“Good,” I snarled. “Because they’ve fucked up.”
She half shifted, claws popping and fangs descending. Hair rippled along her cheeks and brow.
And for the first time since she howled a song of mourning at the death of her Alpha, Elizabeth Bennett tilted her head back and sang.
Only this time, it was a song of war.
WE WERE fractured.
Part of us were gone. Our pack wasn’t whole. That much was true.
But we made up for it. We filled those spaces with temporary things to hold us together while we still could.
“What’s the point of all this?” Rico had asked, sweat dripping down his face.
I’d remembered what Thomas had told me. About pack. And protecting one’s territory. “It’s just in case,” I’d told Rico. Tanner and Chris were within earshot, panting out little sharp bursts of air. Mark was half-shifted. Elizabeth was full wolf. Their eyes flashed at me.
“In case of what?”
“Anything. Go again.”
And they did. Again.
And again.
And again.
IT WAS an oddity, where the wolf had wanted us to meet. An old covered wooden bridge outside of Green Creek. It was supposed to be quaint, even though the paint was peeling and the wood was cracked. People from the city came up in the fall to take pictures of it while the leaves changed around them. It stretched over a creek bed that trickled with cold water from higher up the mountains.
It meant, though, that it was out of the way, so nobody from town would get hurt.
We didn’t bother with a car. Mark met us in the trees, already shifted, eyes bright in the dark, tail twitching. Elizabeth disrobed while Tanner called, having heard her song. “Is this real?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “They have Jessie.”
“Fuck. Chris, he’ll—”
“Get them. Meet at the shop. I’ll tell him.”
“Ox—”
“Move,” I snapped. “Now.”
He grunted and disconnected.
I turned back to the others.
Robbie was there now too, a gray wolf with black striping along his face. He was smaller than Mark and Elizabeth, and leaner, but his teeth were sharp and his paws were big. That thin thread that somehow stretched between us and him pulsed gently, and I could feel the packpackpack riding along each little wave. We hadn’t quite acknowledged it, none of us had, because betrayal ran deep. He wasn’t Osmond, but he was still part of where Osmond had come from.
But Robbie had been here. He’d trained with us. He’d eaten with us at our table. I didn’t think it’d be too much longer before whatever obstacle between us fell away.
I wondered if Joe could feel them.
I wondered if he even cared.
They followed me through the trees, running in the dark by my side. I didn’t need to look where I was headed. I knew this place, these woods, this forest. I knew every inch of it. Thomas had taught me that. He’d shown me that a territory was a home and this was my home. I knew where to jump. Where to duck. I didn’t think of how or why. It just was.
We were careful when we got to Green Creek, keeping in the shadows. It was late, very late, and the streets were empty, but there were already rumors of wolves in the woods, and we didn’t need anyone in town to think they’d walked along the streets.