And who fights—not with you, but at your command?
I didn’t recognize their scent or their pack affiliation. She was a mercenary, so the wolves she hired would come from different packs, outcasts willing to live a rebellious life. But they didn’t fight like outcasts. They were lethal and disciplined, worrisome men to be admired.
Mace was snarling beside me, with the same questions racing through his mind.
Angel tipped her head. More alpha-to-alpha than subservient respect.
“I’ll tell you one day.” Her smile curved before she pivoted and disappeared, her wolves guarding her back.
Through the pack bond, I issued orders to clean up the mess. We weren’t far from the second passage into Sentinel Falls. I picked up the scent, let the wolf take the lead. I would go on alone. Mace agreed to follow after he burned the hybrid bodies, which was the only way to insure they didn’t resurrect themselves.
Noa’s scent was strong in the passage. I ran through the possibilities but knew the one place where she would run toward. The one place where she would feel safe. What worried me was why she needed that level of safety. And the second scent. I wasn’t sure if it was genuine or not.
When the wolf emerged from the last passage, the silence raised a ridge of hair along his spine.
She, she, she…
To the wolf, Noa was She.
To me, Noa would always and only be Bedisa… destiny.
I offered a soothing pulse of reassurance. He shook his massive head, walking through the open field, following the paired footsteps still visible in the snow. Two people had crossed the open patch where we’d made snow angels. Where the young pups laughed and built a snow wolf with their damaged alpha.
This was where she’d healed me. Held me… and I told her to go…
The sun was low in the milky sky. Ice glinted on the tall stalks of last year’s grass. Beneath the wolf’s paws, the crusted snow gave way with a faint crunch.
She heard us.
Silently, she stepped through the open doorway of my childhood home. Stood on the porch where I’d played. Where my mother once stood, as fiercely as Noa now stood with a bow in her hand—a shiny black compound bow like the one Angel used, with the arrow nocked and aimed.
The wolf halted with one paw still in the air. Only his tail twitched. His lip quivered.
Noa didn’t speak. Didn’t move, other than the turning of her head as she scanned the surrounding trees. Her body hummed with apprehension. She wore clothes she’d left here, jeans that fit her long legs, a tucked cotton tee shirt. Her braid fell against her shoulder as she studied the middle distance. The photographer in her—searching for what didn’t belong. I wanted to lunge toward her, protect her, erase all that had happened. But that was impossible. The woman she was now would not allow it.
She would want every minute, every second of experience, good or bad. Treasure it for the fleeting nature of life, knowing that what fate had laid out before us was now in play.
She’d told me we were the perfect lovers. Passion. Destruction—and perhaps what happened now was all part of it.
“Well, wolf.” Her voice startled me. “Did Mace come with you?”
The wolf shook his furry head.
“Good.” She eased the bowstring back into normal while her eyes traveled over the wolf, as if she was searching for a wound that wasn’t there. “Did any hybrids survive?”
Another shake of the head as the wolf answered her.
“Shift before you come inside.” She turned on her heel. “All that blood will make a mess.”
The wolf, the weak-kneed bastard, relinquished control, and I followed Noa into house. Disappeared into the bedroom I’d grown up in, dragging on whatever was available—black jeans, and a tee shirt that still carried a lavender scent she used when she did laundry.
I’d never had a woman do my laundry, other than my mother, and it probably made me the worst kind of alphahole because I enjoyed having Noa take care of me like that. She was pacing through the kitchen, her back tense.
“We need to hurry.” She gripped my hand, tugged me through the bathroom, across the threshold and the veil of magic. We entered the house Fee built, my refuge—our refuge—through the living room, through the open glass doors and onto the patio.
I gaped at Julien, slumped in a chair.
Noa was babbling, close to crying. “Please don’t be mad. I didn’t know where else to go where it was safe and… he wouldn’t stay inside. Something about needing an invitation even though I said it was okay. He needs healing. He isn’t dead. I got him all this way, and they were chasing us, but…”
