Then an idea comes to me.
“What about Mal?”
Omar turns to me. “Mal wasn’t an alpha. She sat on the council at the Sanc, but she’s no more in charge of the rogues than I am.”
“But they would listen to her,” I say. “She may not be an alpha but maybe she could do this Big Howl thing. If she did, we might stand a chance.”
“So what?” Omar suddenly sounds incredibly tired. His shoulders slump forward. It’s firmly tomorrow now, the morning birdsong scoring our conversation, the sunlight through the trees reminding me we’ve been awake for a very long time. “We head to the Sanc?”
“One more problem,” Olivia says. “Mal’s not at the Sanc.”
Omar squishes his face up, as if he’s offended Olivia might know more about Mal than he does.
“We met her,” Mia says, “she passed through here a while ago.”
“Mal would never abandon the Sanc.”
Olivia shrugs, crosses her legs. “She would if the Sanc no longer existed.”
Omar and I share a glance, our mouths open in shock.
“Walter,” Olivia says as if that explains everything. “The Axis wolves trashed it, not that there was much left to trash after my father, well”—her gaze darts to the ground—“you know what he did. You were there. Even before Walter attacked, a lot of wolves had left, looking for safety elsewhere. A few of them ended up here. Others moved to parts unknown. Mal stuck it out until there was nothing left to stay for. She left. Her and her mate.”
I remember Mal’s mate, Kairos, who chose to live exclusively in his wolf form.
Omar shakes his head like he can’t understand.
Olivia’s tone softens for the first time since we started talking, she leans forward toward Omar. “I’m sorry.”
“So we have to find her,” I say, trying to add some pep back into the conversation. “We find Mal, ask her to perform the Big Howl and gather the rogues to battle the Axis Pack with us.”
“It’s a good plan,” Mia says. “But how will we find her?”
I take a breath and let it all out at once. Because I can’t wait any longer, I need to do the thing I’ve been avoiding. Use my blood-wolf powers to help win this war.
“Leave that to me.”
PIXIE DUST
“You wouldn’t believe this place,”I tell Jasper. I’m sitting in Olivia and Mia’s yurt-style tent. Omar is somewhere getting cleaned up while the girls are giving me some privacy so I can update Jasper.“Everyone here is queer and so committed to helping other rogues. It’s amazing.”
Just walking from the fire circle to this tent I saw so many more of Olivia and Mia’s Pixie friends as they went about beginning their days. It was like morning at an artists’ commune or something. Everyone was giving alternative vibes. Their hair was styled in radical ways, their clothes were colorful, layered in a mess of mismatching fabrics and patterns. Everywhere I looked was a painting or something crocheted. One guy was up early working on a massive wooden sculpture, wielding a chainsaw as he hacked away at the stump of a tree that must have fallen over.
“That’s great,”Jasper replies. He sounded so relieved to hear from me, although I could tell he was frustrated when I explained what happened at the last settlement.“I can’t believe you found the girls too. Salazar will be happy, or maybe pissed he didn’t get there first.”
Olivia gave me her blessing to tell Jasper I’d found her. Although the way she said it made me think she still wasn’t quite ready to be found.
“They seem to have really settled in here.”
A pause.
“Do you think you can convince them to come home? If Morven knew we’d found Mia and—”
“I don’t know, Jasper. I can ask. But it’s their decision.”
“Fine.”He sounded frustrated again.“But you know we’d stand a much better chance against Walter if the Rocky Pack were on our side.”
“I know.”I wipe a hand down my face. I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours and the fatigue is getting to me. So is Jasper.“I’ll do my best.”
