“The Badlands,” he said. “we can take refuge there, at least for now.”
I agreed with the idea, but something gave me pause. “Wait. We can’t just leave Luna.”
Nate faltered. We hid behind a rock, catching our breaths for a moment. “I know,” he replied. “But… As much as I want to go back after her, I don’t think that will go over too well.”
“We have done nothing wrong,” I told him, snapping my jaw.
“Do you think the Alpha will believe that?” he asked. “Luna tried to defend us, and the Beta ignored her.”
“He’ll see the truth, eventually. Besides, some things matter more than others.”
Nate nodded. “And that’s exactly why we need to go. If we don’t… They’ll kill us. They might even kill her.”
The Wolfsbane Pack might pretend they were tamer than the Firewolves, but we all knew the truth. There was a reason no one talked about what had happened with the Alpha’s mate, and it wasn’t just because he was grief-stricken.
“I want to go back for her too,” Nate added. “But Sam, she’s only fourteen and she’s injured. We can’t take care of her out here in the wild. We’re not what she needs.”
A pang of shame and anguish rushed through me at his words. The weight of the chaos was still making my mind fuzzy. A part of me wanted to go back to the pack, to help Luna. But yes, she was so very young, and we… We couldn’t…
Couldn’t what? I didn’t know, but I felt increasingly nauseated. Nate nipped my shoulder and his presence anchored me. “Come on. They’re after us. We have to go, or they’ll catch up.”
I didn’t argue with him again. There was nothing else I could say, nothing that would make a difference. What was the point in pretending, anyway? Returning to the pack was out of the question. We’d killed the Alpha’s heir, and no matter what reason we’d had for it, that would never change.
In the distance, the waters of the Bloodmoon Lake glittered ominously. I took in its bright shimmer, marveling at how well it suited the blood now staining my fur. Up above, in the sky, the moon was shining, bright and cold, its crimson rays guiding our fellow shifters to their mates.
But we would not be so lucky. Today, we would leave our past behind, but we wouldn’t find our future. We would only find death and a barren wasteland.
With a heavy heart, I suppressed all the emotions rampaging inside me. Together with my brother, I started running again, heading toward the Badlands. I didn’t know when we would return, but I prayed with all my might that until that day came, Luna would be all right.
* * *
Rowan
“It’s coming. It’s going to be here soon.”
I shared a look with my brother and smiled, finding my excitement mirrored in his eyes. “Yeah. Do you think you’ll get lucky this year?”
Rufus laughed. “No idea. Maybe. We can only hope. But we have enough wolves that at least some of them will find their mates. By next year, the pack will have more pups.”
“Maybe some of them will be ours, eh?”
“That’s right.”
We’d already gathered underneath the Great Tree in the center of our pack settlement. Now, we just had to wait. And we didn’t have to do so for much longer. Slowly, but surely, the fog rolled in and utter darkness covered the sky. The moon shone brightly above us, the crimson light making the distant waters of Bloodmoon Lake look eerier than ever. Following my instincts, I shifted into my wolf form, dropping down on four paws.
I could already feel my body respond to the chaos, my senses sharpening and every single inch of me vibrating with intense, carnal awareness. Our prey was waiting. I looked forward to hunting down my female, to bringing her here, to breeding her and watching her swell with my pups. The chaos would guide me to her. I was sure of it.
By my side, my brother and the other members of my pack were doing the same. I ignored them. Rufus was my Alpha, but I couldn’t have cared less about his authority. Tonight, the Firewolves were all on their own. The Alpha would never stand in the way of the chaos’s voice, so we would all head in different directions, depending on where we were being summoned.
Rufus let out a deafening howl, and our pack joined in, our voices reaching out to the chaos, making reverberations of its power echo through us. And just like that, the hunt was on. Leaving everything and everyone else behind, I embraced the power of darkness and fully surrendered to my instincts.
The world became a blur, individual objects fading away as my focus lined up to one goal alone. The leaves of the scattered trees rustled in the wind, birds chirped in a mix of alarm and excitement, and the ground itself vibrated with a strange form of sentience. Everything was so much clearer to me, and yet, somehow fuzzy, as if irrelevant. The only thing that was truly important was her, my female, my mate.
She was close. I knew she was. I could feel her. But there was something in the way, a barrier that was keeping us apart. Snarling, I pushed myself harder, running faster. In the distance, I could glimpse the lands of the Wolfsbane Pack.
Firewolves avoided encroaching on the borders of our neighboring pack. We didn’t fear them, but there was a reason the pack carried that name. It regularly used weapons and poisons that specifically targeted our weaknesses. They didn’t always resort to silver, but they turned to it far more often than other packs. In some regions of the valley, silver was a highly regulated substance, but the Wolfsbanes hadn’t let that stop them. And they had other tricks up their sleeves, dangerous poisons almost as lethal as silver. There had been plenty of skirmishes in the past, with losses on both sides, so we tried to keep our distance, whenever it was possible at least.
Right now, I couldn’t have cared less. Let them attack me if they felt so brave. Their tricks and games meant nothing to me. I would tear them all apart before they could even make a move. Nobody would stop me from getting to my mate.
