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“Step back, go to your tents, and stay there!”
The words were clearly an alpha commandment given the speed with which my attackers disengaged from the fight. On the other hand, the alpha tossing around orders was just as clearly Gunner rather than Ransom based on the way my debt tugged at me to follow in the receding werewolves’ footsteps.
“I don’t have a tent to go to,” I muttered under my breath, getting ahold of my body with an effort. And when I was finally able to look around me, I noted that most of the werewolves seemed to be engaged in a similar battle of willpower. Only, in their case, the issue appeared to be whether to accede to the younger brother’s wishes...or to continue protecting their wounded pack leader by killing the obvious kitsune in their midst.
Lucinda alone had no such ambivalence about which action to engage in. She picked herself off the ground where Mama had flung her, marched up to Gunner, and slapped him hard across the face. “You bastard!” the female hissed. “You won me and now you’re angling for fox booty in addition?” Then she stalked out of the amphitheater with a sway to her walk intended to show Gunner precisely what opportunity he’d tossed aside.
And, to be honest, I couldn’t really blame the other female for her anger. After all, from what I understood about the battle I’d walked in during, Gunner had as good as taken one girl to the dance then prepared to leave with another. As the side piece in question, I wasn’t particularly thrilled.
Ransom was quick to agree with my assessment. “Brother, you have a lot to learn about women,” the pack leader noted, blotting at his bloody face with the shirt he’d discarded a few moments before. And he looked so prosaic in that moment that I suddenly doubted the instinct that had made me conclude he was the Master. Could Mama really have broken through her minder’s magical bonds so thoroughly as to attack him if that had been the case?
“On the other hand”—Ransom’s voice broke through my thoughts as his eyes scanned the ambivalent shifters—“my brother speaks for me on matters that don’t pertain to women. This fight is over. Now go.”
I turned to follow the other shifters, my mind already racing with ideas about how to track down my sister. Because finding her had to be my top priority, even above ferreting the Master’s identity out. The guys would have taken her somewhere safe but would have assumed I’d know how to find them. So...
“Not you.” Ransom’s words, while not impacting my footsteps the way Gunner’s had, froze me in place nonetheless. Because what the pack leader might lack in overt dominance, he clearly made up for in wiles....
Only, Ransom wasn’t speaking to me. His gaze was instead intent upon his brother, and now Elle was tugging at my arm.
“Mai,” she murmured, pulling me along behind her until we stopped in front of a nicely dressed male that I’d met once previously. Was he Lincoln, Leonard? Whatever his name, this was the same shifter who’d slammed the door in my face the first time I’d visited the Atwood mansion, the male who had filled Ransom’s goblet while Gunner was fighting...and, apparently, the twin Elle had spoken of so fondly of during our riverside lessons.
Because—“Go with my brother,” my mentor murmured before sliding away from me and back toward the sibling standoff. The electricity in the air was raising the hairs on my arms, but she slid between the duo as if there was no danger, removing the shirt from Ransom’s fist and bringing the fabric up to dab gingerly at her pack leader’s face. “You’re going to have a shiner...” she berated him.
Then I was being drawn up the stairs behind her brother, away from everyone I knew within this strangely combative pack.
***
“I JUST WANT TO FIND my sister,” I offered once we were out of the amphitheater and away from the danger Ransom’s presence represented. Unfortunately, the male beside me seemed disinclined to offer any direction. Instead, he thrust out his hand in a distinctly unwerewolf-like gesture of greeting.
“I’m Liam, in case you don’t remember,” he said.
“Mai,” I answered, accepting a grip that was firm but not overpowering. Despite the unpleasantness of our initial introduction, Liam seemed less like the stereotypical werewolf and more like his easy-going sister. A definite relief given that he was the sole familiar face in the swirl of werewolfishness that surrounded us both.
“And now I know where Elle’s been running off to,” Liam continued, his words mirroring my pondering. “I’d thought all the secrecy meant she was stepping out on her boyfriend....”
“Her husband, you mean.” I frowned. “Or mate, rather. I thought werewolves chose a partner for life.”
“You’ve been reading too many novels.” Something dark and wounded flickered across Liam’s face as he answered, then he turned on his heel and led me downhill and deeper into the forest without another word.
So—mates, not a good topic. I grimaced, deciding that holding my tongue was a good decision when faced with a prickly shifter whose sore spots were impossible for a stranger to suss out.
After that, we walked for several minutes in silence, signs of werewolves dissipating until we might as well have been wandering through an uninhabited wilderness rather than skirting around the edges of the shifter equivalent of a professional networking convention. Still, there was no sign of Kira. So, eventually, I caved and asked again.
“My sister...” I started, having to speak up this time to be heard over the sound of a nearby waterfall. Rather than answering, though, Liam held up one hand in a request for patience then pulled me off the deer trail we’d been following and straight through a thicket of thorns.
In a minute, I decided, I’d turn back and find someone more likely to lead me to my sister. In a minute....
Due to the dim evening lighting or my own rushed thinking, I didn’t realize we were on a clifftop until Liam paused...then dropped right over the edge. Only when I picked my way to the cliff edge after him did I see that Liam was holding onto the side of the rock face with one hand while leveraging himself down a series of ungainly but apparently human-created steps that led to a flat ledge of rock at the base of a waterfall.
How handy, I noted. To have a hideaway close but at the same time unrelated to the gathering....
The existence of this secluded spot, however, became irrelevant as soon as my eyes drifted down to the cluster of shifters gathered at the shadowed cliff base. Allen, Tank, and Crow were all huddled so close together that I could barely distinguish one from the other. Then a shifter leaned backwards and I clearly saw the comatose form of my sister lying at their feet.