Those who died.
It was a memorial to the mages, humans, and other paranorms who’d lost their lives when the dragon came. Torin lifted his hands and placed them on the wall. It shimmered before wavering and disappearing.
The blackened and twisted lands of Scorched Earth spread before them. The ground was cracked and split, some areas still red with undying fire. It seemed to breathe, burping steam and fire in spots.
“The wall keeps the dragon flame from spreading,” Torin explained.
“It still burns?” Giuliana couldn’t believe it. The dragon had come and gone decades ago; the fire shouldn’t be still going.
“To this day. Watch your step and follow closely. The place in your Alpha’s mind was once a sacred space.”
Giuliana lifted an eyebrow but did as the Guardian said. Pasquale moved first, right on Torin’s heels, Giuliana behind him, Zahara next, and his wolves spreading out around them in a tight circle. Romano noticed it, smirking, but said nothing.
The small army kept a tight file, traversing the scorched landscape with sure feet. As wolves, they could sense the ground. Not in the same way as mages, but they knew where it was safe to step and where it wasn’t. It worked for them now.
Torin picked up speed, his legs eating up the distance in a hard race, one to rival an ordinary wolf. That was surprising. Mages, no matter how strong, couldn’t move as fast or have the senses a shifter had.
The Guardian was full of surprises.
He cut to the left, and the shifters followed. Silva stayed in the air, barely hovering above the ground. She must have been conserving her strength for the upcoming clash that was sure to happen. As her hair shifted in the breeze, a silver hilt of a sword appeared between her shoulder blades. The Fae Queen was not coming for a simple rescue mission.
Giuliana could understand her resolve. Kieran had crossed a boundary there was no looking back from. No matter what, he’d die today, and Romano’s constant growls added to the atmosphere of retribution filling the air.
Heath. Kalinda. Silva.
They’d all been hurt by Kieran’s need to have Silva, for a reason none of them were aware of. But it wouldn’t matter when they found him.
A flash to Giuliana’s left grabbed her attention, but it moved too fast for her to know what it was.
Did you see that?
See what?
Pasquale tossed a look back at her over his shoulder before scanning the horizon.
Maybe it was nothing.
Your senses are strong. We’ll keep a lookout.
She liked how he did that. How he took her thoughts and trusted them. No one had ever trusted her so completely. Her heart felt as light as her feet. Maybe, just maybe, they could do it. Figure out the details and give this a chance.
A forest rose from nothing, shimmering in a haze until it solidified.
“The trees are real, no matter what your mind tries to tell you. Dodge them!”
Torin’s command reverberated through the air. That was fucking weird. Her wolf senses didn’t pick up a single tree even if she could see them. She would have assumed they were a mirage, but at Torin’s call, she shifted to dodge the first one as they entered.
A yelp told her a wolf hadn’t listened, too cocky and sure of their nose.
“You will die here if you don’t listen to exactly what I say.”
They would be sure to. The pack pulled closer together, streaking in and out of the trees. Another flash, this time to Giuliana’s right, nearly made her stumble to a stop. There was a wolf, one that wasn’t with them. But even as Giuliana lifted her nose to the air to sniff, the wolf was gone, and they weren’t downwind of it.
Who the hell is that?
A Renegade may be tracking us.
Just saying the name in her head made her hands shake, but she’d grown stronger, facing her memories slowly each day. It didn’t stop her as it had before.
