“I assure you, it’s there.” The crone calmly sips her tea. “You can’t feel the blood coursing in your veins, either, but it’s there all the same.”
“No.” The suggestion itself has my claws drawn.
“The bond can only bring you misery. Una doesn’t want you now. And you won’t force her.”
Rage surges through me, and the crone is wrong. I can feel my blood—it’s burning. “I am not my father.”
“No, you’re not. So since you don’t want her, let her go. Let her be happy with someone else.”
“Who?” It’s a snarl.
She waves her hand. “Relax. I’m talking theoretically.”
“You’re playing Fate.”
“And you don’t, Alpha?”
We are silent a moment, glaring at each other as I force my wolf down, compel the rage to abate. The crone is a canny adversary. You don’t go into the ring in a temper.
“There’s no way to reverse what you have done?”
She crosses her legs and smooths her slacks. “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t know how.”
“You have cost me my young, witch.”
“You cost yourself. It’s your head that’s stuck up your ass.” My wolf rumbles, and she hurries to add, “And we don’t know that for sure. You could always, I don’t know, woo her. The moon works in mysterious ways.”
“Woo her?”
“You know. Dates. Flowers.”
“That’s human shit.”
She shrugs. “They do it at Moon Lake.”
I slowly exhale. “You have done me a grave disservice.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe I’ve done you a great favor. Go back to camp. Train your fighters. Let a female lure you to her bed. Nothing has to change.”
It’s the first lie she’s told me.
I glance out the window at the packed car. “You’re leaving?”
“I am.”
“Stay gone.”
“You’re exiling me?” She arches an eyebrow.
“I’m advising you. You can come back when my mate’s belly is round with my young.”
She laughs and moves to clear the cups from the table. “You always were confident.”
“I have always had cause to be.”
The crone pauses and cranes her neck to search my eyes. It’s the closest to a bent neck I’ll ever get from her. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
Her brow furrows. “I don’t think I should tell you. I don’t want to get in the way of the Fates.”
I snort. “Crone, you’re full of shit.”
She shrugs. “It’s hard to know what’s helping and what’s meddling. There’s no rule book.”
I have no clue what she’s talking about. There are rules. I made them. And folks don’t need help or meddling. Nine times out of ten, they need a swift kick in the ass.
I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere, though, and my wolf and I are agreed that we’ve been too long away from camp.
“Stay gone,” I tell the crone’s back as she turns on the faucet to rinse our dishes.
“I do what I want,” she tosses over her shoulder.
I know when to tap out, so I toss my shorts on a bench, head out the door, and let my wolf take our skin.
I’m done with this vague, hippie shit. I am going to get my mate. My body warms. A faint, strange pulse tick tocks in my sternum.
My wolf raises his snout as we race back to camp, and I swear words ring in his howls.
Took you long enough.
I’m almost back to camp when another scent stops me in my tracks. It’s rich. Delicious. I bound off through the underbrush, and it doesn’t take long to discover the source.
Darragh Ryan is hauling a fresh kill on his shoulders. A buck. Eight points.
Before I shift, my wolf leaps up and snaps a chunk off the haunch. So fresh.
When I rise to two feet, I wipe blood from my mouth. “What are you doing down here?”
Darragh’s twisting his neck to check out the damage. “Did you really have to? Couldn’t wait for me to dress it for you?”
“You don’t do it for me. You do it for Mari.”
Mari’s the mate he avoids claiming by living feral in the foothills. He says it’s ‘cause of the age difference—he wants her to have the chance to grow up before taking on his old ass—but it’s something else. Don’t know what, and since he keeps shit secure in our western territory, I don’t care.
“She doing well?” Darragh schools his weathered face like he ain’t transparent as hell.
“She is.” I don’t mention her squeal when she caught sight of my cock last night. That wouldn’t go over too well. “What are you doing so close to camp?”
“Cutting through. I was following my nose. Took me out by the old dens.”
“You smelled that buck all that way?” It’s big, but it’s not that big.
Darragh shakes his head, and his salt-and-pepper beard brushes his equally hairy chest. “Something else. Something unfamiliar.”
My adrenaline kicks up. “Like what?”
“Dirt. Leaves. Pine needles. Not ours. From another territory. Baking soda.”
“Like hunters covering their tracks?” It’s rare, but occasionally humans are stupid enough to track an animal onto our territory.
“Yes, but I didn’t scent human.”
“Wolf?”
He shakes his head. “Once I got out there, all I smelled was this fella here.” He resettles the buck’s weight.
“Should I send a patrol out?”
Darragh snorts. “I don’t know. You willing to waste good training time based on the overactive imagination of a wolf almost gone feral?”
“Hey, patrols are cardio.”
“True enough.” He sighs, his gaze turning toward the direction of the old dens. “I think it was a fluke—some strong scent carried on a strong wind. I tracked this big fella a few hours, covered a lot of ground, didn’t scent anything out of place.” Darragh pats the deer’s haunch. “I’ll bring this down later. Let Old Noreen know to expect it.”
“I will.” I clasp Darragh’s hand and fake like I’m going in for another bite.
“Fuck off, man.”
I chuckle. I made him flinch. I miss Darragh around camp. He taught me a lot of what I know. “You know we keep a seat open for you in the lodge.”
“So you tell me.” He jerks his chin and strides away, blazing his own trail through the thicket on a path toward the ridge. Anyone who saw him would mistake him for a member of the Last Pack. Long, snarled hair and beard, claws that never quite recede, ears that come to a point.
If he doesn’t come out of the hills soon, he might not ever be able to. That’s his choice, though. Every male is entitled to his own. I don’t know how Mari handles her heat with him gone, but she does. It’s a messed up situation, but they can do as they see fit—and if they don’t want the rest of the pack to know, I’m not a gossip.
I shift back to wolf and lope back to camp. First, I swing by the lodge and tell Ivo to take a group up and comb the northeast quadrant, and then I head straight for Una’s place.
Gael isn’t where I left him. Jaime’s there. He’s wandered up on the ridge behind the cabin, squatting on a rock, playing on his phone. I leap and knock it from his hands while I shift back to my skin.
“Where’s Una?”
Jaime scrambles to his feet. “Down there.”
“No, she isn’t.” I smell Mari. Annie. Kennedy. That’s it.
“I swear, Alpha. I’ve been here an hour. No one’s left.”
“Where’s Gael?”
“Lochlan wanted him in the gym to spar with Finn. He sent me to take his place.”