We filed past him, leaving behind a man who was not only a traitor to my pack but a traitor to my heart. The tears fell silently as we walked, and my alpha and Killian both, Luna grace them, neither of them mentioned it. They let me grieve.
I stumbled when I heard the cry not five minutes later. Wolfe’s hand tightened on mine.
Diesel.
He’d warned him. “Next time any of my pack,” not him. Not me.Anyof the pack.
Diesel joined us not long after, carrying the body of Omar. He didn’t say a word, and Wolfe never acknowledged it.
One from Blueridge Hollow, one from Stonefang. How many more would fall because of a Council’s greed?
“I want to go home,” I told him.
“Diesel, we need to shift,” Wolfe said gruffly.
“Strap him to me tight,” Diesel answered. “I’m not leaving him.”
The efficiency with which Killian and Wolfe strapped Omar’s body to Diesel’s wolf made me realize they had done this before. It was a terrible thing to recognize. I wasn’t sure if it was worse for Diesel—carrying a fallen comrade over your shoulder as a man or on your back as a wolf. Which was worse?
Or were they both just as soul-destroying?
“Everybody shift,”Wolfe commanded. “We stop when we set foot back on the Hollow.”
We ran.
I knew that, as we put distance between the Pack Council and us, we’d probably done what they wanted,which was to run. They’d say we fled, and it would give them a reason to chase us.
Let them come. We’d seen everything we needed to see by coming here.
Now they would see whatweneeded to show them.
A pack united, and a land that was not theirs to take.
Chapter 17
Wolfe
We were halfwaythrough a nasty thicket of trees and gnarly ground when Killian suddenly stopped dead.
One second, he was ahead of us, scanning the trail. The next, he froze—every muscle locked, nostrils flaring, eyes gone sharp with a fear I hadn’t seen in him since the rogues.
Rowen’s wolf stumbled into my back as I halted.
“What is it?”she asked me.
Killian turned, his wolf looking at mine. “Can you smell it?”
I inhaled. Wind. Pine. Stone. And underneath—smoke. Not from a campfire, nor a hearth fire.
Burning wood. Burning sap.
And under the smell of burning, death.
I broke into a run, leaving the others behind, Rowen’s voice whispering in my head.
“No, no, no.”
I knew she was behind me, and catching up fast. I couldn’t let her get in front of me.
