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Not after him staying for my heat. Not after recognizing, without a doubt, the connection between us. Augustus and I are fated mates—it has to be true. It has to be.

And I have to believe in him, in the version of him I was with.

The exhaustion from my heat weighs me down, slowing my pace, and I crawl into bed, under the covers, wholeheartedly expecting to see my mate here with me when I wake again.

Chapter 28 - Augustus

It does not take much time for us to extract information from the traitor they caught.

Typically, I don’t like to compel, but now, I pull the full force of my chest, of my position as the Alpha King of this pack, and I growl down at the shifter with my boot on his neck.

“Who are you working with?” I demand.

He cries out, his hands clenching and unclenching again and again. I can feel the power of my compulsion working through him. Him, as an alpha, struggling against it.

Surely, he knows the second he gives away the information, I will kill him.

“Tell me!”

Sobbing, he lets go of something else instead, “They are planning an attack! Where East meets North. On the guards—”

“When?”

“Tonight!”

I can only see the still of Denvil’s back, the slope of his head, the weight of his grief at the shifters he lost. The mangled bodies and the blood upon the ground. As a destined king, I always thought I understood the role I’d be stepping into, but it’s not true.

I never could have understood the gravity of this responsibility to my men. To the shifters in this pack who rely on me.

“Send word to the other kings,” I demand, after stepping down hard enough to break the traitor’s neck. I don’t even have time to have fun with the kill.

Then, I am running. Out the door, following my nose and the vague instructions from the traitor. I know exactly the place he means—our largest food store. If it falls, if they manage to take it or even destroy it, my people will not make it through this winter.

We would have to switch to round-the-clock hunting. Shifters would succumb to the cold. It’s not just food in that storehouse, but firewood as well.

Zade is the first to find me, joining me along the border of our two packs. We don’t stop to communicate—there’s no time. We simply run, paws hitting the hard, packed snow. Noses stinging in the cold, tracking the scent.

I’ll show no mercy. Any shifter in the area with the traitor’s scent on them will be questioned mercilessly. This is about food, yes, but it’s about the lives of my shifters. If they go hungry, that will be on me.

And if my fighters face the same fate as the men Denvil lost…

We hear the sounds of the skirmish up over the hill before we see it. Zade and I run harder, faster. I take the lead and come barreling into the fray, finding several shifters snarling and snapping, several tumbling together, jaws going for one another’s throats.

I let out a sound that’s more roar than bark. At the warning, the attacking shifters start to flee, retreating, but I catch one of them by the throat, snap him to the side, the taste of his blood hot and metallic in my mouth.

Brack arrives next, curtailing some of the escaping attackers, catching another and throwing him against a tree. Brack and I catch as many of them as we can while Zade shifts back, starts to tend to the injured Northern and Eastern shifters on the ground.

And when Denvil arrives, he’s furious. Whether at missing the action, or at another attack like the one that killed his men, I’m not entirely sure.

“Who are they?” he hollers, shifting back and breathing hard. Although he got here last, it’s impressive that he got here in such short time at all. “Who the fuck are they?”

I’ve already been asking that question, myself. But with my nose buried in their necks, with their blood in my mouth, I…don’t know.

Reinforcements arrive to take away the injured fighters. Zade starts to take reports from those who are uninjured, but tired from the fight.

Brack, Denvil, and I stand together at the corner of the field, surveying the damage.

“The store house is untouched,” Denvil says, scratching at the back of his head, toe-ing at one of the dead shifters near our feet. “So what the fuck is going on? Are these Gavyn’s men?”