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Malcolm nodded. “We followed you out of the underworld, we will follow you back to Rome.”
Lawson nodded his thanks and it was clear he had not expected anything less. “Come on, let’s go see the chief,” he said.
Marrok listened patiently as Bliss told her story. “So, Romulus has found himself a guide to the passages,” he said. “Let us hope she is not as good as this one.” He pulled something from his pocket. It was a small round silver pocket watch in a cloth handkerchief. “We were immune to the silver once, but not anymore. I will give this to you to hold, since I don’t think it will burn your skin.” He dropped the watch into her palm. It was unusually heavy and cold.
Bliss looked down at the chronolog. The dial had Roman numerals numbered from one to twenty-four. The numerals started at the bottom of the dial and moved counterclockwise around the circle. There was a second dial, layered over the first, in silver, and the edge of the watch face was carved with runes. “How do you use it?”
“We’re not sure,” Marrok said, embarrassed. “I’m hoping it will be self-explanatory once all of you enter the passages.”
Bliss touched the chronolog and suddenly experienced a flash of memory. In her mind, she saw a hand reach out and press a button on the side of the chronolog. But it wasn’t her hand, and she wasn’t accessing her own memories; they belonged to someone else. Not Lucifer—she didn’t have the icy feeling that crept up her spine when she knew she was recalling something he’d seen. No, these were pleasant memories, memories of a happier time and place, memories belong
ing to someone she loved. This memory was Allegra’s. She blinked and looked around. How strange that she had her mother’s memories in her as well. It comforted her to know she still had a connection to Allegra.
“Can I see it?” Malcolm asked shyly.
“Careful,” she said, placing it on his palm with a handkerchief.
Lawson was arguing with Marrok. “I told you last night, I’m not leaving without Ahramin. She’s part of my pack. Release her to me.”
Marrok did not look happy to hear that. “You don’t know what she did down there. She was the worst one they had, Lawson. She was vicious…cruel. She’s not the she-wolf she was. They turned her into a hound.”
“Even so, they turned her into something else when Romulus broke her collar. She’s not a hound anymore. Her eyes are blue. She cannot shift. Marrok, be reasonable.”
“She tortured us, Ulf. Not reluctantly—with glee. When they released her aboveground, she tracked us one by one. Wasn’t she the hound who found your pack?”
Lawson did not answer. Of course he remembered. The dark girl at the door, her eyes blazing with crimson hatred. “She wore a collar back then. She doesn’t now. She’s part of my pack. I speak for her.”
Marrok sighed. “There’s no other way?”
“She belongs with us. My brother will not leave her side. Without her, I lose Edon. I will need all my strength when I go to Rome.”
“I understand,” Marrok said. “I will release her to your care. But she is your responsibility now. If she betrays us, my pack will not hesitate to kill her.”
“If she betrays us,” Lawson promised, “I’ll kill her myself.”
Ahramin did not seem grateful that Lawson had pled her release. The wolves had been holding her in a wooden cage, and the bars exhaled as they clattered to the ground. She stepped over the wooden sticks. “Marrok had every right to hold me, you don’t know what I did for Romulus,” Ahramin said dully. “Why did you secure my freedom?” she asked Lawson.
“I trust you, Ahramin. You brought us to Marrok, to the free wolves, as you had promised. You say you are no longer a hound and I believe you,” he said, offering his hand to shake. “Peace?”
Her eyes flashed but she held her tongue and managed to shake his hand. Bliss hoped Lawson knew what he was doing. Ahramin made her way to Edon, who had never left her side, who had slept next to her cage all night.
“I know he only asked for my freedom because of you,” she said to him, sounding tender toward him for the first time since she had returned to the pack. She held a hand to his cheek, and Edon put a hand on top of hers. They stood there for a long time. Whatever had broken between them appeared to be mending.
As Bliss watched the two of them, she felt another stab of jealousy. It was another reminder that Dylan was gone, forever this time, and the one person who made his absence hurt a little less was obsessed with finding his own lost love. She could never compete with that, and she wouldn’t want to.
The pretty scene was broken by Malcolm’s vomiting all over his shoes. He fell to the ground and began to shake all over, his body jerking in spasms. Rafe picked him up in his arms. “It’s bad, they must be right on us,” he said.
“Into the pine trees. Now!” Lawson said as he led them into the forest, where the thicket of trees was dense and could protect them from being seen. Bliss huddled down and held her hands around her knees. “How many?” she asked.
“A whole legion, it seems like,” Lawson whispered. “Poor Mac.”
There was a rustling that slowly turned into the sound of an army approaching; Bliss got scared. She grabbed Lawson’s arm to steady herself, and he pulled her toward him, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting in the crook of his neck.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re going to get through this.”
Then came the sound of heavy boots, and the hounds appeared. They were fearsome and massive in the dim twilight. Their crimson-and-silver eyes shone, and their armor clanked loudly. There were hundreds of them and they roared past, heading toward the serpent mound. They kept coming—they leapt from branches and tore through the tall grasses, bounding over the low earthen mounds until they were out of sight.
“Let’s go,” Lawson said. He signaled to his brothers and the team raced through the woods and down the side of the mountain, to the serpent mound.
