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I slept in Luke’s arms until long past dawn. Birds chattered above us, but the werewolf encampment remained silent. No wonder. I’d been the first to leave the festivities. Everyone else had many extra hours of dancing to sleep off.
For our part, Luke and I had ended up sandwiched between a duffel bag I remembered from Wolf Camp and the damp fabric of the tent wall. Was it still a pup tent if an alpha werewolf denned inside?
I smiled, soaking up the ambience. Warmth emanated from where Luke curved into the big spoon behind me. My own heat reflected back from his bag of clothes pressed against my front.
And all around—cinnamon. Sweet cinnamon. Stale cinnamon. The barest hint of shoe-leather-tinged cinnamon. It’s a good thing I was a fan of the spice.
I was a fan...but my throat now resembled sandpaper. I could barely swallow. So, carefully, I wriggled out of the sleeping bag and draped it over my tent-mate. Then I took my sword and my bare feet out through the door flap.
Bleary-eyed, the clearing struck me as the aftermath of a battle. Bodies—lupine, human—were sprawled across the turf everywhere. They were breathing, though. Not dead. Just sleeping. I guess there wasn’t room for everyone inside the tents.
And...a plastic jug of water sat on the ground no more than a foot from me. For a long moment, I lost myself in quelling a thirst that had been building for hours. Then I lowered the jug and caught sight of one wakeful wolf watching from the edge of the trees.
He was that gray so common among wolves, a mottling of every shade from white to black that made an animal blend easily into a winter forest. From this distance, the four-legger could have been anyone...if there hadn’t been a perfect blaze of white running down the center of his snout.
“Bastion?” Water splattered across my toes. I’d dropped the jug. I stepped right over it.
That couldn’t be my cousin. Not here, in the hidden camp of skinless.
Plus, he didn’t greet me. Instead, the gray wolf turned on his heel and trotted back under the shadows of the canopy. Within a second, he was out of sight.
***
I NEEDED TO BE LUPINE and I needed my sword kept safe from token hunters. Too bad the urges were mutually exclusive.
The solution, of course, lay behind me. Inside the pup tent.
I tried undoing the zipper as quietly as I’d eased it open the first time. But my mind was on the gray wolf and my fingers fumbled.
“Honor?” Luke’s voice was a half-asleep grumble. He didn’t open his eyes, though, and he didn’t sit up to greet me.
Still, if he was nominally awake, there was no need to be quiet. I ripped off clothes, dropping my sword on top of them. “I’ll be back,” I promised. “Do you mind watching my sword?”
I expected argument, but the run to and from Wolf Camp must have taken more out of him than expected. All I got was a sleepy nod as I swirled the pelt around my shoulders then sprinted for the trees.
The watcher was Bastion. I smelled his scent trail as fresh as if he was right in front of me. But my cousin was fast. Even running flat out, I couldn’t catch sight of his fleeing form.
Until, that is, I ran smack dab into him. No, not into him. Into his brother.
“Honor.” Justice seemed cold and uncaring at times. Not right now. He lifted me up, despite the fact I was furry and muddy. Then he hugged me so tight to his chest that I’m pretty sure I totally ruined his bespoke suit.
“Don’t ever leave us dangling like that again.” A punch on the shoulder, this time from Bastion.
The latter had shed his lupine skin, and I struggled to follow suit. But my pelt was recalcitrant. By the time I shifted, there were three family members visible rather than two.
“Honor. Your wardrobe needs work.”
Of course it did. I was naked, save for my pelt. Still, I grabbed my twin and hugged her even tighter than Justice had squeezed me. “How did you find us?” I murmured into her hair.
“It wasn’t hard.” This was Justice doing what he did best—relaying factual information. “Grace noticed the song on the radio when we spoke yesterday. It’s relatively uncommon. Only ten stations had it on their playlist during that hour.”
My lips quirked. Trust Justice to make a gargantuan task sound easy. “And that was enough to track me down?”
Grace shrugged, but she didn’t push me away. Instead, she let me keep on hugging her as Justice filled in the blanks.
