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Arthur forced himself between us before I could answer. From behind, he could have been Luke, all broad shoulders and intensity of purpose. So I let him take point. Let him ask the question I didn’t want answered.
“Sorry for what?”
“The tokens.” Honor spoke to her feet. “Three of them. Too many. But that’s only halfway to forcing a Hunt. And it’s possible nobody went back to get them....”
Three instead of two? Was Ruth talking about the magnets and sword I’d entrusted her with rather than my human hair and pelt? Was she trying to make it look like she wasn’t the one who’d tipped Victor off about my status as woelfin?
Arthur shook his head while I was still trying to work my way through the maze of Ruth’s thought processes. “Not three. Five.” His fists clenched. “We lost two tokens in the forest. You know what that means.”
Ruth’s ragged breath was either very good playacting or honest distress. “That the final token is in play.”
They turned to face me, two skinless with an equal intensity of focus. I spread my arms, proving my point even as I made it. “I have nothing left to steal, so you can wipe that expression off your faces.”
“You are the final token.” Arthur reached out as if to grab my shoulders. I sidestepped while he spoke to Ruth as if I wasn’t even there. “We can’t risk Honor being captured. I’ll take the pack car and get her out of here....”
I was ready for his second try at restraining me. I slipped my arms between his as he reached forward. Twisted and slammed his attempted grasp aside. “Not happening. Ruth, where’s Luke?”
Bastion was beside me now, lupine and growling. His presence provided leeway for me to pay attention to Ruth’s reply rather than guarding against another well-intentioned attack.
“Gathering up the clan.” Her eyes slid away from mine. “That’s how I lost your tokens. I had them with me when I dropped Grace, Aunt May, and the kids off at her car.”
I wanted to hear the rest, but this already wasn’t ringing true. “Aunt May left with my sister?”
“A pack princess should have a female relative as chaperone.” Ruth’s lowered brow suggested I was an idiot not to have understood that without having to be told.
Okay. Whatever. Skinless rules were currently irrelevant. It was time to get back on track. “Continue.”
Now I sounded like a werewolf. But it worked.
“Luke called me”—Ruth tapped her head in explanation—“when I was partway back. It was an emergency. Lone wolves working together, trying to herd the pack into a dead end. I went lupine to catch up.”
She wiped one hand across her forehead and murmured to herself. “That’s no excuse.”
Ruth appeared honestly distressed by what, in my opinion, was the least of her failures. So maybe my guesswork was off track?
Still, it was awfully handy for her to be hanging around Wolf Camp while the rest of the pack fled from our enemies. And why would lone wolves—solitary by definition—band together? Had they been bribed to do so by Carl? As a distraction while Ruth took possession of the final token?
“You didn’t answer my question. About Luke. Current location?”
My tone must have been tougher than I’d intended because Arthur glanced at me quizzically. Bastion growled. Ruth’s nostrils flared, but her voice was even when she replied.
“I don’t know where Luke is exactly. The lone wolves came at us around midday. They must have smelled our clan’s weakness. Luke took evasive maneuvers. He sent me here to meet you and help deal with Carl.”
“Oh did he?” I wasn’t buying it, but I also couldn’t see why Ruth would make up such a convoluted story. For Arthur’s benefit, maybe? If so, it appeared to be working. The older man was glancing back and forth between us as if unsure who to believe.
So I was down to Bastion as my only dependable ally. My feet throbbed. Running back toward the main road would hurt, but I’d do it. The question was—where would I go from there?
Rather than answering or attacking as I’d expected her to, Ruth tilted up her chin and sniffed the air between us. “You think I’m lying.” She narrowed her eyes, raised her voice. “Justice! Get out here.”
It was a strange bluff. Stranger still when my cousin answered from the direction of the cabins. “Coming.”
Justice was in on her plot? I shook my head. That wasn’t possible.
“Bring my phone,” Ruth called back. Then, quieter, “Luke’s too far away for pack bonds, but you can call him yourself. Last I heard, he and the grannies were hot-wiring a pickup truck.”
Justice materialized out of the darkness, phone in his hand. But he didn’t give it to Ruth despite her waggling fingers.
Instead, his face was pained as he met my eyes. “Grace just sent a video-chat request. I accepted. She wants to talk about the scheidung now.”
***
THE WORD scheidung stole my breath for a moment. Or maybe I was just surprised by Justice’s use of the language of our shared childhood.
Because, while living next door to a passive-aggressive Grace in New York City, family had made more sense than the term I’d grown up with—wolfsrudel. Lately, among skinless, I’d fallen into the pattern of thinking of pack mates instead.
Our ability to consider ourselves wolfsrudel, pack mates, or family were all in doubt if my twin wanted to talk about the trial divorce she’d instigated last summer. No wonder I could barely cling to the cell phone Justice handed over.
I swallowed, glancing around at my audience. All except Justice had super-sensitive lupine hearing. I didn’t think I could handle holding this conversation with so many people listening in.
The cabins were too far for my sore feet to carry me, but the pack’s dependable station wagon waited no more than ten feet from us. I addressed my question to Ruth: “Do you think I could take this in your car?”
“Be my guest.” Keys spun through the air toward me. I fumbled the phone in order to catch the key ring. Ended up staring back at Grace’s accusing eyes when our cousin’s phone landed cockeyed on the ground.
