They broke.
Fast.
Running?
Killian panted beside me, his muzzle soaked in blood. Diesel spat out fur and glared down the ridge. All around me, I checked on my pack, listening for any calls for help.
Diesel shifted back to his human form. “Round one goes to us,” he growled.
“No,” I replied, my chest still heaving.“That wasn’t round one.”I watched the fleeing wolves, cold certainty settling in. “That was the Council measuring our strength.”
Diesel bristled. “Think they got their answer?”
“They’ll be back,”I said flatly. “Stronger.”
Behind us, wolves gathered—panting, wounded, furious, but still alive. Alive because we held the line.
I stepped back, wiping the blood from my mouth, and looked toward the heart of the Hollow. This wasn’t over. Not even close.
“Killian,” I said. “Sound the call.”
He was still in his wolf’s form. He looked up at me in surprise. “All warriors?”
“All warriors.”
He lifted his head and howled—a long, thunderous cry that rumbled through the Hollow like a battle drum. The pack responded, their howls rising to join his.
I smiled grimly as I heard them, knowing what the Pack Council would just have heard and realized.
They hadn’t broken us. They’d only woken us up.
Killian’s howl was still echoing when the wind shifted. Not a breeze.
A warning.
Diesel stiffened beside me, hackles rising. “You smell that?” he growled.
I did.
Reinforcements.
More wolves, and by the sounds of it, a lot of them, and they weren’t retreating.
“They circled,” Diesel snarled. “Bastards doubled back.”
That fast? No—that planned.“Positions!” I roared.
But the Council wolves were already charging through the trees—this time in formation, moving fast enough to rattle the ridge.
The next impact hit us like a landslide.
I shifted to my wolf and caught the first wolf mid-leap, jaws clamping around his throat. Warm blood sprayed across my muzzle as he went limp, but another immediately followed, teeth ripping into my shoulder. I threw him off and slammed him into the ground so hard that the dirt cracked beneath us.
To my right, Diesel fought like something wild and unhinged, tearing through wolves twice the average size, ignoring every wound, every bite. He didn’t slow down. He never slowed.
Killian’s wolf lunged into a group of three, breaking one’s leg and causing the others to scatter.
But there were more. Too many. They kept coming, wave after wave, like someone had opened a dam of wolves and aimed them at us. They pushed us back, and the Hollow trembled beneath the weight of it.
