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“Do not waste your energy, little wolf.” Her voice is as melodic when she’s speaking as it is when she’s singing, but it no longer has power over me. Maybe she’s not trying to trick me anymore.
“You’ve trespassed here.”
“Have I?” She looks around, pretending to be confused, and I growl again. “I must have lost track of how far I walked. Forgive me.”
“Enough of your lies,” I snap. “Get out of here, now. I’ll give you until the count of three, and then you’ll wish you had left when I gave you the chance.”
“Little wolf, I have no intention of fighting or dying on this day.” She stands straight and tall, her hands folded in front of her, hidden beneath her cloak. “But I have no intention of running, either. We do not run. That is not our way.”
“So, what, you expect me to be okay with the fact that you trespassed? You crossed the border.” How did she do it? This is huge. I have to get back. I have to tell Connor and Wilde and anybody else who’ll listen. It’s possible for them to get through without setting off the alarms.
“How do you know you didn’t cross the border into our territory?” she asks, her head tipping to the side.
“You don’t have territory.”
“That is neither here nor there. You’ve come quite a way from your pack’s lands. Are you sure you are not the one trespassing now?”
Shit. Am I? Now I’m not so sure. I would look around and try to get some sense of where I am, but I’m afraid to take my eyes off her. I don’t know what she’s going to try when I’m not looking. Besides, how would I know? I’m surrounded by trees, and it’s getting darker all the time.
“It doesn’t matter,” she continues with a sickening smile. “Here we are, face to face, regardless of who stepped foot over an invisible line.”
“What do you want?”
“Myself? I merely wanted to collect moss. We use it in healing poultices—and we’ve gone through quite a bit of it as of late,” she adds, her voice going brittle at the end. “There are a great many more wounds to treat.”
“Wounds? I thought most of you were being killed.”
“But not all. And we must prepare for the future, for the upcoming battle.”
“Why are you doing this? Why go through all of this? You can’t win; there are too many of them. What are you gaining?”
“I would say you’ll find out, but that would be untrue. Because you won’t be here, little wolf.”
“Says you.”
“I speak the truth, and it’s best that you hear it now.” She drops the fake friendly act, and while her eyes narrow, they seem to glow brighter than ever. “If you remain with the Silver Shadow Pack, you will die.”
“Right. From what I’ve been told, there were more of you who believed that just a few nights ago. I guess you haven’t heard what happened to them.”
“I know very well. But that changes nothing. Your destiny has been set. Fate has decided. Mark my words. This will only lead to your destruction.”
“My mate is here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Your mate will die. The alpha, his father. His twin. All of them, down the line. Every one of their kind… gone.”
Something close to a giggle bubbles out of her. “And it will be your doing in the end.”
“Really? That’s news to me. I have no intention of killing anyone.”
“They will not die directly at your hand, but through you, just the same.”
“And exactly how? That’s the thing. All of you, you’re all big talkers, but you’re too cryptic. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s because you’re full of shit.”
“Are we?”
All at once, there are other glowing orbs in the darkness behind her. Two, four, ten, twenty, the eyes of so many necromancers, all of them trained on me. My blood runs cold, and everything in me screams to run, to run fast, to run far, and to not look over my shoulder until I’m inside Wilde’s house, inside the protective circle of his arms. What was I thinking? I’m all alone, and there are so many of them.
And they want me dead. None of them has to say it out loud. I feel it, their intentions sinking into my bones. All of them, they all want me to die. Even if I don’t know why. I guess it doesn’t matter in the end, does it?
“There is no denying or escaping what is meant to be.”
I focus back on her, the one who brought me here. “What do you want?” I whisper, and I hate the way my voice shakes. But who am I kidding? I’m sure she can see through me. She knows how afraid I am. “What is the point of this? Why do I have to die? Why do any of them?”
