Dawn Released

Carter wrenched tightly back on his shattering control. Shayla trusted him with her life and he, a condemned creature, was not worthy of the faith she placed in him. By withdrawing his fangs and taking only what he needed from her, in this one single act, he would never be worthy, that he new, but maybe he could prevent a new sin from being heaped upon the endless mountain that haunted him every time he closed his eyes.

Shayla panted as she recovered from the fury of his bite. "Why did you let me feel your bite?" Her clammy palm pressed hard against the stinging, tender flesh of her neck.

"So you would never forget it. I will never lie to you. Never. I won't try to hide what I am from you or sugar coat it behind a layer of sweet words and divine phrases. I do what I do and I am what I am. Never forget that, Shayla. I am not a man. I am this thing that you see before you. I am not worthy of your trust. Ever."

"I know what you are and you've given me a glimpse into the darkest recesses of your heart. I know who you are as well and I am not so innocent or easily deceived by your mask of humanity. I. Know. What. I. See. And I know you don't want to admit the real truth. For some reason the truth terrifies you. I've seen what you've done and despite all that. I know you're a good man. Deep down. You. Are. Good." Her palm pressed against his beating heart, feeling each beat thrum in his chest.

"I've done terrible things, things bad enough to make the devil turn me out of Hell. Yet you who barely know me tell me I am a good man. I'm not even a man at all, just a shell of one. The man you speak of died many, many centuries and should never be spoken of again." Gently, he pulled her palm away from his chest. "You should go and join the others while you're still ahead. I don't see the good you see, because there isn't any good left to see. Go."

Shayla's legs were wobbly from her donation, but she stood and maintained her footing. Staring down at his halo of blond hair, she shook her head. Such a martyr. His icy blue eyes looked up at her beseechingly. Silently begging her to drop the conversation and do as he asked. "What happened to you?"

Carter tore his stare away from her soft, brown doe eyes, filled with such trust and pity for him. "Does the prey get emotionally involved with the hunter? No. Do us both a favor and leave while you still can."

Shayla gathered her dignity and left the vampire to his dark musings. She felt his sigh of relief echo through her mind as she slammed the steel door closed behind her. "Crazy bastard," she mumbled under her breath. Who was the crazier, her or him? Was he crazier because he pushed her away or her, because she cared enough to offer her throat?

Chapter 47

Torr dragged his father's limp body to the center of the platform. Despite the bastard his father had been in life Torr couldn't bring himself to deprive the miserable

son of a bitch of the rite of the pyre. Maybe in death, his father would find the peace he'd always been missing in life. Carefully, almost as if he'd actually loved him, Torr arranged his father's lifeless limbs and folded the hands that had caused so much pain and hurt across his still chest. Torr chuffed humorlessly at the thought. He'd wanted his father dead for so long and now that he was tears he thought he'd never cry stung the corner of his eyes.

He'd day dreamed about the day his father would draw his last breath. Even gone as far as to fantasize that the all mighty Seff, Master of the Western Territories, would meet his demise by the hands of the son he'd hated since the moment he'd been born into the world. Torr had killed his father. And now, at the end of it with the man that he'd spent his life hating dead. There was nothing, no supplication, none of the vindictive feeling of justice or rightness he thought he'd feel. Torr thought at the very least, he'd feel a sense of relief. As he lowered his fingertips to push his father's eyes dulled in death closed, a sort of abject blank emptiness sank down deep. Almost as if he were watching the scene unfold from a far and completely removed from it.

Naked and crouched over the man responsible for so much pain, Torr couldn't describe what he felt. Pity, he supposed. Regret? Perhaps? No, not regret for what he'd done. There was none of that. Only regret that the man his father could have been if not for his greed and selfishness was the father Torr had never gotten the chance to love. Pale and lifeless, stripped of his title and the fear he'd inspired in others, his father seemed so much smaller.

Torr watched the life he'd ripped to shreds with claw and tooth dry in a mess of thick, tacky, clotted patches on the wooden boards. This platform had claimed its last life and so had his father. He'd bled, Kacie had bled, but what they'd paid was small change compared to the price his father had left on the altar of his own making. In the absence of so much hatred, he didn't quite know what to do with all the lightness inside of him. It was a bitter thing, this victory. He'd finally become the man his father had always wanted him to be. A son his father might have loved.

