Wolf, I called softly. I need your help.
Obediently, my animal half rose up to join me. What’s the plan? she murmured, her voice nearly too quiet to hear.
We’ll try the easy way first, I replied. But if all else fails, we’ll break the unbreakable and see what happens.
The wolf sipped my intentions out of our shared mind as if they were a long drink of cool water. Then she hummed her assent. It’s worth it, she agreed, to save Lia.
Of course it was worth it. I closed our shared eyes and inhaled a few deep breaths, then reached out with as much force as I could muster in search of the tangle of intangible energy that bound me to my pack mates.
There was Lia, alone once more. And now that I pushed more energy into the effort I could also catch my pack mate’s connection to the sleeping Savannah. Lia had obviously taken the other girl under her wing and connected her cell mate to our clan through sheer force of will.
Good job, Lia, I whispered to myself. And I almost thought I saw the girl smile in reaction although I’d made no effort to push my words down our shared line.
But those weren’t the shifters I was looking for. Instead, I visualized Glen, my most stout-hearted and steadfast companion. The lone male who had abandoned his chosen clan for no reason other than to protect my back. I could almost touch this firm friend with my human fingertips even though I currently wore paws. Could almost taste his scent on the air.
But I couldn’t. Not quite.
Frustrated, I growled into the darkness. Glen must be too far away for our more moderate tether to access. Which meant Ginger was my best bet for mind-to-mind contact.
The female trouble twin and I’d had our disagreements of late, but our connection had previously appeared the strongest of anyone’s in the pack. I brought to mind the young woman’s smile as she danced atop the bar table. The glint of mischief and simple joy in her eyes as she—I now realized—tried to capture the attention of an elusive pack leader rather than—as I’d then assumed—catering to the libidos of a roomful of outpack males. Surely the friendship we’d built combined with Ginger’s dreams of something more would help me reach the young woman even from this distance as long as I concentrated hard enough.
I sank my muzzle down onto my paws, trying to relax into the pack bond. But the puddled water had risen too high and I inhaled a choking noseful of muddy water by mistake. Coughing, I sprang to my feet and jabbed my hip hard against another stone jutting out of the rough walls of the pit.
This is stupid, I berated myself. I should be putting every ounce of energy I’ve got into escape rather than fighting for alpha powers I don’t know how to use.
Hunter, my wolf rebutted.
Sighing, I admitted that my animal half was right. I’d already tried physical escape, so contacting the uber-alpha was my only remaining option.
If bond strength was anything to go by, in fact, I should have called out to my newest pack mate first. Now, remembering the bright thread of light that had connected me to the Tribunal enforcer, I wondered how I could have ever doubted that he really was my mate...and that I was more closely intertwined with Hunter’s animal half than I was with any other member of our clan.
Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Not the mate bond part—no, I was finally willing to admit that I’d made a supreme error in judgment sending Hunter away. He’d obviously been trying to protect me all week long, and his strong set of teeth might have provided the power necessary to sway yesterday’s outcome in the other direction.
Sorry, Hunter, I whispered to no one. I screwed up.
Past mistakes aside, though, there was one other shifter who I could be confident of contacting quickly and definitively. One other shifter who would surely come to our aid...although bringing Wolfie into the mix would mean losing the right to remain alpha of my own pack.
Hunter first, my wolf demanded and I opened our mouth into a lupine grin in response to her haste. Unlike me, my animal half wasn’t terrified of the consequences of losing our alpha powers. She was simply impatient at the delay in contacting our chosen mate.
On it, I agreed.
But before I could do more than send a lone tendril of thought wisping down the pack bond, I heard the deep rumble of a truck’s engine starting up above my head. The hatch enclosing my pit shook in sympathy, explaining why it had been impossible to move the thick wooden boards when I’d strained against the obstruction earlier. No way was I strong enough to push my way out from underneath what sounded like a half-ton pickup truck.
A tarp slapped aside, the door above my head cracked open, and light seeped into my prison cell at last.
Too late. The SSS must have stashed Lia much closer to me than I’d thought, because it hadn’t taken Quill long at all to reach my prison. Which meant I was running out of time. Once our captor joined me in the pit, I wouldn’t be able to muster sufficient focus to call upon anyone at all.
Save Lia now or save the whole pack later. It wasn’t as difficult a choice as I would have thought. Not when losing my own clan only meant I’d no longer be a pack leader, not that my friends would perish upon some crazy outpack male’s altar.
Even as those thoughts rushed through my mind, I was frantically shifting into human form and combing through the mud at my feet with fumbling fingers. I needed to call in the cavalry, but I also needed to ensure I could buy enough time for my friends to travel to our remote location.
