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So I slip out of bed and rush out of the back door of the cabin, where the moon shines brightly on the forest and I don’t have to be in the dark with my nightmares.
19
Dare
It’s the kind of night made for stealth.
The kind of night made for tracking down witches and destroying each and every one of them before they can find a way to penetrate pack lands.
The landscape flashes by at warp speed, and my paws thunder against the ground. I live for this shit—this freedom, the wild air, the heady scent of dirt.
The chase.
I skid to a stop in a small clearing just beyond the barrier line and lift my nose to the air. I can smell her—the witch that’s been testing the boundaries of our sigils. She has a cold scent, calculating and authoritarian, like she’s an alpha in her own right.
The good news is, alphas are born to be tested.
And beaten.
I duck between the trees and put my nose to the ground just beyond the barrier. A tentative scent pattern tells me the witch was here, and recently. She zig-zagged just outside the boundary, getting closer and closer with every fucking step. I’ve been tracking this bitch for weeks, and as always, it seems I’m still one step behind her.
No matter. She can’t evade me forever.
As I pass back through the boundary, I catch a hint of something different. Not the witch’s scent, but something sweeter and more alluring.
I follow the marker to a nearby tree and jump up onto my hind legs to sniff at the tree. A female. Not any pack member that I know, but still somehow familiar.
I consider following it, but I haven’t finished my patrols. The East, West, and North Packs aren’t handling the witch threat as aggressively as they should, which leaves me to pick up the slack and do their dirty work.
Without a pack of my own to protect, I figure what else is there to do but protect the rest of the packs from their own inadequacies?
Heading west, I follow the narrow corridor of empty land between the West and North Packs, focusing on the witch’s scent. I run for several miles before I’m satisfied by the fact she hasn’t yet come this way. The boundaries are still strong, humming with power and untouched by her magic.
That’s good—it means she’s sticking to the farthest boundaries, closest to the more populated human lands. Whether that’s because she hasn’t found the empty lands between the pack territories, or because she hasn’t tried, I don’t know.
I’m not going to give her a chance to try.
Every night, I complete my patrol. I start on the farthest western boundaries and make the circuit all the way around, then through the empty lands between each of the three packs’ territories. Without fail, I spend my nights protecting the dumbasses who can’t protect themselves.
What the fuck are they even doing all day?
I slow my pace and veer off the path to take a break and get some water, letting that thought mull in my head and stoke the anger that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my chest.
They could be planning and prepping to add more protections, to do more for the shifters. Instead, I caught wind recently that they’d had more executions. More wolves dead. They let the witches get close enough to kill their people.
Fucking idiots.
I sink to my haunches on the bank of my usual stream and drink. This deep in the mountains, the water tastes wild and untamed, so crisp it sends shivers through me.
Then I scent something that doesn’t belong here.
Raising my nose to the breeze, I sniff the wind. It’s that same stranger’s smell—the female, something not quite shifter, but familiar. I stand and turn into the oncoming wind, realizing it’s bringing that intoxicating smell from farther upstream.
I can’t help myself. I follow it.
A half-moon shines down through the trees as I take my time walking the banks of the stream. It’s the darkest depths of night, when the sky is full of stars and the moon transforms the land into something unearthly. I feel most myself during these hours, as if my wolf is so fully connected to the land that I’ve lost track of the human inside me.
I’m a decent distance from any of the three packs’ settlements. I never see anyone out this way except wildlife.
