“You couldn’t tell me I was barred from joining the fight?”I snapped at him.
“I did tell you,” he said, sounding completely reasonable. “I told you no harm would come to you or our child while I lived.”
It sounded completely romantic when he’d whispered it to me. Now it sounded like shackles around my wrists.
“This is bullshit,” I growled at him, letting him feel my frustration through the bond. “What’s happening? You can tell me at least. Right?”
I heard the hesitation, and my head turned to look southwards. He must have felt how pissed off I was.
“I need to concentrate on this, just now, princess. Stay with the druid. I love you.”
My hands curled into fists. I’d just been dismissed and what felt a lot like being put in my place. His place as awife, not an equal. If I replied right now, I wouldn’t be responsible for what I was going to say to him. Instead, I picked up the satchel, slung it over my shoulder, narrowly missing taking out the druid in the process, and marched to their tent.
I was pregnant. I wasn’t broken.
The druid said nothing as they followed me to their tent. I didn’t balk from walking right into their tent and dumping the sack. I sat down on the floor and waited. The druid cast one look at me and rolled their eyes.
“Now I remember why he calls you princess,” they muttered.
I bit my tongue to keep from tearing them a new one. Instead, I sat and fought every instinct in my body not to run to the southern ridge and see what had called my pack there.
Was it the Pack Council? Why would they come from the south? They were north of us. Had they slipped past our lookout points and made their way south. Why? South was downhill, so we had the advantage with the higher ground. What could they want there? I quickly ran through the packs that were located to the south of us. None of them were our enemies.
Some—few, I corrected myself—would be loyal to the Pack Council. But of those few, there were one or two big packs. Fighting packs. At the start of the rogue attacks, I was sure we would discover drifters from those packs were the ones who would fight us.
“Yellowrock,” I murmured, looking up at the druid as they made me tea. This was surreal. “Yellowrock Pack, they’re…unconventional.”
The druid snorted. “Inbreeding does that,” they muttered.
“They’re also beholden to the Pack Council for letting them keep their lines…pure.” I wanted to stand and pace, but the druid was serving tea, and I couldn’t help but think that, while this was the most frustrating thing they’d ever done to me, it was also a lesson. I just didn’t want to learn the lesson. “They’re unconventional but brutal.”
The druid nodded. “Very efficient fighters.”
I waited. When they said nothing else, I widened my eyes with impatience. “Druid!” I snapped. “Is it Yellowrock?”
They calmly poured tea, handing me a cup. “No.”
I was going to explode. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and took a gulp of tea. My nose twitched at the strong woody scent, and my eyes flew to the druid’s in recognition, in time to see the look of regret in their eyes.
“Valerian root?” I asked them in surprise. “You drugged me?”
“Sleep.”
I remember falling to the side, then nothing.
Blackness.
I floated over the endless sea of blackness. I was aware, but I was not awake. My body was weightless, and when I reached for the bond, it was there but so faint, so far away. Was this what it would feel like to die?
“Wolfe?”
Nothing. My hands tried to press against my belly, but I had no hands. I had no body. Valerian root was something that pregnant women should avoid. But I was a shifter. Human ailments weren’t my ailments. Still, while I floated, where was my body? Was my child safe?
Wolfe did this. I felt a pang of regret. I didn’t know that for sure, but he was an extremist when it came to keeping me safe. I was going to kick his ass. I was going to kick the druid’s ass. And Killian’s because he would know theyplanned this. AndDiesel, this was the kind of shit Diesel would do.
I was going to kick a lot of ass.
Just as soon as I found my body.
