Betrayal And Redemption (Wolves of Hollow Ridge Book 1)

Chapter 9. Escape at any Cost!

Hope you are all enjoying my story. Out of curiosity, what do you all think of the title?

Chapter 9

Zack drove away from Sophie's house and he couldn't help but feel as if he had betrayed his mate once more, but he didn't know how else to persuade her to come back to the pack. To use her emotions against her went against everything he believed in, and to use the threat from the wolf council to the children, he knew was low.

Even knowing all that, he didn't think he would have done anything differently. He wanted, no, he needed her to come home. Not just because of the council, but because he needed to try and fix what his parents, and inadvertently he, had caused.

He would never forget the day he had discovered the truth. The day he realised his parents and Sophie's uncle had hid his mate from him two years. The day Sophie had killed her uncle.

It was the screams that drew his attention. He had just returned from a trip to town for supplies and had parked his truck beside the pack house and was shooting the breeze with a few pack mates before unloading the dry goods into the storeroom when the first scream came.

He and the three others turned and started running. The next scream came seconds later. As they ran towards the houses at the far side of the pack village, one of the woman came round the bend almost falling in her haste to get away from whatever she had saw.

As Zack came closer he recognised her as Anne Dobson, one of his fathers enforcer's mate. "Anne, what is it, what's happened?" He asked quickly.

"It's Frank!" She sobbed, barely able to speak through her sobs. "It's Frank, he's....he's...dead!"

"Where is he Anne?" Zack asked urgently. "Was it a hunter?"

Anne shook in his arms and continued sobbing. "No!" She said gasping. "It was her!"

"What are you talking about Anne, who? Where is frank?" Anne turned and pointed towards Frank's run down cabin.

Zack gently pushed her into the arms of one of the men now gathered round and walked quickly to the cabin. As he got closer he could smell the blood clearly, the copper scent bitter to his sensitive nose.

The nearer he got to the porch, he realised he could scent the blood of not just Frank but also of someone else and his heart began to pound in his chest. His wolf began howling, scratching at his insides trying to burst free. Mate, his wolf howled. My mate. He wrestled to get his wolf under control only just managing to hold off his shift.

Zack couldn't believe it. His mate was in there and from the scent she was hurt. He ran up the steps and onto the porch stepping through the already open door. The site that greeted him as he walked into the main room of the cabin would haunt him till the day he died.

Frank Danes was lying on his back in the middle of the floor with a large kitchen knife sticking out of his chest, the pool of blood underneath him spreading out around him like a macabre ink blot. He know immediately that a Frank was dead. The scent of death already thickening the air.

But it was the small figure curled in on herself in the corner that drew his attention. She was covered in blood from head to toe and her back had been ripped to shreds, with muscle and bone showing in places, the wounds were so severe.

"Mate!" He whispered brokenly. He rushed across the room and bent down reaching a hand out to touch his mate. He knew she lived, he could hear her shallow breathing and slower than should be heartbeat.

As he gently brushed her blood matted hair back from her face and recognition flooded him. Sophie Danes! Frank's niece. But how could that be. He had met her just after her eighteenth birthday, when she had approached him and his father at the packhouse. She had said then they were mates but she hadn't scented as his mate then. How could this have happened.