“We consulted maps also. Looked at radio broadcast coverage areas. Used aerial photos to hunt down places wild enough for a pack of skinless to hide. The process simplified once we decided Luke would want to stay close to his familiar territory.”
I wanted to hold my twin close forever, but she was starting to tense up. Rather than pushing my luck, I squeezed her once more then let her go.
“Thank you.” I grinned at each of them in turn. Two cousins plus a twin added up to a family. It was the kind of math I could have stared at forever.
If there weren’t skinless in the wings, that was. Swallowing back bubbly happiness, I tried to make myself as business-like as Justice had been. “I have everything under control. But you can’t believe how good it is to see you. It means a lot that you’d come looking for me.”
Justice’s brows lowered as if he didn’t quite get what I was thanking him for. “It’s what family does.”
Bastion nodded. “Of course we’d....”
His voice trailed off...then he was lupine. Standing in front of me snarling as another wolf sprinted toward us down the trail.
***
“THAT’S JUST L—” WAIT. No. That wasn’t Luke. Instead, this beast’s fur was as pale as his hair was in human form. His snarl was all skinless wolf.
I stepped in front of my family, ignoring my nakedness. This wasn’t Luke, but it was manageable. “Victor, cool it.”
Luke’s cousin shifted upward, fury evident in every motion. “I smell a gun.”
“And you’ll feel a bullet between your eyeballs if you’re not careful.” Justice was beside me before I could stop him. The same pistol he’d drawn in Central Park was leveled upon Aunt May’s growly grandson.
Back in the Big Apple, a gun was illegal. Here, a gun was an affront to the alpha. The air turned electric as Victor’s wolf prepared to break back out of his human skin.
“Victor.” I emulated Ruth and turned my voice whip-like. Wolf-like. My pelt wriggled in my arms.
And that was what Victor looked at. “They gave it to you already?” His face pinched in confusion. “We haven’t had time to tan it. You accepted?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “I can tan it myself.”
And, just like that, Justice’s gun was forgotten. Victor grinned, all wolf-sharp teeth and leering satisfaction. “My brother’s skin will make a perfect token to initiate the Hunt.”
At my feet, Bastion growled, responding to Victor’s manner even though he didn’t understand what was happening. I understood though. I’d been played. Had admitted ownership of a second item.
Sword plus pelt equaled two tokens to be stolen. A third of the way to forcing an Alpha’s Hunt. Before Luke’s ankle was ready to let him run on it. With Carl in attendance.
The math this time didn’t play so nice.
But the damage was done. And this would, at least, give me a reason to wear my pelt openly...
...As long as Victor wasn’t present when whoever had been intending to dupe me presented the dead werewolf’s skin this morning.
So it was time to ditch Victor. Get back to camp. Make a big show of being pleased at the gift of Easton’s pelt.
“Did you guys come in a car?” I asked my family.
Justice raised his eyebrows at the abrupt change of subject, but twin-sense was working between me and my sister. “Of course,” Grace answered. “How do you think we got here?”
“We need it off the road.” I told her, thankful that she’d understood what I needed. “Victor will show you where to park. Justice, you can leave your gun locked inside. No firepower in Luke’s territory.”
Victor took a step forward until he loomed over me. “I think you and I have other business to attend to.”
“Oh? You plan to rip your brother’s pelt out of my hands? Too afraid to go for my sword in an honest challenge?”
Afraid acted on Victor just the way I’d thought it would. “I’m not afraid of you, sword maiden.”
“Then act like it.”
For one long moment, Victor held my gaze and I held my breath. Then naked shoulders rose and fell in a loose-muscled shrug.
“Today, tonight. Makes no difference. Perhaps I’ll take your sword and Easton’s skin too when you falter. I’ll cut off your hair to share with the others. I’m not the only one in the pack who thinks Luke doesn’t have what it takes to lead.”
This time, I let Victor’s grandiosity stand. After all, he was doing what I wanted.
Leaving my family to fend for themselves, I turned back in the direction I’d come from. It was time to deal with Easton’s pelt at camp.