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His lips touched my temple and stayed there.
“How did you keep my wolf hidden?” Mosa asked with the same curious voice she had often approached me with as a small child.
“Frequent doses in your food or drinks that were a combination of plants and minerals commonly used in the Dark and Middle Ages,” I began. “Human settlements encroached on our territories back then. Their villages and cities rose up. They were weaker in their bodies but outnumbered us hundreds to one. And they had become clever in their weapons. An entire community of shifters might be wiped out if a child could not control its abilities.”
“But my panther—”
I stopped her with a small nod. “The specific combinations that work for one type of shifter are useless for another. The differences are a result of certain elements, lithium, beryllium, cobalt, rubidium…”
I sighed, then vaguely gestured at Mallory and Doone. “Lithium suppresses the canine strain in shifters, cobalt suppresses the feline strain.”
Mosa started to say something else, but Mallory gently shushed her.
“Let your mother rest, child.”
CHAPTER28
DOONE
Staying off the main roads,it took us just shy of seven hours to reach Night Falls. The rising sun trailed after us, but there was no sign of pursuit yet from the Rockford leap or any of their potential allies.
Covering our tracks was another facet of the strategy we had executed. If we were lucky, Henric would continue believing that it was Kalchik he had gone into the woods with, that Kalchik had torn off his finger, and that it was Kalchik who had fled with Justine.
Mosa had already told us Kalchik never failed to express desire for her mother when he visited the leap. Whether it was merely to get under her husband’s skin or not, the wolf’s lewd, disgusting expressions would have built the foundation for Henric’s mistrust. With any luck, the two men might take each other out.
Precautions were still being taken in Night Falls. Most members of the community, especially the most vulnerable, had been taken to a secure location. That’s where Taron was leading us now, his mate and cubs already there.
“The inner sanctum,” Mallory said, moving up to the front passenger seat as I turned onto a dirt road leading deeper into the forest, Taron about thirty feet ahead of us on his motorcycle.
I nodded, my chest tightening over an idea I had been trying my best to put out of mind.
Now that we were back with the shifters of Night Falls, people would want to know how we had managed to rescue Justine with the numbers stacked heavily against us. Eventually, my impersonation of Kalchik would come out, Taron and Mallory already warning me that my extra ability was something we should introduce to the community at some point. At least, tall as I was, my height would give me away if I tried to impersonate anyone within the pack other than Taron or Buzzsaw, the resident elk shifter. And I couldn’t play the noxious cologne trick again. Those considerations should give some of the local shifters a little peace of mind.
“Don’t worry,” Mallory said, the old wolf reading my mind. “We’ll introduce the concept gradually. And folks around here are accustomed to stranger than strange.”
I barked out a laugh. Stranger than strange. STS. It sounded like some kind of communicable disease…but, in this particular case, I was the only known patient.
“Keep right,” Mallory pointed as Taron’s bike turned left down a path too small for the van. “He’s taking the south entrance where his mate and cubs are waiting. We’ll park to the east where the trees will hide the van from any drones flying overhead.”
Drones?
Damn. Being on my own so long and growing up in the human world, it was hard to conceive of how there were shifter communities all over the country—all over the world—who had their own militias.
Hair bristled along my jawline and up my cheek as my wolf wanted out.
“There,” he pointed again. “Joshua already has a blind erected for the van.”
I parked, jumped out, then pulled open the sliding side door. Mother and daughter were huddled together, Justine’s head resting on Mosa’s shoulder. The woman was exhausted, her body still healing from the torture that had been exacerbated by the nightshade.
Mallory bundled her up and started down a path, calling back as Mosa climbed out of the van.
“Bring the gear in, you two. And leave the keys in the exhaust pipe.”
Mosa rolled her eyes at his back, but started shouldering some of the rifles.
“I can carry it all,” I said, trying to stop her before she layered a backpack on top of everything already weighing down her shorter frame.
She let me take the pack but kept the guns. I quickly grabbed the rest of the gear and we started after her parents.
