Page 28 of Tangled Fates

“Sounds like you’re already done with her.”

I shrugged. “She’s more than proven that she’s done with us, so as far as I’m concerned, she’ll have to prove otherwise before she gets anything else out of me.”

“All right,” Dean said as the strength in his voice came back. “We’ve still got wounded that our healers are tending to, and I’ve got some poundage I’ve been wanting to get rid of. I’ll head toward the back of the neighborhood and start there. You start at the front, and we’ll work our way into the middle.”

I cracked my neck. “Sounds good enough with me.”

“And Levi?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t help with the healing if you don’t have the weight to spare. There are plenty of other things to be done, like repair work to some of the family chalets.”

I started for the first house on the left. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not some overly emotional?—”

“Levi,” he warned.

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Good.”

As I watched Dean jog off down the road, I simply shook my head. We were all twisted up in knots over Raven’s arrival, and I knew damn good and well that was why we had gotten hit so hard. Had we all been focused, we wouldn’t have had nearly the casualties we’d suffered. And the idea that she had pulled our focus away from our families long enough for the bears to wreak havoc made me sick in my stomach.

Never again would I allow any woman, much less Raven, to have that kind of attention.

Because out here in Bend? With this pack and the wars that raged between us and the bears? That kind of distraction got people killed.

“She doesn’t deserve this pack,” I murmured to myself.

“Levi!”

I whipped around at the sound of my name. “Maribel. What’s going on? What is it?”

She panted for air as she rushed up to me. “Mom. She’s in labor. She’s not supposed to be in labor, but she’s?—”

I held my hand out for the little pup’s. “Show me.”

As Maribel dragged me across the street, I heard the low grumbling of a wolf ready to tear someone’s head off. The smell of blood tainted the air as I turned the corner into the shadow that one of the chalets cast from the back porch. Three healers surrounded Maribel’s mother, with one propping her up from behind. She rocked side to side, growling and grumbling with her legs spread open.

And the healer working between them had already broken a sweat.

“What do you need?” I asked as I rushed up to Maribel’s mother.

The healer propping her up pointed to her face. “She needs water. I’ve got no clue where in the hell?—”

“I’ve got water! I’m coming!”

I craned my neck over my shoulder and saw yet another healer stumbling along with a pale full of crystal-clear liquid. He dropped to his knees beside me and shoved me out of the way, causing me to tumble back. I had to bite back a growl as Maribel’s mother unhinged her jaw, letting out the most bombastic howl I’d ever heard in my entire life.

And as she slowly shifted, I stood to my feet.

“What can I do?” I asked.

“Be on the lookout,” the man said as he dabbed water all along her chapped lips. “There’s a hell of a lot of blood, and you know who that attracts.”

I whipped around toward the woods and stuck my nose in the air. I sniffed deeply, making sure no bear shifters were close enough to our encampment. Every single hair on the nape of my neck stood on end as I drew in a deep lungful of air.

And as I howled out a command over the heads of the entire pack, men and women alike poured out of their homes to form a blockade around our entire area.

---