We can’t shake him.
My legs ache; they are panting and look exhausted.
“We have to find somewhere to hide.”
“Where?” Legion hisses. “We’ve tried high, low, underground, stone, wood, trees. It’s got a tracker on you, and it’s not giving up.”
“So leave me.”
“No!” Mordecai and Jarek snarl at the same time. Mordecai runs a hand over his face, wiping the sweat off him. Jarek drops, resting in a crouch, but his legs are trembling.
I lean against the wall. “We can’t keep running.”
“Sure, we can,” Mordecai says with a thick voice. We’re all thirsty, and the water is long since gone. He knows we can’t, he’s just stubborn.
I let out a bitter laugh.
The Ravage Wolf appears like a nightmare at the end of the street; it starts stalking towards us. It doesn’t need to run; there’s nowhere to go. I push myself off the wall and take a stumbling step towards it.
“I don’t want you to die here,” I say to the alphas. “Go and help the Resistance. Tell them I died.”
“Not a chance in Remmilow!” Jarek snaps. “I’m not losing you again.”
Again? When did he lose me the first time?
The wolf snarls, flashing yellowing teeth in deep, dark warning.
A deep bass growl explodes around us, shaking me down to the bones. It’s a sound that sends my soul flying, soaring.
The growl doesn’t come from a human throat, nor does it come from the Ravage Wolf.
I turn and stare at the black wolf with the blood red-tipped fur, the wolf I freed in Beta City.
It peels its teeth back and sinks down, its body moving sinuously as it prepares to attack.
Jarek pulls me out of the way just in time to save me as the two of them charge each other.
I’ve never seen anything like it; I can’t look away.
“What is that?” I breathe.
“I have no idea, but I think we might be getting saved,” Legion whispers.
Chapter 22
A clash of titans
They slam into each other with a thud so loud it rattles buildings. I take a quick step back, bumping into Legion. All I can see are flashes of sharp teeth, black fur, and dust as they whirl around, leaping and rearing up. I analyze their movements in morbid fascination, trying to find a weakness, but I can’t see anything. The speed and agility of these beasts has my heart dropping, their bite force is breaking through stone, and their claws leaving furrows in concrete. While the Ravage Wolf has the other one in size, the new wolf has an aggression that is driving him back.
He might actually come out of this the winner.
Their teeth snap in a sound that sends a bolt of primal fear through me. I watch the new wolf rake claws down the belly of the Ravage Wolf, only to be thrown into a building. He’s on his feet in seconds, shaking his fur out, his eyes locked with deadly intensity on the monster in front of us.
The Ravage Wolf roars, and the other lets out a snarling, animal growl that makes my knees weak.
“We need to go, now,” Jarek hisses. “Before they remember we can be food.”
I ignore him because teasing the threads of memory is a story that I remember hearing from my mother when I was a little girl. She told me a story so wild that I dismissed it as fancy. I’d forgotten. The letter she left me and the appearance of this massive wolf have torn down a veil in my memory.
