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Lindsay was completely on board with our plan. "I'm sick of waiting for fortune to favour the bold," she said. "We'll rustle up the cavalry and put your cousin down once and for all."
"Let's try diplomacy with her first," Roger suggested. "I know Faith's a few unmentionable words I won't repeat in polite company, but let's at least give her the chance to try and make amends before we go in all guns blazing. She's holding the cubs hostage - I don't want her going ax-crazy and killing them to stop them from being rescued."
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The Red Winter packhouse in Bristol was not the most pleasant of houses. It was an imposing, dark structure that seemed to hail from the Middle Ages, and I shivered at the thought of my daughter being raised in such a place. Roger, Lindsay and James all looked as sick as I felt. "This is not a place for cubs," Lindsay muttered.
"And it's not a place for you," Faith told us from the front step. Her eyes glittered with malice as she looked down on us. "You might as well turn tail and head home; my daughter isn't coming home with you. She prefers my company, and by God, I'll ensure it stays that way, even if I have to rip her apart from the inside out and remake her from scratch. I have the ways and means to do so; be thankful I'm using my son as a tool to keep her on the straight and narrow."71Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR9sMDX3dPc
I took a deep breath. "If you want a weapon so bad," I said, "then take me instead." I felt James stiffen up beside me, but I also sensed how proud he was of me for making this agreed sacrifice. We'd cried together after the decision had been made, agreeing that, in the long run, our daughter's freedom was more important than mine. "In fact, you can take Lindsay and I," I added, and Lindsay nodded, her face firm as she stepped forward to join me. "Our freedom for our son and daughter's," I said. "It sounds like a fair exchange to me."
"I've agreed to exact no further reprisal on you and yours for what you've done," Roger added. "Just return our cubs to us, and we'll let this whole matter go. Do the right thing for once, please."
Faith sneered down at us. "As if I'm going to take you at your word," she said. "Do you really believe I don't know about the army you've got waiting, ready to take me down at a moment's notice?"
"I'm in contact with our Beta and Gamma," Roger said. "They've orders to withdraw the moment the exchange has happened. I swear to you on my life that I intend to live up to the promise I'm making you."
"Hmph." Faith let out a snort of disgust. "I don't believe you. You can mouth all the pretty promises you want, but I know for a fact you'll sic your army on my refuge the moment the cubs are back in your grasp."
"You have my word," Roger insisted.
Faith stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head. "Mercedes is of no use to me, save as a useless mouth to feed," she said. "Leanna is much more to my liking, and I can mold her the way Mercedes was meant to be molded. If I take Mercedes, you can rest assured I'll break her as surely as I plan to break my daughter. And my son will suffer the same fate, even if his egg donor comes under my care as well. But neither of these two are useful to me. I can breed them until their baby-making parts are dried up, and then slit their throats, but their worth to me is as nothing. And the cubs I have in this house will outlive any value Mercedes and Lindsay might bring me. So go home before I forget myself and have the whole miserable lot of you killed." 71Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNqfJwhXY4R
She turned on her heel, and something inside me snapped. Years of abuse finally took their toll, but instead of breaking out in rage, I snapped my fingers, freezing Faith on the spot. Shock broke the normal guard she had on her mind, and I took over with ease, shunting her aside with the contempt a man might show to a fly he swats out of his way. Once I'd established control of Faith's body, I ransacked her mind for what I needed. She screamed helplessly as I undid the spell that would have killed my daughter, as well as all the other cubs, but I soon put paid to her struggles by locking her in a glass box, condemning her to the same fate she'd inflicted on Cherry. To further drive the message home, I set the trap on loop, meaning that, every time Faith "drowned", she'd come back to life, with the room filling with water, her grisly death reliving itself over and over again until she broke from the strain. It was cruel, perhaps, but no more cruel than what she and her pack had done to me as I was growing up.
With Faith secured, I turned to the others. "I've got it under control," I promised. "Faith won't get out any time soon, and if she does, well, I can use her own magic against her. James, take my body back to Penzance. Roger, give the order."
"Yes ma'am," James and Roger said in unison. As James shifted to wolf form, Lindsay joined me.
"That was very well done," she said, as I opened the door. "I'm impressed you restrained yourself so well after all she's done to you."
"I'm milliseconds away from just outright killing her," I admitted, as we entered the house. Stunned pack members came running, having heard the commotion, but Lindsay and I shifted, and, once the rest of our pack had teleported in to join us, we made short work of the enemy wolves who tried to take us down. Other allies went in search of the missing cubs, and by the time the carnage was done, no enemy wolf was left alive. "But I'm not like Faith," I said, as I got my breath back, nursing a few bite marks. "She deserves to die, but at the same time, she deserves to suffer. So I'm giving that to her in spades. By the time I leave her body, she'll be trapped in an endless loop, with no way to get out, and it will eventually drive her insane. Some might call it cruel; I call it justice."
"Good call," Lindsay agreed. "Death is too easy for her, in any case."
"You said it," I agreed.
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