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I hold Tasha like our lives depend on it as she sobs against my chest. Luca brought us a chair from the pack house so I could sit and hold her properly despite her protests. She doesn’t want to hurt me. She doesn’t realize the thing hurting me most right now is her pain.
I wish Dominic had waited until I could get Tasha out of here before summoning Alpha Callum. She already lives with the pain of what happened with the East Terrace Green Pack. She doesn’t need us rubbing it in her face.
The man strides forward with purpose, ignoring Dominic’s attempts to talk to him. His gaze is set on Tasha. I tighten my grip on her as he closes in.
“What?” I snap at him, narrowing my eyes.
He barely spares me a glance. “Tasha.” He kneels next to her. “I am so sorry.”
He starts to reach out as if to touch her, and I snap. “Back. Up.” I release an angry growl that startles him. He hurries to his feet and reels back, his hands in the air as if that will make him seem less threatening. “Further.”
“Paxton, stop.” Tasha’s voice cracks, but she manages to collect herself enough to raise her head. Fuck. There are wet streaks down her cheeks from crying. Someone might as well stab a knife through my chest for how it feels to see her so devastated.
“Go look at the body.” I glare at Callum. I know none of this is his fault, but I need someone to take my anger out on, and he’s the one who tried to touch my woman. The sooner he gets out of my face—and the sooner we know whether this was one of the rogues responsible for Tasha’s loss—the sooner we can figure out how to move forward.
Dominic leads Callum away, presumably toward where they’ve moved the body of the wolf they were forced to kill to save me. I’ll owe Dominic for that.
Luca stays to keep guard over us as Tasha drops her head back to my chest. I stroke her messy, tangled hair and try to ignore the sting of the wood against the claw marks on my back. I would put up with pain a hundred times worse so long as it kept her in my arms.
Tobias appears from the side of my vision. I assumed he had gone back to Dominic’s pack with the rest of the family.Where the hell have you been?
Making some calls.He holds up his phone.I asked some friends to put their ears to the ground and start looking for the Sovereign Pack. They can’t just disappear without being noticed. Someone had to see something, and it seems to me like we need all the information we can get.
He studies Tasha in my arms, his expression surprisingly soft.
She’s a good woman.
I know that. Did you hear anything back about the Sovereign Pack?
Yeah. I—
“Is there a reason you’re speaking privately?” Tasha turns in my lap and lays her head on my shoulder so she can see Tobias. He shrugs sheepishly.
“I didn’t want to alarm you, ma’am.”
Ma’am? I snort.
Tasha narrows her eyes at me. I can read on her face what she’s thinking. She might be having a vulnerable moment, but she has responsibilities to the community. She doesn’t want to be kept out of the loop. I nod for Tobias to go ahead.
“I have a friend with the Great Plains Pack. Some of the Sovereign Pack has apparently been fleeing in that direction. They say the Sovereign Pack has been disbanded.”
“What?” Tasha sits upright. “On whose authority? I’m the one the Sovereign Pack is meant to answer to.” Her eyes blaze as she pushes off of me, her hurt forgotten in the name of her responsibilities.
Despite the years I’ve spent hating most of this system we’re born into, I respect the hell out of her. It sends a pang through my chest as I think about how much we still have left to figure out. All of my early plans involved her living with me as a rogue. Now that I’ve seen who she really is, I realize how much compromise is left to be made.
Tobias clears his throat, and I realize he’s looking warily at me. He knows the answer, but he’s not sure he should tell her.
“Spit it out.” I shrug. Whatever it is, my woman can handle it.
“Waverly broke up the pack and went rogue. No one knows her whereabouts, but the shifters that were fleeing said she disbanded the pack when most of them refused to form some kind of militia she’s apparently trying to build. No one could say what the numbers looked like before they fled, but tensions seemed high.”
“Militia?” Her eyes dart to mine, wide with alarm.
“It’s okay.” I stand with a great deal of pain, but I swallow my groan. I forget about the pain in my back anyway as I wrap my arms around Tasha and she comes to me easily. Fucking finally. “We’re not alone, right? We have a big network that’ll help us figure all of this out. You’re not facing this alone.”
“This has all gone too far,” she whimpers. Her body is tense.
A chill sweeps through the air. “What the hell?” Tobias mutters, taking a step back as a white glow starts to creep out from beneath Tasha’s feet, stretching over the earth around us. It stops just short of where Tobias stands, looking on at us from the edge of the defensive circle Tasha has made. His eyes are wide with disbelief but he shakes his head and shrugs to himself like he’s willing to accept what he doesn’t understand.
