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Kira had to be my top priority. I knew this even as the pack bond informed me that Gunner was fighting...and losing.
Meanwhile, shifters streamed past in the opposite direction, rushing to assist their alpha as the pack bond alerted them to Gunner’s fate. But they piled up in the doorway, frozen by the enforcer’s dominance and unable to set a single step inside.
Gunner, for his part, was being shredded and battered. Blood stung his/my eyeball as I experienced the pain right alongside him, and he limped to avoid putting pressure on his front left foot.
Still, Gunner fought with all the abandon of a werewolf protecting his partner even though I’d never overtly chosen him. “Hurry,” he suggested, the word warm in my belly. And I blinked back tears that blocked my vision, using my second-strongest tether as a guide leading me toward family and escape.
“The neighbors are gathering.” Tank appeared out of nowhere with Kira wide-eyed and panting behind him. “We have to get you out of here before they block the exits. Did the enforcer see you shift?”
“No.” That much, at least, I’d done correctly. But—“I can’t find Oyo. If she shows up in fox form, what will happen to Gunner then?”
Tank didn’t speak, but his grim silence was its own sort of answer. Then we were in front of my grandmother’s camper, the massive bulk of it menacing in the dark.
And for the first time since leaving my cottage, I hesitated. I’d parted from these near strangers with no real conclusion earlier, didn’t trust any of them despite my grandmother’s recent oath.
Kira, on the other hand, had no such reservations. “Sobo!” Her voice—and her pounding fists—broke the silence. Lights flared on inside the RV a millisecond before Yuki answered the door.
It’s going to be alright. Despite the pain I felt every time Gunner accepted a blow that was meant for my ribcage, Yuki’s appearance gave me hope. Sure enough, the human took only one look at our faces before ushering us inside the vehicle. Meanwhile, the rest of Sakurako’s entourage flowed out around us, began working in seamless synchrony to crank in the RV’s popped-out sides.
“The best route away is east,” Tank informed me from beyond the still-open doorway. He wasn’t coming with us. None of these werewolves would leave clan central while their alpha was engaged in a deadly battle.
Or maybe I’d misgauged the loyalty of Gunner’s pack mates. Because a dark shape pushed past Gunner’s most loyal underling, materializing into Becky with her bloodling pup cradled in both arms.
Cradled...then extended towards me. “Take him. Please,” she begged, ignoring everyone else as she ran halfway up the stairs and attempted to thrust the sleeping pup into my arms. The female was terrified, hesitated only long enough to glance back over one shoulder before descending into a litany of promises I knew she couldn’t keep.
“I’ll do anything for you if you’ll protect him. And he’ll help you. Werewolf blood is powerful. Curly, tell them you want them to take your blood if they need it. That you won’t fight against a cut.”
The puppy hadn’t been sleeping, I realized. He’d been doing the only thing he could to help—keeping himself silent and still.
Now, as his body slid away from his mother’s and up against my sweatshirt, he didn’t attempt to reverse the flow of his own motion. Instead, he peered up at me with dark eyes full of understanding, then he nodded his lupine head.
But, of course, despite his cuteness, Curly wasn’t a puppy. He was a young werewolf, well aware of what would happen if the Atwood pack was overrun. I wasn’t exactly sure what that awfulness would consist of. And yet, given the slights Becky had faced from supposedly friendly shifters, I was able to take a wild guess.
“You come too,” I demanded, pulling Becky up beside me. But she resisted and I had to release my hold so Curly wouldn’t fall to the ground.
“No, I can’t leave my pack,” the other female murmured. For a millisecond, her hand extended as if to pet—or regain—Curly. But then the gesture aborted. And without a word of farewell to her only offspring, she turned on her heel and sprinted back toward the cottage where Gunner fought.
***
TANK FOLLOWED HIS PACK mate, leaving me alone with two kitsunes, a bloodling pup, and five male humans. To my surprise, Sakurako slipped into the driver’s seat, taking the curves far faster than I would have been able to without risking a spill.
Beside me, Kira cradled Curly, the pup so silent I thought at first that he was soundly sleeping. But, no, Curly was merely feeling what I was feeling—that brittle breaking in his middle as he was spirited away from every other member of the Atwood pack.
Because my own connection to Gunner had begun to falter as the distance increased between us. I could no longer see what the enforcer was doing back in our cottage, only felt fists and teeth cutting into my mate as a dull, distant ache.
Then even that bodily contact faded. And I gasped, unable to breathe around the thought that Gunner might have faded right along with it. I’d made the wrong decision, choosing Kira over my partner....
Yuki was the one who noted my silent anguish, who knelt before me and clutched five of my frozen fingers in ten of his own. “We’ll make it out of here,” he promised...even as Sakurako slammed on the brakes and abruptly shut off both engine and headlights.
Pay attention, I told myself, shutting Gunner’s fate away in a tiny box shrouded in black ribbons. I’d chosen my family over our romantic partnership; it was time to ensure neither Kira nor Sakurako was caught in the undertow now.
To that end, I scooted around Yuki and peered out the windshield into darkness. There were snowflakes in the air despite the fact that it was only early October. Snowflakes that settled on the glass and might soon stick to the soil.
How easy would it be to follow our trail with a blanket of snow on the ground to turn tracks into billboards? Our enemies wouldn’t even need a predator’s nose.
“They’re ahead. A quarter of a mile,” the old woman said tersely. She glanced in my direction, raised one brow. “Your werewolf didn’t know what he was talking about. I hope you have another way out of these woods.”
And, as I peered at the brand new yet abandoned vehicle Gunner and I had arrived in not long ago, I realized that I did. It seemed disloyal to reveal Gunner’s tunnel to strangers. Still, would it even matter that Sakurako knew about the secret passageway if the Atwood pack leader might already be dead?
“Mai?” Kira’s voice was so small I barely heard her, but it slammed me back into the present and out of the abyss of loss. I’d resolved to protect my sister above all others. So I’d lead us to safety...then, later, I could fall apart.
“This way,” I told them, descending from the vehicle so I could lead two kitsunes and five humans away into the forest. Curly I clutched to my chest as much to soothe me as to warm him. Meanwhile, behind us, one of the males sprayed an aerosol of de-scenting compound across the ground to eliminate our trail.