Page 164 of Poet & Protector

You are a such an idiot. Sabine snarled at him. Don’t you understand what this means?

It means Calla’s a cheating bitch. He growled. And she deserves whatever is coming to her.

I’m not going to bother explaining why that’s the stupidest response you could have. She turned away from him with another snarl. Where’s Ren? He’s going to need us.

She was right. I searched the clearing and saw no sign of our alpha. I also noticed another glaring absence. The Nightshades weren’t here. Neither the elders nor our Haldis packmates.

A chill raced along my spine. Where were they? Where was Mason?

Now that I had a grasp of what had transpired, I cursed myself for not paying closer attention to what was happening with the Nightshades. Calla was their alpha. That made them potential co-conspirators. Mason was in danger.

Emile Laroche’s shout suddenly roared into my brain, which meant it was in the mind of every Bane wolf.

We’re on the hunt. All patrol wolves must follow me. Find the traitor Calla Tor. Kill her. Bring the human back. We need him alive.

Cosette let out a long, trembling whimper. Kill Calla?

Sounds like a good time, Dax muttered.

Sabine snapped at his flank and he jumped away, startled, before he bared his fangs at her.

She ignored him and looked at me. I knew she wasn’t sharing her thoughts with anyone else when she said, The Nightshades are missing.

I moved close to her, pressing my muzzle into her shoulder for comfort. I know. I need to find Mason.

No, Nev, she told me. Not right now. I’m sorry. We’ll find out what’s happening as soon as we can. But we have to hunt Calla and Shay. Emile gave the order. We can’t ignore it.

Damn it. I snarled. I don’t want this.

Neither do I. She touched her nose to mine. I’m not Calla’s biggest fan, but if the Keepers were really going to make her kill Shay, I don’t blame her for saving him. None of this makes any sense.

No, it doesn’t.

A new round of howls, louder than any before, soared into the autumn night. We had no choice but to chase after their calls. The hunt was on.

I barreled into the forest, my packmates running beside me.

Does anyone know where Ren is? I asked them.

All the Banes were following Emile in this hunt, but Ren was still our alpha. He should have been with us.

No, Dax replied. But I can guess. He went after Calla before Emile gave the order.

Dax was probably right. Calla’s scent was in the clearing and Ren would have been able to track her. But I didn’t know how long he’d be able to stay on her trail. Snow had been falling steadily all through the ceremony. It would be harder and harder to find her scent as the night went on.

We plunged forward, weaving between trees and churning through the ever-deepening snowdrifts. I’d never hunted with this many wolves at once. It was jarring to see so many Guardians darting in and out of the shadows, their movements constantly flitting through my peripheral vision. My mountainside patrols were rotations with Sabine and Cosette, but never more than three wolves at a time. Before now, the largest group I’d been out with was the Haldis pack the day Logan sent us to check out the cavern.

Calling in all the Bane patrol wolves meant there were upwards of twenty Guardians tracking Calla and Shay. My muscles propelled me on the chase, but my mind was a storm of confusion.

Everything about this was surreal. I was running through the woods, hunting, with an order to kill a wolf who was supposed to be my new alpha and to capture and bring back a human I’d come to think of as a friend. I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it. What did this mean for the Haldis wolves? Without Calla, did our new pack exist?

And I still had no idea where Mason and the other Nightshades were. The farther I ran from the clearing, the more my stomach churned with worry over what might be happening to them.

We ran and ran. As I’d anticipated, Calla’s scent was muted and on its way to vanishing. But something else strange was happening. Along with her familiar scent, I was catching something else. A wolf, but not anyone I knew…except I’d encountered this wolf’s scent before. It was the lone wolf we identified when the Haldis pack patrolled together for the first time. The wolf that killed Logan’s spider.

Why would that wolf be here?

A lone wolf ranging through the mountains around Vail wasn’t unusual. They usually moved on of their own volition, and if they didn’t, Guardians ran them off or killed them. But lone wolves didn’t range near populated areas, and we were very close to Vail.