Despite the danger coming our way, my heart had never felt fuller. I made a little ball of myself and felt around to make sure the tarp completely covered me. It had been a long time since someone had looked after me so thoroughly, and I made sure to follow Weston’s instructions to the letter.
I just hoped whatever trouble had followed me here wasn’t more than they could handle.
Weston
The pack bondlit up with communication as my wolf ran toward the center of the camp. Nova and her team passed by us as they ran south, in the opposite direction. They spread out as they got closer to Aurelia’s location, acting as her guard and ready to face any attackers that got through the front lines.
The enemy approached from the north and the east, an organized wall of attack. This wasn’t like the attack on the camp those many nights ago, when our enemies tried to engage using antiquated tactics meant for a much less experienced alpha. Their pack was synchronized and well-led, under the command of someone with both experience and viciousness.
My wolf ran that way, monitoring our pack members and their positions. We were spread out around the camp, some in spots with no action. They would retain their posts in the likely event that the enemy spilled over to them. Those farther away would look out for any enemies attempting to sneak in from along the sides or behind the battleground.
The enemy pack might be well-led, but they didn’t have advanced battle tactics. They didn’t have my royal training and experience.
Snarls and yelps pierced the night. Bodies darted between the trees. Two of my pack members took down a smaller, quick wolf. Another member of my pack dashed left, smashing into a larger wolf trying to break through our lines.
They were in range and my wolf searched for their bonds, ready to grab them up and force them to submit.
Just like when Hadriel used Aurelia’s product, though, the connections were slippery and elusive. They slid through my wolf’s clutches and fell away.
My wolf ran closer, pushing our pack farther to the left and right to create a hole for us. Two enemy wolves waited and we barreled into them, taking the much smaller wolves to the ground. My wolf ripped out the throat of one without issue and rounded on the other as he reached for the bonds again. The one next to us was no problem, the proximity allowing my wolf to snap up that bond and push the enemy wolf to his belly. We’d be back for him. I had questions, and he would give us answers.
Other enemy wolves ran around us and my wolf reached again, clawing at that bond, wrestling with it until he could grab it up. We had to be three times as close as normal to the enemy to do so. Damn that product.
A yelp rang out to the left. Pain reverberated through the bond to the right. The enemy was starting to scatter, though, unused to the caliber of wolf I had in my pack. They weren’t used to facing the sort of leadership and training we had.
A scent we’d know anywhere hit my wolf like a wave of blistering rage.
“Dead wolf walking,” my wolf snarled as he pulled back from the fighting and lifted his nose into the air.
Alexander.
We knew his scent from Granny’s large estate near the castle, in Granny’s cottage in the village, and in his various living quarters provided by Granny. After hearing Aurelia’s stories, it was a smell now burned into our brain.
My wolf ran right, grabbing up the bonds he could as he followed that scent. The enemy wolves slowed when we grabbed them, making it easy for my pack to rip right through them. I only needed a couple for questioning, the rest could meet their maker.
A wolf lunged out of the shadows. My wolf turned quickly, snarling at the attacker. Teeth tore into our shoulder before my wolf had her in his grip; he ripped into the side of her neck and pushed her to the ground. There, he finished the job, blood dripping from his muzzle.
The bond lit up with new information. The enemy had indeed run in from the sides and at the back. Nova was fighting, taking on two enemy wolves with the courage of a champion. Another member of her team rushed in to help her, the rest spreading out a bit more to cover more distance.
Still, my wolf and I tracked Alexander’s scent. As alpha of this attack, he was the main target. As torturer of my true mate, he was now just waiting to die. Slowly. Gruesomely. Painfully.
I just had to catch him.
His scent wafted through the trees and floated around the reaching branches. Enemy wolves ran ahead of me, two breaking apart to run in opposite directions. Their fear was starting to get to them, was scrambling their decision-making abilities. My wolf reached for their bonds as we ran by, scrabbling to hold on.
“Leave it,” I said, wishing I was in control. “They’re nothing. The pack can handle them easily. Go after Alexander.”
He didn’t need convincing. He put on a burst of speed, catching a whiff here, a thread there. He couldn’t be close. Alexander was overseeing, nothing else.
Why wouldn’t he be going for the prize?
Another wolf broke toward Nova’s team. The first two wolves had been dispatched easily; our pack had no problem handling the third.
Shadows dashed behind a fat tree trunk, the detail lost to the night. My wolf darted in, recognizing the scent and chomping into the escaped prisoner it belonged to.
Then it occurred to me.
“We’ve recognized a lot of these scents,” I said as the enemy wolf stopped moving and my wolf stuck his blood-coated muzzle into the air. The scent was fainter now, though still traceable. My wolf took off in that direction, working around toward the back of the camp. “A couple have been escaped prisoners, a few were from the patrol in Granny’s village that evaded capture.”
