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Dmitri
He’d been tracking the elk for the last hour, stalking through the forest, the night breeze cool upon his fur, the thick understory of the trees scratching against his pelt as he moved.
It was a buck, a huge one, at least eight points. It would be a fight to bring him down, but it was a fight he needed. A fight he relished.
But it wasn’t the only scent he detected on the wind, not that night. There was no way of knowing how long he’d been trailed—it was simple enough to stay downwind of one’s quarry after all. But he had an idea it had been a while. It was, if nothing else, a… familiar pattern.
Abandoning the scent trail of his elk quarry, he detoured up a ridge, the blackness of the night made more so by a thin layer of low clouds obscuring the moon. The trees rustled and moaned with the wind, the sound like a sadness, of longing, the trees speaking to no one and everyone in the gloom’s deep.
He found the rock outcropping he’d used many times before, its promontory serving as a dramatic and very useful vista from which to survey the forest glen below, the meandering course of the creek that bisected it like an inky black trail of oil upon the earth, only its subtle murmur betraying its actual nature.
“Come to kill me, have you?” Dmitri said the words without looking behind him. There was no doubt whom his mysterious visitor was. It was a surprise to be sure, but in a way itdidfit the wolf who tracked him.
A rather ignominious end for you, don’t you think? Killed alone in the night like some rabid dog being put down.
Dmitri finally turned, beholding the great golden and white striped wolf stalking unhurriedly up the slope toward him. The beast’s eyes glowed with incandescent fire, so unlike any others of his kind. He was one of the largest wolves Dimitri had ever seen, befitting the alpha he was.
“I have not come to kill you. Our quarrel will be settled another day. I’ve come to… talk.” In an instant, Kellen shifted to his man form, a towering, gaunt figure close to seven feet tall. His blonde hair was so fair it was practically white, his skin a ghostly hue that bordered on translucence. In his eyes there was the power though, the cunning that made him a valuable ally—and a most formidable foe.
“You’renotgoing to kill me?” Dmitri assumed his own human form, grunting inside at the searing pain. Within seconds he was sitting upon the promontory, his long legs crossed, arms resting in his lap, the stone cold and hard against his buttocks.
Whitlow drew closer, but when Dimitri indicated he should sit, the man shook his head. “Word has gotten out. Some are suspicious. Plenty more are just curious—but that won’t last. The demandswillcome. You know what must be done.”
Shit.
Ithadbeen a honeymoon of sorts, since he’d rescued her. They’d gotten much closer, his feelings for her deepening, his need to have her by his side at all times one that was almost painful. She was his in every sense of that word.
None of that changed the truth of Kellen’s words though. The bitter truth.
“She must go through the Proving.” Kellen shook his head, looking out over the vista. “It’s been more than fifty years. Much too long. Half of our brethren don’t even believe such a thing exists anymore. The other half, well, they’re distracted. Perhaps fatally so. Consumed with their dalliances and intrigues with the humans. We’revulnerable. You know this as well as I do. Which is why time is of the essence.”
Dmitri took a breath, savoring the freshness of the air. “And what of Caleb? You traveled six hundred miles to tell me that there will benoreckoning? No repercussions for his death?”
Kellen’s golden gaze fell upon him then, and Dmitri’s blood ran cold with what he saw in the wolf’s eyes. There was rage there still, a fiery, vengeful, mad seething.
More than that though, there was hurt—and a hurt wolf was the most dangerous kind of all. “We’ll have our reckoning when the time is right. But it won’t be now. This is far more important, and we both know it. Youmusttell her. And you must tell her soon.”
A gap in the clouds opened up then, the light from the crescent moon flooding the landscape, lending both of them a shimmering aura.
Kellen’s words were true, no matter how much Dimitri wished otherwise.
“I know I must.” The weight of what had to be done settled upon him with a sickening force. “I just… don’t know how to tell her. Don’t knowwhatto tell her.”
Unexpected softness crept into Kellen’s voice as he looked down upon the beautiful glen below. “Just tell the truth, wolf. The truth is all she’s ever needed. And she’ll need it to get through what’s ahead of her, too.”
Dmitri pushed himself up to his feet, extending a hand toward his erstwhile ally, and now likely adversary. “I’ll do it.”
Kellen shook his hand, then squeezed it with bone crushing force. His gaze locked with Dmitri’s. “Keep her safe. If she is what we think she might be, then it’s all but certain the enemy knows too.”
“Is that what they were up to then?” Dmitri pursed his lips. “This wasn’t just some snatch of an omega. Like the others.”
A crease deepened on Kellen’s brow. “What do you mean, theothers?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Dmitri turned his face up toward the moon, the beautiful light filling him with both hope, and the bone deep resolve to see things through, no matter what sacrifices it might take. “The humans… they’ve been lying to us. For more than a year.”
“Tell me. Tell me all of it.”
Dmitri dashed off down the hillside then, gaining speed as he went, the power of the moon filling him with an unaccountable, exhilarating strength. In an instant, with an agonized groan, he changed to the wolf, flashing down the ridge as fast as his long legs could take him. “Then follow me!”
And Kellen did just that, the two giant alphas howling off into the night.
The End
