Then we heard it.
Running. Something crashing through underbrush with the desperate rhythm of prey, branches snapping, breath coming in ragged gasps that echoed through the mist like ghost whispers.
And behind it, the sound of pursuit. Multiple bodies moving fast, coordinated, hunting.
Luke's hand went to his knife. I let my wolf rise just beneath the surface, muscles tensing, senses sharpening until I could smell the fear rolling off whatever was coming.
They burst through the fog line twenty yards ahead.
A wolf. Young, dark-furred, running on three legs because the fourth was hanging useless and bloody at his side. He was half-shifted, caught between forms in that excruciating space where bone and muscle couldn't decide what shape they were supposed to hold. His eyes found us, wild with terror, and I watched him stumble, fall, drag himself up again with the desperate determination of something that knew stopping meant dying.
Behind him, the hunters emerged.
Five of them. Rogues. I knew it the moment their scent hit my nose, that particular wrongness that came from wolves who'd lost themselves to something darker than pack instinct. They moved in formation, coordinated in a way rogues shouldn'thave been, eyes empty and hungry and fixed on their prey with single-minded focus.
“Daniel,” Luke said, voice tight.
“I see them.”
The young wolf collapsed ten feet from the boundary line. On his belly, clawing at the dirt, trying to drag himself those last few feet onto pack land like it was salvation.
The lead rogue stalked forward, massive and scarred, lips peeled back from teeth stained dark with old blood. He didn't look at Luke or me. Didn't acknowledge our presence at all. Just kept his dead eyes locked on the wolf bleeding into the moss.
“You're on Callahan territory,” I said. Voice carrying Alpha weight that made the air itself feel heavier. “Turn back now.”
The rogue's head swiveled toward me. Slowly. Wrong. Like a puppet being controlled by something that didn't quite understand how bodies were supposed to move.
“He belongs to us.”The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, scratching at the inside of my skull. Not the rogue speaking. Something else. Something using the rogue's mouth like a telephone.“He carries what we need. Let us take him, Alpha. This doesn't concern you.”
My wolf surged against my skin, furious and territorial. I let it bleed into my voice. “Everything that crosses my boundary concerns me.”
“Then you choose poorly.”
They attacked.
No warning. No posturing. Five rogues exploding into motion like marionettes with their strings suddenly cut, moving too fast and too coordinated for creatures that were supposed to be mindless.
I shifted mid-stride, bones snapping and reforming with the kind of violence that never got easier no matter how many times you did it. Fur erupted across my skin, senses explodinginto supernatural sharpness, and then I was wolf and the world was blood and movement and the absolute certainty that these things would not touch what was mine.
Luke shifted a heartbeat behind me, his timber-brown form smaller than mine but just as deadly. We moved in tandem, pack bond singing between us, fifteen years of fighting together making words unnecessary.
The first rogue hit me like a freight train.
We went down in a tangle of claws and snapping jaws, his teeth tearing at my shoulder while I got my back legs under him and kicked with enough force to send him flying. He twisted in midair, landed on his feet, came at me again before I'd finished standing.
Fast. Too fast. These weren't normal rogues.
I caught his throat in my jaws, tasted blood and something else, something chemical and wrong that burned my tongue. He thrashed against my grip, claws raking down my ribs, and I bit down harder, feeling cartilage crush, feeling the fight leave him in one shuddering gasp.
But there were four more.
Luke was holding two of them, dancing between their attacks with the kind of desperate skill that came from knowing you were outmatched and fighting anyway. Blood matted his fur, a gash on his flank painting his brown coat black. He wasn't going to last.
I released the dead rogue and launched myself at the nearest attacker. Caught it from behind, jaws closing on the back of its neck, and used my momentum to bring us both crashing to the ground. The creature howled, twisting beneath me, claws slashing at anything they could reach. I felt them score deep across my muzzle, felt blood run hot into my eyes, and I bit down until bone cracked and the howling stopped.
Two down. Three left.
Luke had finished one of his, but the effort had cost him. He was limping now, favoring his right foreleg, and the gash on his flank had opened wider. The remaining two rogues circled him, patient, coordinated, herding him away from me with the kind of tactical awareness that made my skin crawl.
