By first light, every shifter in the territory felt it. The airwas too tight, the ground too aware, the trees leaning in like they too were waiting for someone unwelcome to cross them.
I stood at the ridge above the eastern border, the same place we’d fought the scout line a few days before. Killian paced behind me, tense enough to vibrate. Diesel stood to my right, arms crossed, jaw grinding like he was chewing rocks.
“They’re close,” Diesel muttered.
“They’ve been close.” I scanned the tree line, scenting for wind-shift, movement, anything. “Today they’re coming with purpose.”
Killian stopped pacing. “I feel them.”
So did I. It wasn’t scent. It wasn’t sound. It was pressure. The very atmosphere tightening around us like a storm front. The Pack Council wasn’t creeping up on us this time. They were marching.
Straight for us.
A soft voice flicked through the bond—Brand. My whole body stiffened.
“Four Winds. Trapped. Not right here. Keep drugging?—"
I swore under my breath. “That was Brand,” I told them both. “He’s in trouble.”
Diesel growled, “Should’ve dragged him back by the throat.”
“He’s been gone too long,” Killian said. The accusation was implied but not spoken. We no longer knew who to trust.
“Too many unknowns,” Diesel said with frustration.
Silence descended on us again, and I stood unmoving as Killian resumed his pacing, and Diesel’s anger burnedbrighter and hotter.
They had killed our most precious. Taken them from us with brutality and callousness, and the loss still choked me. Words got stuck in my throat, and all I could feel was an anger so big that it was only dwarfed by Diesel’s.
I closed my eyes, but every time I did, I saw her frail body shift into a small gray wolf and leap forward, knowing it would be her death.
“Have you slept?” Killian asked, breaking the silence.
“No,” Diesel and I answered together.
“Me neither.” His voice was heavy with sorrow. “One of us needs to,” he told us with a heavy sigh. “There’s still so much left to fight.”
I clenched my jaw and looked over the horizon. “I’ll sleep when his head is mounted on a spike in front of me.”
“After he’s choked on his own cock and balls,” Diesel growled fiercely. “And his skin peeled from his body.”
“And bathed in salt,” I added.
“Or simply rip his throat out,” Killian snapped impatiently. “Make it clean and simple, but it gets the job done.”
Diesel and I exchanged a look. “No.”
“He will know what suffering is,” Diesel vowed.
We looked away. Eye contact with anyone was hard right now. Grief, fury, betrayal—each emotion shone back at me and only made my temper build.
“Should I ask if you ate?” Killian pressed us both.
Before I could respond, a howl sounded in the distance—low, stretched, unmistakable.
Killian’s lip curled. “They’re signaling.”
“Let them,” I said.
