“Appreciate it.”
“Tend to your men and give them the newswe’re staying the night,” Fallon ordered in dismissal.
Perry nodded once more.
Caden waited until he was out of hearingdistance to say, “This pack was much larger than reportsindicated.”
“Yes.”
“Much larger.”
Fallon grunted.
“These men are lucky your ghost woman madeher escape. If she hadn’t disappeared, we would have lingered incamp and been too late rendezvousing with them.”
“Yes. That is one way of looking at it.”
Caden took in the carnage. “This gives me abad feeling. You think there might be a traitor in our midst?”
Fallon didn’t answer as he watched the mendrag the revenants’ dead bodies off into the trees.
His silence was answer enough.
“Well. Shit,” Caden said. “That’ll makethings difficult.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Fallon’s face.
His attention caught on a slim figure lurkingby the horses. It was the boy he’d pulled a revenant off of in thebattle. He was a tiny thing but brave as fuck.
Fallon had seen him tangle with that monster,sure the boy was dead before he hit the ground. Somehow he’dmanaged to survive and was in the process of killing the beast whenFallon guided his hand in the deathblow.
Something about the boy was familiar, but hecouldn’t quite place it. His coloring said he wasn’t Trateri.Lowlander, maybe? He’d never seen a Lowlander with hair so oddlycolored. It was a matted black and stuck straight up from his headin clumps.
He was a scrawny thing with barely anythingto him. If Fallon hadn’t seen his bravery in battle first hand, hewould have had his trainers defending their reasons for puttingsomeone like that in one of his best units.
The boy noticed him and froze, his eyes goingwide and slightly panicked before he abruptly headed for the bigman directing several soldiers.
Hm. Definitely a Lowlander.
Ah, well. Maybe he was familiar becauseFallon had conquered his village or something.
Dismissing the boy from his mind, Fallonjoined Perry and his second in command to discuss plans for themorning.
Shea glued herself to Eamon’s side and kepther head down.
That was close. She shouldn’t have panickedlike that when she found Fallon’s eyes on her. She might as wellhave put a sign on her that said “guilty party here.”
She needed to act like one of the guys andthat meant not acting like a squirrelly Daisy who had never setfoot outside the fence.
When nobody pulled her out of the group, sherelaxed slightly. The first meeting with anybody new was always theworst. Once they accepted she was a guy, they never thought to lookdeeper.
It looked like her luck still held.
Eamon finished giving his orders to themen.
Shea quickly fell behind him. “What do youneed from me?”
“Oh, so you’re talking to me again?”
