All he wants, then and now, isher.It’s frustrating, and about the only thing we ever disagree on. I’ve never been so far from him as I am in these moments, when he thrashes and bites like a feral thing, desperate for his mate.
“Kieran has some news about the spreading madness that he’d like to share. Don’t you, my boy?”
My father’s gruff voice grabs me by the scruff of my neck and yanks me to the present, my wolf flattening his ears in response to the dominance and thinly veiled aggression in his tone.
“Yes, I…” Exhaling slowly, I try to rememberwhyI was in the outskirts in the first place this morning: the newcomer. “We recently received a newcomer from another pack, uh… Pack Garnet.”
“Pack Garnet? Aren’t they all the way in the southeast?” Elder Cahan frowns at me, his salt and pepper brows severe overhis dark eyes. “What would bring a wolf all the way here from that far away?”
“They are, and he came because he has a friend here, also living in the outskirts. Julien—that’s his name—left Pack Garnet in a rush because the madness overtook them. He brought news about the madness.”
“Go on.”
Nodding, I do my best to relax, trying to make my wolf remember that we have a reason for being here. “Apparently the madness came on quickly. Just a few weeks ago, the whole pack was fine, and by the time he left the night before last, almost every pack member, including the alpha, had gone mad.”
Murmurs of consternation go up at this. I continue, “He claims that right before the madness happened, a member of the pack started talking about seeing the fae again after years of them not being around. Apparently there were signs: faerie rings in the woods, hedge witches roaming around gathering mutated plants, and little bits of food left out for them.”
“Packs don’t mess with the fae,” my father insists. “We know better. Witches and humans make bargains with them, not shifters.”
“Well, someone in the pack was bringing them around.” That, or they came around on their own, which seems worse somehow. “I could smell the fae on him—he’d been gone from his pack for two days, and it was still a strong scent.”
Elder Mariana asks sharply, “Was he mad?”
“Is it going to spread to the rest of us?” Elder Orin wants to know, his gnarled hands clutching the armrests of his chair tightly. “We should exile him before it can.”
“I say we get rid of any of those from other packs,” Elder Rihanna says. “After all, doesn’t it spread through touch?”
“We don’t know that,” Elder Cahan says. “In fact, the only thing wedoknow is that it all started with Pack Onyx.”
That brings my father’s eyes sharply to my face, and I know he’s thinking ofher.I keep my mouth shut tight, her name gripped just behind my teeth, my eyes trained on the tabletop.
“If it’s the fae, then it won’t be spread through touch,” Elder Mariana says. “Anyone who’s ever hunted them knows that the fae work through bargains and deals, not rudimentary magic like the covens and hedge witches.”
Her voice is calm and focused, and as the oldest of our elders, and the only one who’s ever faced the fae, her authority overrides the rest. For a while, there’s further discussion, which my father gruffly joins only a few times. The elders of Pack Jade volley tense worries and observations. All five of them: Mariana, Rihanna, Orin, Cahan, and Bear, who rarely speaks, eventually come to the same conclusion…
If the fae are involved in the pack madness spreading, we have to find out more about it. The only question is how to start that investigation, and the answers are mixed.
Until, at least, my father comes up with a suggestion that makes the whole room quiet down. “Kieran will lead an investigation into the spreading threat. He can smell fae magic—he smelled it on the newcomer, and he can trace it to the source. Not many shifters can say the same. He’ll look into it more and come to us with what he finds.”
There’s not much the elders can say to that, since they all agree, at least, that we need more information before we act. The fae are notoriously tricky and tend to keep to themselves. If they’re going after packs again now, there’s a reason.
As my father turns to me with a nod, and I nod back, accepting the assignment, a surge of emotions wells in my chest. Pride that he gave me this responsibility, knowing how big of a deal it is. Trepidation, because if I fail, he’ll be furious. And a strange mixture of longing and curiosity—because it’s possiblethat all this started in the same place that Aurora was born, yet she’s the one person I can’t go to about it.
Not that she would have answers if I asked. She was just a baby when her pack went mad and her alpha killed every single shifter of Pack Onyx save one: her. Now she doesn’t even remember what her parents looked like, much less what happened that fateful day when my father and his warriors arrived on Pack Onyx land only to discover that they were too late.
“Now that we’ve decided to hold off on any decisions until an investigation is complete, we need to discuss what to do with the growing number of shifters in the outskirts,” Elder Bear says, settling back into his chair. “At this point, their population is dangerously close to eclipsing ours. We need to either bring some of the more worthy closer to us, exile the troublemakers, or both.”
I listen intently for the next several minutes, making sure I don’t hear Aurora’s name, then relax and let my mind wander. My wolf has settled down some now that we have a purpose. The investigation is something to concentrate on, and knowing that our nose sets us apart from the others is a source of pride for him. It doesn’t hurt that her smell is finally starting to fade, too, buried under the stench of anger and anxiety swirling in the room. By the end of the day, the smell of her will be gone completely, and my wolf will settle down.
Just when it seems like the meeting is going to come to a close, there’s a commotion from outside. We are all alert to the sound of a wolf’s howl of alarm. Panic thrums through the pack bond, and my father jerks his chin toward me.
“Go. Check it out and report back.” He pushes his chair back and motions toward the elders. “I’ll make sure that whatever it is, the threat doesn’t make it inside.”
Our elders are our most precious resource, so I don’t have to be told twice. Leaping from my chair, I rip my shirt off and shed my pants in two fluid motions, then call for the wolf and let it flow through me.
After the tension of the day, he’s more than happy to oblige.
The shift is a beautiful, joyous thing. My muscles loosen, my bones lengthen and shorten, my joints turn, and as the wolf flows out of me, fur sprouts all along my body. It happens in a fraction of a second, too fast for a human eye to see. One minute I’m leaping naked into the air, and the next I’m landing on all four paws.
