Sienna catches my eye through the glass and gives me a look I can’t quite read. Part question, part warning. She’s alreadyfigured it out, too, or she’s close. She was there all those years ago, when I came back from that field, wrecked and silent, and wouldn’t tell anyone why. She was little more than a kid then, but she’s always been too sharp for her own good.
My whole pack is too sharp for their own good. That’s why they’re mine.
“Twenty minutes,” I call to Rook. He lifts a hand in acknowledgment.
I lean against the truck, drink bad coffee, and watch the light fail over the mountains. Somewhere south of here, a pack of wolves is living in the ruins of what used to be a settlement. No alpha. No protection. No future, unless somebody decides they’re worth fighting for.
Brenna decided that. With her life.
Least I can do is decide it with mine.
We load up and get back on the road. Cameron comes out of the diner with Sienna walking beside him, and something has loosened in the way he carries himself. Not much. But enough that I notice.
He climbs in. Buckles up. Glances at me once and away.
“Sienna says we’re not going to Frostbourne.”
“Did she now?”
“She says you’re taking me straight to Ravenclaw.”
“She’s right.”
He’s quiet for a while. Then: “The others are okay with that?”
“Wouldn’t be following if they weren’t.”
He turns that over the same way he’s turned over everything I’ve said: slowly, testing for traps. “Why?”
“Why are they okay with it?”
“Why are you doing any of this?”
Because your mother asked me to. Because I owe a debt I can’t calculate. Because you might be my son, and even if you’re not,no seventeen-year-old should carry this much damage and have nowhere safe to land.
“Because it’s the right thing,” I say. “That enough for now?”
He watches me for a moment. Weighing whatever he sees against whatever his mother told him. Then he nods, turns back to the window, and lets it go.
The sun drops behind the mountains, and Cameron watches it. He falls asleep around dusk. One minute he’s watching the road, the next he’s out, his body surrendering because it can’t hold the line anymore. His head drops against the window. His breathing goes deep and ragged.
I drive. The road winds south through deepening pines. Headlights cut through early dark. Rook and the others follow closely.
Then Cameron makes a sound. Small. Strangled.
I look over. He’s twitching. His hands are curling in on themselves, fingers hooking like claws. A bad dream. I’ve seen enough of those in my own pack to recognize the signs.
Then the heat hits.
Not gradual. Not building. Justthere, flooding the cab with dry, scorching warmth that has no source. The air shimmers above his skin. The window where his forehead rests starts to fog from the inside.
Fuck.
It’s magic. His. Raw and uncontrolled.
“Cameron.” I keep my voice level. “Cameron, wake up.”
He doesn’t hear me. The heat intensifies. The dashboard creaks, plastic warping. A copper-gold light starts bleeding from his skin, tracing the scars on his arms in thin, burning lines.
