The dense forest surrounding Pack Quartz territory looms before us by late afternoon. Aurora pulls her bike up to the main road and waits for me to catch up—my wolf has been slow this morning, his unhappiness bristling under his thick fur. As I join her at the pack’s borders, the scent of pine and earth fills my nostrils, mingling with the distinct markers of the pack.
There’s a blockade stretching across the main road, large metal signs declaring the quarantine. My wolf’s hackles rise as I get closer, the scent of the pack’s fear and sickness setting him on edge.
Aurora turns her back as I shift to my human form and pull on my clothes. She won’t even look at me as I step up beside her to face the quarantine sign. Her jaw is a set line, her mismatched eyes flinty with irritation. Gone is the young girl who laughed at everything, even my worst jokes—now there’s this woman in front of me instead, one who has every reason to hate me and more.
“Ready?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
She nods, glancing over at me for only a moment before she looks away. “Let’s get this over with.”
Thismeaning not just our next stop on our journey, but the entire investigation altogether. It shouldn’t pain me, since I’ve been thinking the same thing all morning, but some part of me hates to be pushed away like this. Some hypocrite I am.
We approach the pack borders cautiously, on foot. Alpha Thorin sent word ahead that we were coming to help out, but given the current state of things on Pack Quartz territory, you never know. As we get near, I see a group of wolves emerging from the tree line. They shift into their human forms in front of us, carelessly naked until they pull clothes from a chest by the barricade. The lead man, Jacen Boudreaux, stays unclothed for far longer than necessary—and the long, searching looks he keeps casting Aurora’s way have my hackles up.
Jacen Boudreaux is the pack’s future alpha. I met him years ago, during the tour my father sent me on of all the other nearby packs. He was older than me, arrogant and full of himself. From the haughty look in his eyes as he approaches us, and the rolling saunter in his step, not much has changed. He should begiving us deference, thanking us for our offer of help—instead he almost approaches us like we’re the ones who need him.
“Well, well,” Jacen drawls, his gaze sliding to me. “Kieran McCade. When Thorin’s messenger said that you were coming here in the morning to ‘help out,’ I thought he had to be mistaken. It couldn’t possibly be the pizza-faced Kieran I knew. Yet here you are.”
I bite back a snarl, reminding myself that his taunts are meaningless. Stepping forward, I position myself slightly in front of Aurora. She cuts her eyes at me and frowns, no doubt sensing my protective nature and resenting it, but I can’t help myself. My wolf wants to protect our mate—even though I have no right to call her that.
A fact she very succinctly pointed out last night, with fire in her mismatched eyes and venom on her tongue.
“Both of us have grown up in the years since we saw each other last,” I say to him, putting casual confidence and the strength of my wolf into my words. “I was sorrowful to hear of the difficulties Pack Quartz has been experiencing. Your father was always an honorable man, and I look forward to helping him get to the bottom of this.”
The mention of his father, Alpha Carver, takes some of the haughtiness out of Jacen’s body language. It was always like that with him—no matter how much of an ass he could be, he knew better than to act up around his father.
“We’re under strict quarantine,” he says, tapping one of the large metal signs. “Unless you can’t read?”
Before I can respond, one of the women behind him steps up and snaps, “Come on, Jacen. You know better than to be an ass. We need their help.” She glances over at Aurora, and with a friendly air says, “I’m Ophelia. We haven’t been introduced.”
Jacen is scowling at the female shifter, but he seems to be unable to speak up to her—which is an interesting newdevelopment. The alpha-to-be upstart I knew didn’t respect much of anyone beside his father.
“I’m Aurora.” She glances uneasily between the two, then adds, “I’ve been looking into the madness, and while I don’t have a definite cure, I was able to help with at least one subject. I’m hoping to investigate more.”
A pang goes through me at the uncertainty in her voice. This morning before we headed out, she tried to cure the outcast shifter’s madness. But Emmett only stuttered and snarled more, the wound he had festering with the magical infection. Whatever she was able to do at Pack Amethyst, she couldn’t replicate it—and it’s been a blow to her confidence, I can tell.
“Aurora is selling herself short,” I tell Jacen and the others. “She’s an expert in fae lore. And she was born a member of Pack Onyx—which is why we’re returning to their pack lands to do further investigation.”
The woman, Ophelia, looks at Aurora with renewed interest at hearing this. “Really? I’m a bit of an expert in ancestral shifter magic myself. Not much is known about it, but they say that the land Pack Onyx was on hasn’t woken in decades—something about the curse of the madness turned it to ruins.”
Aurora swallows, and I feel a pang of sadness from her through our bond. “I’ve heard the same, that nothing grows there or lives there. The humans think it was an industrial waste dumping ground. We think the fae might have had something to do with it, but we don’t know yet what they did or why—we’re hoping to do more investigation before we get there.”
“Which is why your father asked for help, and Alpha Thorin sent us,” I tell Jacen, bringing the subject back around. “We need to get a move on if we’re going to do anything worthwhile, though. The madness spreads quickly if left unchecked.”
Jacen snorts, then motions toward us. “I was just fucking with you. Isn’t that obvious? Of course you’re welcome in—we’ve been expecting you, like I said. We’re just here as escort.”
I don’t like the edge to his smile, or the confused look one of his warriors shoots his way, but at least he opens the barricade to let us through. Aurora hops on her bike and navigates through, while the rest of us jog on foot.
It doesn’t take long for us to reach the outskirts of their territory. Pack Quartz is large and spread out, unlike Pack Amethyst. Jacen has Aurora leave her motorcycle in an old garage by an indoor training gym, then says he’ll bring us further into town in his SUV. He tries to get Aurora into the passenger seat, next to him, but Ophelia hops in first—leaving me and Aurora in the back, pushed together by the man shifter who hops in from the driver’s side.
Sitting this close to her is torture, especially with the curving roads and shitty driving Jacen subjects us to. Every press of her soft yet muscular thigh against mine, the way her scent wafts in the air when she takes her hair down from her ponytail and combs her fingers through it, even the sound of her breathing, all of it is enough to drive me mad. By the time Jacen parks in front of his house, a massive and sprawling Colonial style home with a curving driveway out front, I’m so on edge that I jump out of the SUV before he’s come to a complete stop.
We’re greeted by a group of shifters guarding the front door. They eye us with suspicion and hostility, the smell of their wolves’ anger and simmering violence rolling off of them. I get the sense that if we try to walk past them, we’ll be attacked on sight.
Jacen strolls up to them, then with a smirk, glances over his shoulder at me and says, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? My father is in the outskirts. You won’t be able to meet with him until the morning. Guess until then, we’ll have to just hang out.”
I scowl at him. “We won’t be doing anything like?—”
“I’d love to take a load off for a while.” Aurora’s voice interrupts me before I can finish telling Jacen off. “We can wait until morning.”
