Chapter 80 Treated like Livestock pt 2
Julian
I stepped back and looked at Axel. He was standing between the warrior and the omega. "Can you handle the rest of this here? Lucian just linked me; they need backup."
"Yeah, I've got it. Leave me two warriors and take the rest. It looks like they've cleared the other four cottages, so I'll leave these two to guard here before I join the fight up front." I looked over at the buildings and, sure enough, there were four more battered omegas huddled in the center of a group of warriors. They were dressed in rags, and some had lengths of rope still around an ankle or a wrist. I hated to leave them like this, but if Lucian was calling, they needed us more.
"Thanks. Jake, Paul, stay here and do what Beta Axel tells you to. The rest of you, on me."
I shifted and took off. We'd get there faster in wolf form. Lucian's scent carried on the breeze—a trail to guide me, which was helpful considering I hadn't ever seen an overhead map of this place. Within a few minutes, three large buildings loomed in the distance. The ground in front of them was littered with bodies. Limbs were torn off, throats ripped out. It was a mess.
Shifting, I came up to Lucian, who was standing against the side of the building on the right. He had blood dripping down his calf, the puncture marks from someone's teeth just starting to close. "What happened here?"
"Ambush. Malachi had already split to support the front, and we were coming to check out the barn before we joined them. Warriors must have been lagging behind in the barracks and caught us on both sides. That's not the worst of it, though." Lucian's eyes were bleak. "We need the extra men to deal with what we found in the barn."
A chill snaked up my spine, and the hairs on my arms stood at attention. What the hell did they find? I raised my eyebrow in question.
"You're better off looking for yourself. Tristan's people are already in there."
I ignored the clench low in my abdomen at his ominous words and headed for the doors. I froze the moment I stepped through.
The scent hit me first. Human waste, fear-sour pheromones, and the salt of old tears layered so thick it coated the back of my tongue. The stench pressed in on me, Nemo snarling at the taste of it in every breath. Then the sounds. Quiet murmuring, muffled sobs, low reassurances from warriors moving through the space. There had to be a hundred people here. Maybe more. The barn stretched wide and open, poles sunk deep into the ground at irregular intervals. Each post was fitted with metal rings. Each ring held a chain or a rope, all of them leading to collars on human throats.
They'd been driven in and tied off. Contained.
Alpha James and Beta George weren't leading their people. They were managing stock.
I'd known the truth. Seeing it was something else entirely.
I focused on the group of six in front of me. It was a mix of male and female wolves, omegas from what I could tell. Maybe I was wrong; with the mix of scents in the place, it was hard to pinpoint where they were all coming from. The women's clothes were ragged, with pieces of fabric coming loose. The men were naked except for their boxer shorts. Dirt covered their skin, smudged on their faces. The women had tear tracks running down their cheeks, cutting paths through the filth there. One man was covered in cuts and bruises. When he moved, I caught a whiff of blood, and I walked around him. Whip marks criss-crossed his back, some of them still raw and weeping. The moment I met his gaze, his eyes sparked with visible anger.
"If you're here to do more of the same, just kill us and get it over with," he sneered.
"We're here to help, not hurt. I've got men coming to help get everyone released. We'll get you medical treatment as soon as we can," I assured him. He continued to look skeptical, so I looked around for something to break through his chains. "Are there keys?"