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Zade falls silent, and the truth of the situation settles in between us.

It’s like when we took the baby.

Except we’re us, and we were never going to hurt that kid. The intent was only ever to make Gavyn see that we would have the upper hand.

Gavyn, on the other hand, has already shown that he’s willing to hurt Mylah. He was going to sacrifice her at that festival, dump her alive into a freezing pool and let her freeze to death, drown in front of hundreds of watching shifters.

To rally the outskirts, to get them all to come together, to connect to all the shifters we’ve cast out of our packs for various crimes—Gavyn has to understand them. Be like that. And the thought of what he’s doing to Mylah right now makes me itch with violence.

I turn, growling once more as I start to trot past my friends. I don’t want to hurt them, but if they get in between me and Mylah, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to stop myself.

This time, only Brack steps in front of me. The biggest of them, he stares me down. Feet planted. The image of a man not planning to move.

Either he thinks he can take me in my wolf form, or he really trusts that I’m not going to rip him apart to get through him right now.

“Listen—

At that moment, three snowmobiles come ripping up the hill in our direction, their engines growling and echoing through the trees. It’s surprising enough that the four of us turn to watch.

The one out in front has a familiar form on it, and the two behind are clearly guards, trying to corral her.

“Aurora.” The need to speak has me shifting as I turn and glare at my sister, who whips up on the snowmobile like she’s been riding one her entire life. I guess, in part, that’s true. We both learned as kids, before it became clear that I was the alpha. For a while, nobody stopped her from taking them out.

Then, at a certain point, Father made it clear that it was unbecoming of a proper omega.

It occurs to me now that this is probably how she and Mylah made it to that other town—Aurora took them on a snowmobile. Likely cloaked and shapeless. Moving fast enough that their scents wouldn’t draw attention.

It’s the only explanation for how they got so far on their own, and I never even stopped to consider it before now.

“I’m coming,” Aurora says, taking off a helmet and sitting up tall on her ride, her long dark hair whipping in the wind. It’s like something out of a movie.

Not a movie that I want to watch.

“No,” I growl, shaking my head and stepping toward her, thinking I can grab at the handles. “Not a fucking chance. I have enough to deal with right now without you—”

“I never should have let her go,” Aurora says, her voice hard, something there that I’ve never sensed in my sister before.

Regret. Grief. Something more serious than that under the surface.

Worry.

Mylah isn’t just another omega—they are friends. And now Aurora is dealing with the fact that she let Mylah come out here in the cold. My sister looks down, spots the tire tracks—likely made by a large, snow-faring SUV—then back to me.

“I’m coming with you. I need to help her.”

The two guards come racing up on their snowmobiles. Snow flies up into the air but is whipped away by the wind before it can land on us. Hastily, the guards pile off the snowmobiles and stalk toward us, apologizing for letting her out, tripping over their feet and their words.

How these two women have managed to best my people so many times is beyond me. It just goes to show that keeping someone locked up is hard when they have a will to leave. Or maybe it just means my guards are shit—I should look into training them better, it seems.

These thoughts pass through the back of my head in a fraction of a second. The most important thing—the thing battering at me, relentlessly—is Mylah. Getting to her.

But now that I’m not in the first blush of trying to retrieve her, I can see that Brack’s point has some merit. The other alpha kings are all looking out for me, making sure I don’t do something rash.

I might be strong, but if I go running after Mylah’s scent blindly and stumble into a fight with thirty other shifters, I’ll struggle. Gavyn would get the best of me.

And if he claimed that fight happened one-on-one, if he walked back into my territory with a shred of proof that he took me and won—it would be disastrous for Kault.

He would get his pack, alright. Who knows the kind of damage he could do with that kind of power? And it’s not going to help Mylah if I go sprinting into the danger, unable to save her.