“Damn right, female,” Tiberius, the border guard who gave me and Garrett a hassle when we entered the pack’s territory, is standing behind me. Sadie Lynn backs away, but I freeze, as always. Why didn’t my wolf warn me he was approaching?
“Damien’s going to kick your ass out of here this time.”
“Excuse me?” I say.
He takes a huge step closer, using his immense size to intimidate me. Schneider used to do the same thing, before punishing me with a cattle prod.
I hold my head high, but already I’m starting to shake.
“Get out of here, Tiberius,” Sadie Lynn mouths back. “I’m doing the best I can while Tanner is laid up.”
“Not you, Sadie Lynn. The honey trap.” He grips my left forearm, and I swing at him with my right… which he catches in his palm. Stupid! He’s a guard!
“I never chose to lure them,” I shout at him, my fist still trapped by his hand.
“You still did it. And they’re all gone, moved to another location that we can’t find. No chance of rescue thanks to you. Garrett might not be the smartest shifter in the pack, but he was loyal, before you shook your pretty ass at him, luring him, corrupting him”
“I haven’t corrupted him!”
“Sure you have. And now you think because you’re sleeping with our retrieval expert you have what it takes to stay here, but you don’t, female. You can’t even watch a bunch of kids. You’re putting them at risk, luring them into dangerous situations just like the shifters you lured for the WSSO.”
“That’s enough, Tiberius,” Hayden says from where he’s talking to two other shifters.
As Tiberius releases me, he leans over me. “Get a job where you won’t be a danger to us or find another pack.”
“Enough!” Hayden again. “Clearly you missed what happened here. She saved the boy.”
“That kid nearly died because of her. She failed to watch him. She’s more human than shifter.”
“Tiberius Parker,” Sadie Lynn scolds.
“Ask her why her wolf didn’t walk across the ice to get him.”
“The ice was too thin,” Sadie Lynn defends me. I should be defending myself, but I don’t have it in me… because he’s right. She’s in charge of the kids, but I was responsible for that child.
“This pathetic excuse for a shifter doesn’t belong anywhere near those kids and she doesn’t belong in our pack.”
Hayden steps between Sadie Lynn and Tiberius, very much an alpha in this moment. “You don’t get to say who stays or leaves, and if you have an issue with that, then maybe you need a few weeks on the southern border to think it through.”
“That’s the border we share with the white wolves, Hayden’s birth pack,” Sadie Lynn whispers while she wraps another blanket around me. “None of the guards want that border, and Hayden doesn’t bluff. He’ll send him down there.”
“Little Alex nearly died because of me…” I mumble, the reality of what almost happened like a metal ball in my stomach.
“You saved him, Lina. Got him out of the water.”
“Water he never should have been near. I took my eyes off him for a second.”
She doesn’t say anything, because we both know I’m precisely what Tiberius said, a danger to the pack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GARRETT
Two days away from camp and both my wolf and I are on edge. We need to check on Angel. She smiled when I left, assured me she’d be fine. I never would have left had I suspected otherwise, even if that meant defying Damien’s orders yet again.
“Anything?” Frank asks as he patrols the border. He spotted me while I was still two miles out and gave a brief howl, requesting I identify myself, which means he—or Damien—is on edge. He has the patience of a predator, but he doesn’t leave anything to chance.
“Blade and I tracked two scents that eventually split on the interstate.”
