We don’t know where we are. If we kill him on neutral territory, his entire pack has grounds to come after us.
The wolf sent back a series of images of fighting every wolf in the state.
What would Nonna think of you provoking a war? You’re supposed to be out here looking for a mate!
His great-aunt had sent him back to the original territory of their pack, insisting there was magic here that would somehow get her grandbabies. He wasn’t entirely sure how a state with far fewer people was going to help him meet someone, but he would do just about anything for the old woman. Including, apparently, committing murder.
His wolf insisted it had attacked first in a series of flashing images. The beast spoke to him through his senses—sights,sounds, and memories—in a language almost as fast and fluent as words. It was telling him not to leave an enemy alive.
The stray struggled to get up, bleeding freely from the back of its neck.
His wolf shook the wounded shifter, and Mateo grimaced.He’s down. He attacked, so you retaliated. You’re done.
His wolf sent him a series of snapshots of old enemies.
You leave your enemies alive all the time. There are four packs in New York City. You don’t attack any of them.
They know their place,the wolf insisted, with pictures of all of them avoiding him on the streets.
Mateo made wild jazz hands in his head at the bloody, dirty specimen before them.I think this guy got the message.
His wolf let go, and the stray flinched away.
See? Let him live,Mateo said, putting steel in his voice.
The wolf took a single step back, now directing its rage at Mateo, but he did not waver.
Shifters fought for control every day of their lives, and those who could not tame their beasts could not live. Mateo rarely ever exerted that authority, mostly because in his current life at the top of the heap, he didn’t need it. His wolf wasal settimo cielo,in seventh heaven.
Mateo was terrified that, in a moment like this one day, he would lose it, and there was no one strong enough to stop him.
He took a deep, heaving breath as his wolf took another step back and realized this was not the day.
He had a sudden vision of his office in New York with his perfect chair and the fastest internet that money could buy, with bagels from Russ’s, pizza from Joe’s, and the whole of his pack on the roof of his building grilling steaks. He had every art, every sport, and everything else he wanted at his fingertips. Why the hell had he left?
His wolf remembered it had a pack and did not have to kill half-feral strays with no manners and allowed him to take another step back.
They kept walking backward, and he was surprised to find himself in a clear spot free of trees that started up the hill and lasted for another fifty feet below him, where he could see round boulders freshly covered in snow. A rockfall had taken out a bunch of trees. Here, the snow was already high. This wasn’t the first storm of the year, clearly, and the snow was packed and unsteady under his feet.
He definitely had not walked this way, which meant he had to turn back.
He’d done it. He put his paws on the dirt. He’d seen his great-grandfather’s land, the birthplace of a new pack.
It was… really snowy.
Now, he could go home.
There were no wolves in the second generation. No child born in the last ten years had shifted. This trip was supposed to help with that, but that made even less sense now that he was here.
It was a slog to get through the steep snow. The wind had blown more here without the pines to block the ground, and his paws slithered with every step.
Packs everywhere were birthing fewer and fewer wolves. The magic was dying. No one knew why or what they could do about it. His Nonna was desperate and grasping at straws.
We’ll see her tomorrow. Hell, we’ll grab the jet and see her tonight. You’ll be up to your elbows in pasta by midnight,he told the wolf, who did weirdly love pasta. It couldn’t eat it. They had to be human to enjoy more than a bite or two, but it was one reliable way to get him to shift for vicarious enjoyment.
The crunch of snow. The flash of dirty fur.
He had a second’s warning, but this time it was not enough.