Based on the racks of fabric on the shelves behind her, my sister had made it back to her apartment. Too bad home hadn’t improved her temperament any.
“This is time sensitive.” Her eyes widened meaningfully.
“Just a second,” I promised. Was it just my imagination, or was my twin’s face even more pinched than Justice’s had been? This wasn’t going to be an easy, fun conversation.
Every pebble in the area pushed into my lacerated feet as I picked my way to the station wagon. It was a relief to slide into the driver’s seat and turn the keys far enough in the ignition so the radio sprang to life.
Once again, the song being broadcast was melancholy, full of lyrics about lost love and missed chances. My hand rose to flick the switch and remove the distraction then hesitated as I remembered the need for privacy. Instead, I snapped Justice’s phone into the holder on the dashboard and accepted the inevitable.
“Okay, Grace, I’m listening.”
The answer could have come from my sister, but its timbre was deeper, the tone wickeder. “Took you long enough.”
***
THAT WASN’T GRACE. I sat up straighter. Leaned forward as the camera panned around wildly before coming to rest on Luke’s great aunt.
The same scars and wrinkles I remembered lined her face. But her eyes were wild with exhilaration. Oh, and did I mention the knife pressed up against her great grand niece’s neck?
Aunt May waited a moment, making sure I took it all in. The way Carly’s hand hovered an inch from the knife blade. The tremble of the girl’s lip as she tried and failed to maintain stoicism in the face of a mortal threat from her own ancestor.
She. I blinked. Victor hadn’t been talking about Ruth after all.
“I see we understand each other.” The old woman smiled as puzzle pieces fitted themselves together in my memory. “So I can skip the explanations, hm? Won’t have to answer frantic questions about why and who and how?”
I wanted to assure her that, yes, I got it. Wanted to move on to the negotiations—there were bound to be negotiations or Aunt May wouldn’t have ordered Grace to place the call.
But the camera shook slightly, as if my sister was having trouble holding her own emotions in check. Or was preparing an offensive?
When facing down anyone else, assistance would have been appreciated. But Aunt May, I suspected, wouldn’t hesitate to hack off one of Carly’s fingers to prove her seriousness. Not if what I was starting to guess about the past was true.
Unfortunately, Grace didn’t have the benefit of days with the Acosta pack to inform her actions. So I drew Aunt May out rather than nodding understanding. “That was you who led Easton over the cliff.”
Aunt May’s smile grew wider, showcasing wolf-sharp eye teeth. “And set the bear trap. And ripped out my nephew’s belly. Luke’s father was too strong for me, sadly, or I would have finished the job then. But you wanted to know about Easton?” She shrugged. “The boy didn’t listen when I told him the time wasn’t right for tokens. He’d become a liability.”
I could see how she might think so...if she lived in a twisted world where gaining power was everything. “How’d you do it?”
She shrugged. “A simple hip bump to knock you off the side of the arch, then a frantic request down our pack bond for my grandson to run faster. You didn’t think you and Luke were the only ones who could communicate that way, did you? A grandmother has a special connection with her grandchildren.”
A special connection...and no qualms about killing them if they outlived their usefulness. “I get it,” I told her now that the steadiness of the image suggested Grace also got it. “What do you want in exchange for Carly?”
“An even trade.” Aunt May shrugged. “Come to New York and we’ll swap. You for her.”
Belatedly, my hand snuck over to the window controller. Ruth should hear this.
“Eh, eh, eh. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The knife at Carly’s throat burrowed in deeper although it didn’t draw blood...not quite. “You didn’t realize I had eyes on you? Victor’s man wasn’t fast enough to steal the final token before you gathered backup, unfortunately. But that’s just as well. A game is more pleasant when the loser spends time in check before I take out the king.”
Take out the king...meaning Aunt May intended to use me to depose Luke. This came back to the Alpha’s Hunt. All-out warfare between pack mates that would end with dead bodies and a new alpha in charge.
And I couldn’t prevent it. Because I wasn’t Ruth. I refused to sacrifice Carly. Instead, I dropped my hand back to my lap. “When? Where?”
While I spoke, I racked my brain to come up with an alternative, no easy task with Aunt May cackling in the background. The trouble was, she had me boxed in quite admirably. With Carly under the knife and eyes on me here at Wolf Camp, I couldn’t risk alerting the possible helpers only a few feet away from me. Which left me with no allies at all.
No, that was wrong. My bond to Luke could fix this. I reached out again, pushing as hard as I could in search of the connection between us. I found...
...A big, fat nothing. Initial, tenuous contact popped like a soap bubble the instant our minds touched.
“I expect you here by tomorrow afternoon,” Aunt May continued. There were tears in Carly’s eyes now, but I ignored the girl’s pain while focusing on her great great aunt. “Shall we say two-ish? I need my beauty sleep, and you and Victor need time to get to New York.”
I flinched at the mention of her surviving grandson. If Victor was making the same journey, that meant I’d been right about....
“Yes, dear. This is the Alpha’s Hunt. Victor will claim you, he’ll mate you, the pack will come together under his leadership with me pulling the strings. Now, turn the key in the ignition. And don’t contact anyone else until you get here. If you do, sweet little Carly will pay the price.”