He gave his father one last look. His face, slack in death and stripped of its cruelty had an almost boyish innocence. Covered in his father's blood and healing from the injuries his father had inflicted on him during the fight, Torr sat down, falling onto his ass with a hard thud that rattled the planks of the platform. His skin was tight and stinking with coppery dried gore. The tears he'd tried to hold back came in a downpour. Tears his father wasn't worthy of rolled down his cheeks, smearing the mess on his battered face. Torr let them come. He cried. He mourned, not for the man he'd known, but for the man he never had.

The whys of why his father was the way he had been didn't matter. Seff was who he was and that was pretty much the only explanation Torr needed. Torr felt a grim satisfaction in that the man was no more. It was finally over. The pack had a new master. Torr had saved the lives of hundreds and the lives of future generations to come and they weighed heavily on his shoulders. He would never turn in to the man his father was. Never. Kneeling over the corpse of his father, he whispered a promise. The only promise he'd ever made to his father and said one final goodbye.

Catcher and Tracker mounted the steps of the platform, carrying a delicate, ornately embroidered shroud in their arms. The thin, gauzy fabric riffled in the morning breeze. The sun's morning rays glinted off the swirling patterns of silver and gold thread work. Tracker stood at Seff's feet holding tightly to his end as Catcher stretched the shroud, careful not to let the cloth fall and touch the body as he stretched the length over Seff's body.

They knelt on one knee with heads bowed low and dropped the shroud. They did this, this act of kindness and finality, not for the dead, but for the living. Seff's death had meaning. No one understood better than they the cost of killing to protect the lives of others. It didn't matter if the death had to happen. The taking of another's life, just like the freedom Torr had killed to earn the pack, came with a heavy price. His father's death would weigh heavily on Torr's heart, possibly forever.

Torr was touched by this act of kindness. He thought he'd be sending his father's remains into the afterlife alone. He didn't think anyone would notice or care when he chanted the ancient words or lit the fire. Torr pushed himself to stand. The wooden planks under his feet were cold and slick with blood left moist by the morning mists. He bowed reverently to Catcher and again to Tracker. The cloth was lowered to cover his father's body with a filmy haze of silk and fine embroidery. He gave one final bow, low at the waist, to his father.

The song started out low and soft. Torr sang beautifully. His voice carried and broke the silence of the dawn. His father's death song was a tangle of words. How could he summarize what this man's life had meant in a few brief stanzas? What words could do the man who lay lifeless at his feet justice? Seff was power hungry and desperate. A murder. His name struck fear into everyone who heard it uttered on lips. And somehow, Torr was charged with the task of finding meaning in the terror that had been the life his father chose to live. Ultimately, he sang of a man. A man who was born, lived, and died, not always honorably, but at least he lived with everything he had, and he died just the same way. Sacrificing everything for what he believed was the future. Witnesses filtered out of the woods and out of their homes to gather around the platform. Watching a son as he honored his father one final time. Voice after voice added to the melody of Torr's deep tenor until the voices blended as one.

For his father, it had been a good day to die. And for Torr, it was a good day to start the rest of his life. He uncapped the gas can and doused the wooden planks with the volatile liquid. The golden fluid flowed down the seams of the platform and pooled on the barren ground underneath. The death shroud clung to Seff's lifeless features as Torr soaked the cloth with gasoline. When he was finished and the can was empty, he turned to face his father one last time, bowed, and then turned to follow Catcher and Tracker down the stairs.

The gathering parted for him as he wrapped his fingers around a lit torch. The death song wasn't over until he ended it. There was good to come from this man's death. Perhaps, lessons to be learned. He ended his father's death song with a warning. The final stanza was a warning to everyone gathered here to watch. Torr sang, warning the crowd to learn from his father and his bitter end, to never place possessions above duty, and to never place the love of a son beneath the struggle for wealth or power. With those final words, he threw the torch into the middle of the gasoline soaked platform. The flames sparked and with a whoosh of heat and fumes, his father was sent into whatever waited beyond the life he'd led.

