She smiled at us sweetly, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have deemed her harmless and fragile. But her silver hair was still crimson in places, and I hadn’t forgotten she had killed Andrea and had just attempted to kill us. Strangely enough, that helped me, because it meant we could do this.
Almost ten years ago, Nate and I had been guards in the Wolfsbane Pack. Not much had changed in the settlement since then. In the past, we hadn’t been able to come too close, because our former pack members had always been watching. Not anymore.
This time, when we approached the settlement, there were very few people paying attention. The Wolfsbanes and the Firewolves were still in front of the healer’s hut, arguing about… something. With some effort, I heard a few tidbits of the conversation.
“We have to go after them,” Alice said. “We can still save Rowan.”
“Your son’s made his own bed, Alice,” Alpha Clayton replied. “He never should have claimed my daughter. She was a bad seed from the very beginning. Just look at what she did to our healer.”
Several others around him nodded in assent. I clenched my fists in fury and frustration. How dare they? How dare they blame her for defending herself, for taking revenge when they’d been the ones who’d attacked us? If they had left us alone, none of this would have happened.
Luna didn’t get mad. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s end this.”
Completely calm, she slid through the shadows, careful to stay upwind so that we wouldn’t be scented. We flanked her, just in case something went wrong and we had to intervene.
It was almost too easy. This time, the chaos was on our side. The Firewolves and the Wolfsbanes were getting angry at one another again, just like they had during the failed mating ceremony.
There were a few guards placed in front of the storage huts, and they were actually trying to pay attention. Even so, they weren’t a real challenge for us. They didn’t see us coming, and in the blink of an eye, they were down.
We were careful to not shed their blood, choosing to snap their necks instead. It seemed like a wasted death, since I craved digging my fangs into their flesh. I shook myself out of my haze, reining in the bloodlust threatening to overwhelm me.
I didn’t know what was causing it anymore. It could have been the chaos, or it could have been Luna and Rowan. The quirks of their Alpha bloodlines had always been a recipe for disaster, a ticking time bomb, as the humans would have said. I had no problem with it—just as long as the explosion was directed at the right people.
The door of the hut wasn’t locked, and the reason soon became obvious. The storage room was basically empty. The Wolfsbanes must have thrown everything they had at the Firewolves. Or at least, so it seemed. I knew better.
Our pack always had a backup plan. Luna knelt on the floor and cracked it open, not having the patience to move aside the boards like she should have. Together, we extracted a large wooden box, and inside, we found what we’d been looking for.
The crossbows of the Wolfsbane Pack had once been as feared as their guns were now. They’d become obsolete in the modern era, but the Clayton Alphas hadn’t wanted to just throw them out. They’d been stashed here, preserved for posterity, a reminder of our past.
Luna picked up the crossbow, brushing her hand over the side of the weapon. When she’d been younger, before she’d received the injury that had crippled her so badly, she’d learned how to use the traditional weapons of the Wolfsbane Pack, and those lessons had never faded.
To top it off, Nate and I knew how to use everything here. Our minds, our hearts, and even our muscle memory belonged to Luna. She might have felt uncertain about the details she’d forgotten, but we were with her. She closed her eyes and her fingers easily moved on the crossbow, checking the state of the weapon.
We didn’t offer to do it in her stead. It would have been an insult to her resolve, and in a way, to our bond too. No matter what, we were always carrying the same burden, and we would be sharing this too, just like we were sharing everything else.
That didn’t change the fact that Luna wanted her hands to hold the crossbow that ended this story. “I’m tired of being used and abused. As much as I want revenge, it’s not about that.”
“I know, Luna,” I told her. We wanted revenge too, and if things had been different, we’d have happily destroyed our former packs. But if the chaos had taught us anything, it was that some things mattered more than others. We were going to shed blood today, yes, but it would be for the sake of our future.
We didn’t have any wolfsbane, but we didn’t need it. Luna made a cut in her hand and dipped the crossbow bolts in her blood. “The poison in my blood is diluted now, but it’ll still work,” she explained, “just as long as I aim correctly.”
Luna was the same as Ivy had been now, a walking weapon. Her blood was poisonous, at least temporarily. But unlike her murderous friend, she would not make the mistake of throwing herself at the problem. As long as this worked, we could still survive this, and come out unscathed.
Now armed, we left the storage room and headed toward the healer’s hut. We knew better than to believe our luck would hold. Someone would eventually notice us. The other shifters might be angry and distracted, but they weren’t idiots. But if our plan worked, it wouldn’t matter.
We had to get closer to make sure our mission was successful, and as we approached, we heard Rufus arguing with Edgar again.
“I’ve played along with your little game so far, but don’t think for one second that I’ve forgotten your disrespect. You owe me, Alpha Clayton.”
“I owe you nothing,” Edgar spat. “We reached an agreement, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But that agreement involved Rowan staying alive, not your daughter hunting him down in a chaos-induced rage,” Alice said. “That Omega… She can’t actually kill them, can she?”
“Of course she can.” Rufus scoffed. “It’s not like they’ll want to hurt her. I know I didn’t, and she isn’t even my true mate.”
“After everything that’s happened, wouldn’t you say it’s better for things to end this way? We’ve already lost enough to this pack war.”
As much as I hated to agree with Edgar, I knew he was right. The two packs had already lost enough. The problem was that they were all under this strange impression that it was our responsibility. We weren’t going to accept that anymore.