There! A torn fingernail caught on woven fabric, and I quickly clasped Crew’s collar around my throat. Then, knowing I was losing the ability to shift again for several hours due to two transformations in quick succession, I fell back down onto lupine paws and hunched my body into the mud. Rolling my head quickly from side to side, I matted the fur there so completely that the muddy collar became completely invisible around my neck.
Now or never, I told myself, closing my lupine eyes to buy a couple more seconds of focus before the cowboy shifter took me in hand. Rather than trying to grope a final time for my elusive connection to Hunter, I instead contacted the only shifter I was 100% certain I could get through to immediately.
Because I’d been trying to take the easy way out before rather than going for the sure bet. The pack bond I’d been gifted with less than a month earlier was immature and tenuous as it strung a line of connection between me and my young pack mates. But the alpha dominance that backed those links up was sure and strong, a gift solidly granted by my previous pack leader Wolfie Young.
Just as Ginger had been able to sever her tie to me and fling our connection back in my face, I could do the same to Wolfie. But in my case, I wouldn’t just be disconnecting one strand of a web...I’d be cutting through the linkage that bound my entire clan together. Basically, I’d be severing my newfound alpha abilities from my body and wrenching my pack mates out of my soul in the process.
Details, details.
Meanwhile, the results would be just as extreme for Wolfie as for me. The mantle’s recoil would slap the bloodling alpha in the face with such strength it would surely get his full attention. Then, hopefully, my former pack leader would be annoyed and intrigued enough to follow that blow back to its source. In the process, he’d be able to pull Lia and Savannah out of their prison...assuming he reached us before Quill stopped chasing my tail and turned his attention to the younger halfies.
Of course, I wouldn’t be able to lead a clan any longer after breaking the bond. And without the sharp edges of my current alpha abilities to protect those I cared about from the depredations of outpack males, I’d be forced to send my friends and companions home for the sake of their own safety.
But wasn’t that the true heart of the matter anyway? If I wasn’t a strong enough leader to protect my clan while backed up by the full strength of the alpha mantle, then I didn’t deserve the extra powers in the first place.
So even as the falling rain clumped together fur and trickled down through underfluff to my bare lupine skin, I ignored the externals and uncurled my incorporeal human body within the confines of the wolf’s skull. There was the thin thread of light connecting me to Wolfie, the line stretched taut by distance and appearing easy to sever. But when I began yanking at the strand with human fingernails, an iron core resisted every effort at dismantlement.
Above my head, distant voices coalesced into words. Then light seeped through clenched lupine eyelids as the hatch above my pit opened yet further. I was running out of time.
Tool use, my wolf whispered. And despite the impending danger and diceyness of the current situation, I had to smile as the animal reminded me what separated humans from wolves.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in fur form at the moment, I bantered back. Good thing incorporeal speech didn’t require a mouth because I’d given up on prying apart Wolfie’s tether with fingernails and had since moved on to ripping with blunt human teeth. Unfortunately, my jaws were no more effective than my hands had been.
I’m in fur form. You’re not, my wolf countered.
Much as it pained me to admit the fact, she was right. I felt like I’d been squashed into miniature and stuffed down the wolf’s gullet, but my human brain was really just as ethereal as the thread of light I was currently trying to gnaw apart.
Which meant that perhaps I really could just imagine a tool and it would appear here in my virtual abode. Perhaps I wasn’t forced to rely on clawless human hands to break Wolfie’s tether after all.
Even though I’d already closed the wolf’s physical eyes, I now clenched shut my virtual human eyes as well. And I begged the heavens for the weapon that fit so perfectly into my human fingers that it felt like it had been made for me—Wolfie’s grandfather’s sword. After all, since my previous pack leader had given me the katana to symbolize my newfound alpha responsibilities, it seemed like poetic justice that I might use the same device to relinquish said powers.
My imaginary hands were abruptly weighted down by the rough, corded hilt of the katana, and I gasped out a virtual breath of surprise. Wolf intuition aside, I hadn’t really thought the gamble would pay off.
But there wasn’t time to be amazed at my ability to materialize weapons as I crouched inside my wolf’s scheming skull. My captors would be invading my more physical personal space at any moment, and the tether connecting me to Wolfie still pulsed just as strongly as ever.
So, there inside the wolf’s skin, I grasped the virtual hilt of Wolfie’s grandfather’s sword tightly with ten trembling fingers. Then I hacked at the strand of light connecting me to another.
The rebound this time around was so strong that I fell flat on my face, nostrils once again filling with water.
But it was done. I’d called for help.
Now I just needed to delay until my chosen rescuer showed up to save all of our skins.