How many people, I can’t stop thinking.How many would have to die to spill this much blood?
Vertigo starts to dislodge me from Anassa’s back. The riders around me tense and turn. Anassa growls and side steps, alarm spiking through her as she moves to counter my compromised balance and keep me mounted.
But in doing so, we both stumble and falter out of formation.
Perielle stops short behind me, her wolf snapping. The middle circle halts, and a cascading chaos takes the pack.
There’s still scarlet lingering in my peripheral vision, but I growl and pull myself up. I fight through the dizziness and urge Anassa onward. My head is throbbing, but I manage to set us both back into the proper rhythm, the rest falling back into line once I’ve recovered.
But as I make another turn around the circle, I look up and see him.
Stark, standing with his arms crossed, staring at me. He watches me from his position across the yard with his dark eyes narrowed, calculating. He cracks his neck, and the tattoos that cover every inch of skin are a visible threat.
Fuck up again, and this psycho will take me out himself, adding me to the trophies on his skin.
He saw me falter, and he won’t forget it.
I struggle for the rest of the session to reach that borderline euphoric connection I almost grasped. By the time it’s over and the direwolves are wandering back to the terraces, I’m exhausted and acutely frustrated with myself. I want to slip away and hide from the annoyed glances I keep getting from my packmates, but Egith’s voice cuts through the yard.
“Rawbond Cooper. A moment.”
Great. I turn and watch Anassa’s silver coat disappearing towards the terraces. I’m on my own, then. The rest of the Rawbonds file out of the training yard. My footsteps sound loud as I approach Egith, my boots leaving distinct impressions in the churned earth.
The beta’s expression is unreadable, as always.
The instant I reach her, she jumps right into it. “Your bond with Anassa has improved,” she says kindly, “but it isn’t enough.”
I bristle instantly.Nothingis ever enough in this place. I’m half-convinced she thinks I’m not even trying, at this point. “I?—”
Egith raises her hand, cutting me off. “I watched you today. I saw it happen.”
“What?” I breathe.
“You touched it just for a moment. What we’re striving for here,” she says. Her voice hushes slightly, as if in reverence. “And you felt it, didn’t you? The unity of the pack?”
I shiver at the memory and nod.
Egith sighs. “Then you also felt how easily you shattered it. One moment of weakness from you disrupted theentireformation.” She steps closer, voice dropping. “The pack needs to function as one entity. One mind. One purpose. If you can’t maintain that connection… They’ll all take note of that. And the Purge Trial is only a week away.”
Her meaning is clear. If I can’t maintain the connection, I’m going to get culled.
“I bet you’d hate to lose that bet,” I say bitterly, remembering how she told me that all the instructors were betting on which pack would have the most Rawbonds left at the end of the Trials.
Egith laughs, surprised. “Actually, Cooper, you’ve kind of grown on me. I’d hate to loseyou.”
The words mean more than I’d care to admit and I look away, my eyes burning. “I’m trying,” I tell her. She says nothing, so I glance back. Her expression is unchanged, and I wonder if she really does think I don’t care. “Iam,” I insist. “I’m?—”
“Try harder,” she says sharply. “I mean this as advice, Cooper, not a lecture. Unity is survival. Division will meandeath. You cannot break formation like that again with the Purge coming up.”
Because if I do, I’ll die. The Pack won’t forgive me a second time. Not when it counts. If I am a danger to them, I’ll be extinguished.
The needs of the many.
Walking away, Egith’s words echo in my head, exacerbating the headache that began with that horrible vision. I know Egith is right.
When I first wavered, barely still holding onto pack unity, I felt the confusion and frustration from the rest of them. Anger burned in some of them when they saw the formation endangered because of one person’s failure. Even Izabel shot me an exasperated look.
The worst of it is that for a single instant, Ididfeel it. The perfection of that unity haunts me now, like I stared at a beautiful light too long and the afterimage is burned painfully into my eyes, following me everywhere I look.
