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The phone was ringing in my ear.
“Gordo,” a voice said, rough with sleep.
“Ox. We’ve got a problem.”
“Tell me.”
In the dirt, leading out of the parking lot and into the trees, were tracks. Bigger than an animal had any right to be.
“Wolves.”
she knows/then came the violet
“ABEL TOLD you about tethers,” my father said to me once.
I nodded, eager to please. “They keep the wolf at bay. They’re the most important things in the world.”
“Yes,” my father said. We were sitting in the grass behind our house as we sometimes did, digging our hands into the earth to see what we could find. My tattoos felt alive. “They are. So very important. You take that tether away and all that’s left is a beast.”
I WAS in the forest, the trees around me bending in the sharp winds. I knew these woods better than almost anyone, aside from the wolves. I’d grown up here. I knew the lay of the land. How the earth pulsed.
I was breathing deeply, jacket shed somewhere farther back and left on the forest floor. The tattoos glowed brightly, and my skin felt like it was crawling.
I reached out my senses, letting them ripple through the territory around me. The wards were still intact. I flexed my hands. They flared briefly, strong and fibrous.
In the distance, I heard the howl of a wolf.
It wasn’t one of mine.
It was enraged.
“Shit,”
I muttered, making a split-second decision.
I ran, feet crunching leaves, branches snapping against my arms.
I didn’t understand what was happening. If Omegas had made their way into Green Creek without me knowing. If there were hunters. If somehow my father had managed to find a way through my wards. Pappas had said it was hurting him. What if the other wolves he’d been traveling with had turned on him? They could have been just like Osmond, worming their way into positions of power before turning around and betraying those they stood beside. I didn’t know why they’d go after Pappas, or why they’d wait until they were on Bennett land to attack him.
Countless scenarios played through my head, and in my chest, the threads pulled, those bonds I had been missing for so long. The strongest was Ox, my tether. He was moving fast, shifted into his wolf. Joe was at his side, as was Carter. Mark was bringing up the rear. They whispered to me, voices melding together and saying we’re coming we hear you we need you don’t be stupid gordo don’t do anything without us PackWitchBrotherLove. It sang in my head, louder than it’d ever been, and I felt their anger, their worry. And for a moment, I thought I felt Mark’s fear. He was scared, his heart jackrabbiting in his great chest. It caused me to stumble, almost sending me crashing down to the ground.
I pushed back i’m fine calm fine safe stop stop stop as soothingly as I could, trying to get him to let up.
It worked, but barely.
He subsided, his distress a low simmer.
They were to the east.
The howl of the unknown wolf was coming from the west.
wait wait just wait please wait don’t go
I went west.
Moments later I saw a pair of lights shining through the trees off to my right. I changed course and headed toward them. I broke through the tree line and hit a backwoods dirt road, one of the many that crisscrossed through the forest.
The lights were coming from the generic SUV Pappas and the two Betas had arrived in. It lay on its side, its engine still ticking. The driver’s door had been ripped off its hinges and had landed in the grass at the side of the road. One of the tires was shredded. The SUV had come to rest against an old oak tree.
