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“I don’t trust you,” I tell her point blank. “And I don’t understand what this is.”
“Call it a gift from a friend. That dagger has seen generations of your family before you, and now it’s come home to you. Take it and protect your pack family. You don’t have enough control yet over your power, so let the dagger lead you. Family will never steer you wrong,” she vows.
Her words are a hard pill to swallow. The need to protect my pack at any cost—even if it means putting my trust in a stranger—is strong. But family has steered me wrong before. What my parents did unequivocally changed our family forever.
“What’s going on, Maren?” I ask her because this is too much of a coincidence. All these things are going on around me, and this woman finds me here where I was meant to be hidden.
“I don’t know exactly,” she says with so much earnestness that I think I believe her. “But it didn’t start with the Luna Sovereign or the Anchorage Lake Pack. These are only distractions—but I think this one could be deadly. So please, I promise you’ll see me again, but right now save your mate. We’re going to need you both alive.”
I don’t know whoweis, and I still don’t understand any of this. I want to know who the dagger is from and why she had it. How did she end up being the one to deliver it to me? And what connection does she have to my brother?
But each moment I stay here asking questions is one I’ve lost getting back to my pack and keeping them safe. The Luna in me wins out. I pull the dagger out, letting the box and the note fall to the ground. If I’m lucky, I can come back later to find them and study them more carefully, but right now I need to shift and that means limited ability to carry anything.
I carefully stick the dagger between my teeth and curl my lips back as I start to shift so that I don’t nick myself. It’s a trick Morgan taught me after her first shift—though back then she used it as a way to hold onto her cell phone.
Maren stays where she is as I turn, shooting one last glance her way before setting my sights for the direction of home. I don’t understand why she came, or better yet why she’s not coming now to help us since she clearly understands the impending danger better than I do.
If she meant what she said about seeing her again, they’ll have to be questions for another day.
I kick into full speed, sprinting faster than ever as I eat up ground, the woods no more than a blur as I whip through them, never slowing even as I break out of the forested area into more open ground. I’m only vaguely familiar with this land thanks to Dominic limiting how much I was allowed to explore. Thankfully, I’ve always been good at directions.
All I have to do is keep heading north.
When I make it to the edge of the suburbanized part of our land, all of the darkness that’s been lurking seems to become more tangible, as if I could turn any corner and find danger. I slow, weaving in between houses and around yards. It’s eerily quiet. My hope is that Dominic managed to tell the families to take cover, but I don’t dare try to speak across the mind link for fear I’ll get distracted and miss something as I approach where Dominic and the fighters of our pack should be.
As I pass one house, I see the curtain move in the window, offering some small assurance that maybe all is well here. These are families. If anyone dares touch a hair on any head here, I’m fully prepared to start ripping them—wolves or human—into tiny little pieces.
I don’t realize until I hit the opposite end of the neighborhoods that there must be something shielding the families. As soon as I cross the threshold where a sign marks the end of the last neighborhood, the pack’s voices snap into place.
Suddenly, I can hear everything. I search for my mate’s voice in the thick of it, but it’s hard to discern one voice from another. Everyone is talking over each other, fear and panic and strength all co-mingling in one space. It all drops on my shoulders like a physical weight.
I need to protect my pack. I need to be by my mate’s side.
Dominic?When there’s no instant answer, I call for him more desperately,Dominic!I can feel the link between us, and I can feel that it’s strong. I know he has to be close, which means it’s a very bad sign that he’s not responding right away.
It feels like too much time passes before I hear him, and when I do, it brings me no comfort.
Run, Tess.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Tess
Run, Tess.
He already knows I can't do that. If he's telling me to run, it's worse than I imagined, and if that's the case, I need to be here to help my pack.
I creep along quietly until I can make out the first signs of a struggle. A group of wolves is fighting in pure chaos. I'm not sure how they can tell who is who the way they're going at each other. I've never seen anything like it before.
Finally, something I learned as a child is helpful because being a wallflower meant I learned to sit back and watch what was going on around me, catching more details than the average person. I do that now, trying to get a sense of who's in the mix in front of me.
I don't know all of our pack wolves yet, but I recognize two of them in the mix. I quickly sort the other wolves in my head based on who seems to be working with or against them.
Our pack outnumbers and outclasses them. This group doesn't need help—I'm certain of it.
I keep moving, analyzing several more pockets of fighting. As I move closer to the pack house, I start to pick out Dominic's voice from the others.Hold them back, he shouts at someone.We need backup over here!
I pick up my pace, desperate to get to Dominic. I don't dare call out to him because I'm too worried about distracting him. He’ll be furious with me for not following his directions, but we can duke it out over that later.Afterthe pack is safe.
