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“What is it?” Ashe demands, instantly alert.
“Jasmine?”
“Doug!”
She does not answer, only calls for me again. Do I imagine it?
“Something has happened. My mate needs me.”
“Ashe!”one of his patrol hails.“We have more Blighten bastards!”
“Go,” Ashe says to me. “I will return as soon as I can.”
He shifts to a sleek wolf and bounds off in support of his patrol.
“Doug!!!”
“Jasmine, I am coming!”
I charge into the forest, bound for the pack and my mate.
ChapterSix
Jasmine
“Jasmine, I am coming!”
Somehow, I make it outside the den, taking the old passage that leads around the back, used only by the lesser shifters and humans. I am reeling from what I’ve just heard, which has left me gasping for breath and near faint with terror.
Orcs, inside the pack den.
Orcs, talking with Tavis.
Orcs, the ones that are in the secret alliance that Jim warned us about.
But he did not know it was with orcs, and now it’s all too late.
The spring weather is warm and pleasant outside as I stagger for the cover of the trees and empty my stomach over the forest floor.
Orcs, taking Fern away.
Orcs, taking Tavion, Casper, and Fern’s two human mates.
I heave until there is nothing left, and then I heave some more. Then, finally, the terror dissipates enough for me to recover my wits.
I am so lost in my misery that I do not notice Jim and the other hunters until they are upon me.
* * *
Jim is stony-faced as I tell him all that just happened. Since we arrived at the Oberon pack, the lesser shifters and their human mates have been our friends and allies. I trust Jim, along with his fellow hunters and their mates, the same way that I trust Deba.
“It is pure luck that some of Tavion’s patrol left the pack earlier today,” Jim says, his hand shaking at his side. “Tavion sent four of them to inspect the Sparrowpit village.”
“The old abandoned mine site? Why would he send them there?”
“It’s true that no one has lived there for years,” Jim says, with a nod. “But it offers good hunting in the summer, and we have been in the area many times. The village itself is overgrown, and several cottages have collapsed. A landslide obliterated the main route, making it untenable as a home for the former mine workers. Shifters can still get through, but it’s not a place as might ordinarily appeal to a shifter.”
“Tavion was thinking of taking Fern there before her heat,” I say, as understanding blooms.
