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CHAPTER THREE
My Alpha and his matelay in bed, Coleman draped over Lucy, apparently to protect her. It hadn’t mattered. I’d found Tillman, my former...almost mate...facedown just outside of the cookhouse. He’d only had time to strip out of his thick jacket and thermal shirt. The rest of my pack-mates, all in their wolf forms, had scattered—a few near their homes, most out in the snow. I’d brought them all together, here, in my Alpha’s yurt.
I kept expecting Coleman to come barreling down his loft stairs, demanding to know what the hell I was doing dragging wolves into his living room. He never did. He never would.
He was dead. Lucy was dead.
Tillman was dead.
They were all...dead.
Rage swept through me as I stared down at Tillman, the male who had failed me in every way possible. Angry tears clouded my eyes, but I refused to cry. Not for Till. I flipped the last sheet over his lifeless body before I did something I’d regret.
I stepped over to Nereida and Arteisma’s birth parents. “I love those two beautiful little females with all my heart. I promise I will continue to love them and protect them like...” I bit off the words. There were thousands of promises I could have made, but none of them mattered now.
Tillman and I had been down in the larder when the first two quick muffled shots had come from inside our Alpha’s yurt. Till had cursed at the unknown interruption. Apparently, my other pack-mates had shifted and scrambled. Some had gone on the attack but hadn’t gotten close before several shots had followed. Others had run, and more shots had sounded off. I’d run and had grabbed the twins, then silently slipped them out the back door of my yurt, upwind, into the thickest part of the forest. And there, I’d left them on their own, away from danger. And death.
I heaved a sad, stuttering sigh as I assessed the dead, each killed by a tiny dart. My parents, the twins, my brother, and I were all that remained of the Red Lodge pack. I refused to believe my parents had been caught up in the rogues’ plan. The rogues wouldn’t have gone out of their way to an area populated with human residents and tourists to track down two lone wolves. As for my brother, Decker had survived the Lake Crescent attack and, as far as I knew was still there.
Slowly, I surveyed the room. Coleman and Lucy had embraced our simple, off-grid life. In fact, their home was as spartan as one could get without it looking as though no one actually lived there at all. No pictures, no artwork, no collections of knickknacks, or evidence of a hobby of any kind. The small kitchen area was just as sparse: a water storage tank on the counter and a basin to wash up and rinse off the few cups and plates stacked on a built-in shelf. Beneath the loft bedroom was a curtained-off area they used for their clothing, boots, shoes, and a few books.
I ran my hand along the surface of the only piece of furniture in the living room—a U-shaped mortar and cob-mud bench. A seating arrangement Coleman had used each time he met with other pack members. The bench faced the large wood-burning stove and seemed to work to funnel heat into the loft bedroom. Over the years, the hands of every wolf in the pack had polished the rough cob-mud surface to a smooth matte finish. Now, these wolves lay dead on the rug-covered wooden floor. Aside from my own breathing, the only thing I heard was the creak of the metal pipe running from the wood-burning stove through the exhaust opening in the middle of the yurt. The scents of my pack hadn’t taken on the smell of death...yet. But they would soon.
I was alone.
A shuddering breath shook my entire body. Tired beyond belief, I hurt all over. Not only my muscles and bones, but also my heart and my soul.
There wasn't time to cry or feel pain. If I let go of one single tear, they might never stop.
Nereida and Arteisma needed me to stay strong.
How will I explain what happened?
I might have taught them what to do and where to hide when danger came, but I’d never taught them how to deal with the aftermath. This lesson would be the hardest of the twins’ lives.
I glanced around once more—a room full of the dead.
The only thing left was to get the word out to the other packs.
The radio.
I ran barefoot over the snow-covered bridge that connected the Alpha’s residence to the sixty-foot yurt we called the cookhouse. With my feet wet and frozen, I slipped and came crashing down on my left hip as I barreled through the door. I lay there breathing raggedly as pain shot through my body. I shoved it away. No time to feel it. No time to feel anything.
Though I knew they were gone, the rogues’ odor still lingered in the cookhouse, mixed with fruit and vegetables and that evening's dinner. I could taste their scents on my tongue—acrid, hot, wrong.