Driven back by the heat and flame, Torr stood watch. He would stand watch until it was done and the fire burned everything to ash. The stink of gasoline, burning wood and flesh, the smoke rising from his father's remains were smells he'd never forget. He accepted a blanket someone from the crowd had given him and wrapped it around his shoulders. Despite the heat from the pyre, a chill settled over him and he shivered beneath the rough wool.

The pack mulled around, some whispering quietly in groups and others just watching with a kind of awe as the fire burned. A hand gently wrapped around his wrist and squeezed with soft, feminine fingers. He looked down to see Eloise staring up at him. Her green eyes glimmering with unshed tears. The crystalline tears were a mix of sorrow, of regret, of joy, of gratitude, and of bitter relief. He understood. The tears stinging the corners of his eyes were made of exactly the same.

Eloise was whole and healthy. Her face alight with compassion for all that Torr had suffered. He wrapped her up in his arms and gave her a tight hug. They'd started out this journey as strangers and had ended up falling in love with one another. Their love was deep and limitless, not the kind of love that happened between a man and woman and bound them as lovers though. Rather, the kind of love he'd fallen into with her was that of a fragile kindred soul, forged from tragedy.

Eloise cried the tears that Torr could not. He'd already shed his last tear for the man he called father and she called a bitter enemy. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest, weeping bitter tears of relief and sorrow. After everything that had happened between them, their lives would never be the same. There was no going back for either of them. Seff was dead and the only guilt she felt was guilt over how badly she'd misjudged Torr. He was a man, a wolf, of great worth.

When she'd finally gathered her composure, she said, "You know what we have to do." She was asking Torr to do what she should have done years ago. She too carried her share of guilt and responsibility for what had happened here and it was time to make it right. Instead of brokering her daughter off to the highest bidder and jockeying her pack for the pursuit of security and wealth. She should have done this one simple act instead. She should have given her daughters the one thing that would have been certain to ensure her safety and the security of the pack for all time. Freedom.

Torr unwound Eloise's arms from around his neck and gave her cheek a gentle peck as he clasped her hands tightly in his. Yes, there could be beauty from ashes. In seeing the spark in her green eyes, he knew what they both had to do. They were pack masters. Their positions had been earned by blood, fang, claw, and death, but these packs were not theirs to lead. No man should ever belong to another. And it was time to make sure what had happened here never happened again.

Torr nodded and drew a deep breath. "No longer will fences surround your homes. No longer will one person have control of the fates of many. Your children will marry out of love, not as a result of genetics. The weak shall no longer be driven away deprived a home. The strong shall no longer rule over the weak, but will serve to protect them.

"Talk amongst yourselves and set up a council of governors to enforce the laws that are to be written, not for the benefit of one, but for the benefit of all. I give you your freedom. Live your lives as you will, but live lives worthy of the gift you've been given. Let this place remain here, scorched and barren until nature reclaims the land as her own once again. Let this place, this ground where the platform stood and burned stand as a reminder to us all."

Eloise squeezed Torr's hands and took a deep, nervous breath. "On this day we are pack. We are community. We are one. We are whole, united, and we are free."

The pack howled in joy. Their fates were their own. They could live as they saw fit. Marry whomever they chose, or not marry at all. No mother would ever cry tears of anguish over a child deemed too weak to be a member of the pack. No father would ever bury a son or a daughter slaughtered over senseless rivalry. And most important of all, the pack would never know the heavy, bitter fist of tyranny ever again.

Chapter 48

Kacie stood in the clearing, looking back at the crumpled, twisted heap of metal that had once been the fence. She'd never seen the world, looking out from the inside without the chain link of the fence to block her view. The ground was scarred with a deep groove from the separation of one world from the other. Over time the fence had been replaced. Wrought iron fence replaced the original wooden boundary and then as time progressed the chain link topped with razor wire replaced wrought iron. Ah, the history of fences, Kacie thought to herself. She scarcely knew how to live in a world without fences or boundaries. The world was the same, yet so very different.

