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“Until you’re back,” he murmurs. “When will that be, exactly?”
I was hoping he would not ask, but now that he has, I know I cannot lie about this.
“My task may take some time, but I will bring back food tomorrow night.”
He huffs out a breath. “You are going to be gone a full day? That is not smart, Scar. Those people may not know that their barrier is not working, but they will know the moment they see you.”
“They will not see me,” I assure him.
“You are pretty hard to miss,” he says.
“I will be careful.”
“You had better be, and we would prefer our food fresh. Do not bring slain animals that we cannot first hunt to kill.”
Now that he is bargaining, I know he is close to accepting what needs to be done.
“I will bring whatever is safe to bring,” I tell him, not committing to something I can’t do.
My brothers are used to running on instinct. They accepted their darker appetites when they were young, so they are much more vicious than I was raised to be. It helped them survive, while stripping away a layer of humanity that I was more used to.
I don’t enjoy hunting small animals.
It is a means to an end for me.
The pleasure it gives them is one of the few joys they seem to get out of life, and I would never try to take that away from them. There is not much that we can be grateful for.
“Hmm,” Scratch murmurs, pulling my attention back to his bright eyes. “What about bringing us one of them?”
“One of them?” I ask, too distracted to catch his meaning.
“One of the people who rejected us,” he clarifies. “The shifters who sleep in warm beds in a busy town, while we sleep in caves in this nowhere place.”
He sounds casual about it, but there’s a gleam in his eyes that tells me he would enjoy torturing the people who sent us here. It’s yet another hurdle in my plan to take over Nightshade.
I don’t want needless bloodshed to be part of this, but it feels inevitable.
“We could use a real hunt,” Scratch goes on. “A victim we can taunt and chase until we get bored and end his suffering. That would make this babysitting thing worthwhile. I’m sure Fox would love to try out that knife he spent months carving before he became obsessed with taking himself in hand.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
It would only give them a taste for it.
They’re bloodthirsty enough now.
“There is nothing to stop us from going into town ourselves,” he reminds me.
It is an empty threat. All four of us may be Alphas, but I am the pack leader.
I’m the oldest and I’ve been here the longest. They all took my mark to bind us together as a pack, accepting me as their Alpha. I taught Scratch and Fox how to talk, and I helped Snake find ways to communicate that we could all understand. They are my family, and there is only one thing I care about more than my brothers.
Nightshade’s Alpha made the biggest mistake of his life by allowing his pack’s rituals to slip.
It’s going to afford me the chance I’ve been waiting for to destroy his world.
That is something I’ve been dreaming about for a very long time.
Maybe it is selfish to expect Scratch to understand without telling him my reasons, but I do not wish for him to get his hopes up if there is a chance they may be dashed.
