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She started her heart on purpose.
In the emptied space around them, the sudden beat cracked like artillery, impossible to ignore. Rolf’s head snapped towards her. When she had his full attention, she tipped her chin towards the night beyond the warehouse.
“Come. There’s something I will not say inside these walls.”
His footsteps followed. So did the hesitation in them.
Half a mile out, she stopped and turned. “There are hunters in the city.”
Rolf’s expression shifted only slightly. Not shock. Recognition.
“I saw a group of three on night nineteen,” he said.
Gina’s voice sharpened. “And you didn’t think to warn the camp?”
“Dam.” He used the title with care. “Would the sire have taken the warning—or put me into the sun for breaking exile?”
She snapped her jaw shut hard enough that the shape of her fangs showed through her lip. “It would have happened that way.” She studied him a moment longer. “You haven’t asked after Joe.”
“It isn’t my place.”
“Oh, now you want tradition.” The words came out drier than she intended. “Joe survived the silence. He lives.”
She stilled her heart again and let the quiet spread.
“The hunter and I have an arrangement.”
Rolf didn’t ask the question. He waited, which was worse.
“Mathias cannot be allowed to continue,” Gina said. “Neither can the human. The bond is pulling the camp apart. If they remain as they are, we lose him to the sun anyway—and we lose everything he built on the way down. The agreement is simple: True death for both of them. After that, the hunter and I go back to being enemies.”
Rolf’s voice stayed level. “You would use a hunter to kill the sire who made this camp.”
She couldn’t tell which part of the sentence he wanted answered, so she answered all of it.
“I will use whatever tool keeps this camp standing. You hold the title now. That does not change what Mathias’ absence is doing to the young ones. I will not watch the structure collapse while I pretend loyalty is the same as survival.”
Rolf inclined his head. White-blond hair swung forwards and hid most of his face.
“I hear you,” he said. “I won’t pretend I like it.”
“You don’t have to like it.” Gina turned back towards the warehouse, the hunter’s scent still a faint, useful stain at the edge of her senses. “You only have to decide whether you are sire of a living camp...or caretaker of Mathias’ ghost.”
Chapter Nineteen
Gina
Gina and the hunter did not waste the agreement.
Over the next two nights, they worked in careful, limited cooperation. She remembered a time far in the past when Mathias had used a backwoods cabin, and she provided the location as well as the most likely secondary routes he would take if pressed. Crowe brought in three other hunters and the UV emitters capable of cutting through tree cover. Neither of them pretended to trust the other. They simply aligned on the single outcome that mattered: Mathias and the human would not be allowed to disappear again.
By the third night, the pieces were in place. Feral remnants had been driven ahead as chaotic noise. The hunters would come in behind with light and silver. Gina would close from the front with what remained of the loyal (and the desperate) among the whelps and elders.
Standing in the predawn dark at the edge of the woods, Gina tasted the coming violence on the air and felt no triumph—only the cold certainty that this was the cleanest ending left.
When the first feral howls rose, she moved.
***