She was one of the lucky ones. She'd gotten out when she went in search of her sister. She knew of the world that existed outside of the fence and outside of Texas. Many did not. They experienced life through the TV, the Internet, and in the pages of books. To them, this new universe was as baffling as it was frightening. People mulled about, crossing the deep gouge in the ground just for the sheer principle of being free to do so for the first time in their lives. She wondered, what would happen to these people now. What would happen to her?

Tristen never wandered too far from her side. He was always there, keeping watch over her. She smiled and extended her hand for him to hold onto. Knowing, without question, no matter what side of the unearthed line, she decided she belonged on. Wherever she was, he would be too.

Tristen returned Kacie's smile and took her hand. Finally, he had the girl. He'd saved the day and her. He wished he could be suave and cool about the whole thing, like the heroes on TV were. But, as long as he was her hero, what did it matter?

Kacie jerked free of Tristen's hand and fought her way through the pack gathered around the burning pyre of Seff's body. "Mom!" She leapt and waved, trying to shout over the din of voices. "Mom!" She elbowed her way through the crowd and leapt into her mom's embrace. "Thank God, you're ok!"

Eloise hugged her daughter as another deluge of tears fell. These were tears of utter gratitude, not ones of sorrow over things lost and gained. Kacie was safe. She wiped away the tears with the hem of the oversized T-shirt Nash had dug out of a closet for her and forced a stern scowl on her face. "I should ground you for the rest of your life," she scolded.

"Ground me?" Kacie snickered, "For what?"

"Risking your neck to rescue me. You should have stayed up north where you belonged. You and the omegas... I mean, Catcher and Tracker," Eloise immediately corrected. She grasped her daughter's hand and dragged her from the pyre and the noisy crowd, away from the reach of the bitter smoke of her past. When they were as alone as they were going to get with all these protectors watching over them. Eloise hugged Kacie again. "I missed you so much, Kacie."

Her tone turned serious, beyond that of scolding and to concern. She'd never considered that Kacie might not want to have a relationship with her. She hadn't always been the best of mothers. As she'd atoned for all of her other sins, she had to ask for forgiveness from her daughters as well, starting with Kacie. "I can never make up for the years we missed as mother and daughter, but I intend to try, if you'll allow me."

Kacie smiled and dragged her mother into a strong embrace. This was the moment she'd been waiting for all of her life, the chance to be a daughter and to have a real mom. Not the cookie baking mother who had all the answers or the ruthless, cunning mother Eloise Collins had been, no not that type of mom. Kacie wanted a real mother, full of mistakes that had never baked a cookie in her life, but loved her just the same. And a mom she could love openly and freely without fear of her love being seen as a sign of weakness. "I'd like that." Kacie grinned crookedly, pointing a finger in her mother's chest and said, "but don't get too pushy."

Eloise chuckled and playfully tousled the ends of Kacie's black curls. Kacie's long, beautiful curtain of dark hair was gone. Without the length to weigh her hair down, the ends curled in loose tangles of unruly, corkscrew curls to frame her chin. Eloise's hair would naturally do the same if she cut it short. She'd always hated the natural curl in her hair and wore it longer, down to her shoulders so that her hair fell in soft waves as opposed to the kinky tightness of the spirals. She'd always kept Kacie's hair long to spare her daughter the awfulness of the tight curls she'd inherited from her. "What did you do to your hair?"

Kacie swatted at her mom's hands and ducked. She wasn't about to tell her mom the truth of why she'd cut her hair. It didn't matter now, anyway. "I cut it," she answered lamely as if the whole thing had been done on a whim. "Do you like it?" The tidbit about why she cut her hair was going to remain a secret. Her mom didn't need to know that she'd cut it for her. The less her mom knew about the events that had occurred during her rescue, the better.

As far as Kacie felt, the short hair was taking a bit of getting used to. The back of her neck was always cold and the faintest chill in the breeze brushed over her skin with icy fingers. She did like the way her hair curled on the ends to frame her face, though. She was going to love that her hair would take minutes to wash, dry, and style instead of hours. And she bet, with the loss of almost a foot of hair, she'd dropped at least five pounds. Those were going to be the positive side of things. The negative, the small amount of time she'd spared looking at herself in the mirror had filled her with doubt. She was almost twenty-three and with the shorter haircut, she looked about twelve years old.