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GRIFFIN
Emily was reluctant to leave, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. Every time we were away from one another, my wolf howled and groaned, wishing she’d come back.
But it was necessary, so like the amazing woman she is, she handled the situation with grace and gave Cassian and me one last kiss before she climbed into the backseat of Cassian’s truck. Sam would take his truck back to the warehouse so all the guys could fit into the SUV. I was glad for the vehicle switch. It was cramped enough with the four of us, but now there would be about six or seven men.
It was weird to watch her drive away with someone else—another guy at that—but Sam was her best bet for safety, and we needed to find Morgan.
Fortunately, her car had been left at the scene, which meant she ditched it to travel on foot. That was good for two reasons. One, we had a direct way to pick up her scent. It was all over her car. Two, it meant she wouldn’t have traveled as far on foot as in a vehicle.
But that didn’t mean the difficulties were over. We still had to track her scent, and after being gone for hours, it was beginning to disappear from the woods around us. We had to act fast, picking the strongest scented direction and taking it on a whim. Hopefully, it would lead us to her. And hopefully, the wind hadn’t blown us off course.
Tiny was the first to change into his wolf form. No matter how often I’d been around other wolves before a change, seeing them naked was never any less awkward. Especially when they were from another pack. With your own pack, it was like your family—gross, but bearable because you know them well. But with someone else’s pack, we were practically strangers, and I averted my eyes as Cassian strapped the bag around Tiny’s wolf neck.
Everyone stripped and folded their clothes, shoving them in the bag so we’d have something to wear when we transformed back into our human form.
Once we were all changed into our wolf forms, we took off running in the direction of the scent.
Though Cassian and I bickered a lot at the hotel, in the car ride, or pretty much any time we were around each other, we worked well together in a serious situation. And although I was from a different pack, I got along with his pack, and for a while, it felt like I… belonged.
Hours.
We ran for hours. I thought we’d lost the scent for a while, but we continued on anyway, hoping for a miracle. Eventually, the scent returned, and we quickly picked up her trail.
How she could’ve gotten this far on foot was beyond me. She must’ve had help, but from who? Who would’ve been waiting with the getaway car?
As we came closer to her scent, we approached a camp in the middle of the woods. We changed back into our human forms, pulling our clothes from the bag and getting dressed. Whatever we encountered, I wanted to be in my human form to deal with it. We crept from the tree line as close as we could without being seen.
“There she is,” Gus shouted in a hushed whisper.
Morgan was walking with two men who looked strangely familiar. They joined another group, and it wasn’t until my eyes fell on the figure in the center that I knew who this was.
“That’s my brother,” I whispered, looking at the others who were just as confused as I was. “What the hell is Morgan doing with my brother?”
“Maybe they’re hooking up?” one of the wolves suggested, though I didn’t know his name.
Cassian disagreed. “I think she’s here for much more than a play date. The Langston Pack attacked us once already. They must all be working with Samara together.”
Like a sucker punch to the gut, I felt like I’d been knocked down.
“Those bastards are going to die,” Cassian growled, ready to jump in and pounce on them. But fighting would get us nowhere. We needed a plan. There was a reason my brother and his pack were so close to the cottage where we found Emily—only a few hours running distance away. They had their own plans, and we couldn’t jump in until we had one of our own.
I held out my arm, blocking Cassian from moving forward.
“What are you doing?” he snapped. “Move.”
“No. If we go in there now, we’ll be slaughtered. We need to wait and listen to what they’re planning. Then, you can go in there after we get the information we need.” Cassian remained quiet for a moment, though I could tell he agreed with what I said. I quickly added, “But don’t kill them. Those are my kills.”
Cassian scoffed. “Like hell they are. Kellan killed my mother. I’m killing the son of a bitch myself.”
“Then leave my father for me. I need to kill at least one of them to get a little closure.”
Gus stepped forward, cutting off our negotiations. “Now’s not the time. We’re here for Morgan and nothing else. I loved Luna Grace and want to honor her death as much as you do, but we need to focus on the task at hand. Let’s go around the other side and see if we can hear anything. We need to scope the place out before we go storming in. But we need to be quick before they pick up our scent.”
After walking the camp perimeter, there was no way to get in without being seen or smelled. I knew from experience that my brother and father were excellent scent trackers.
“I have an idea,” Tiny said. “It’s dirty, but I think it could help mask our scent if we cover ourselves in mud. Without our smell giving away our position, we can ambush them, take the broad, and ditch the camp. But we’d need to be quick because they’ll be right on our tails.”
After a brief discussion, we had our plan.
