Page 55 of Rivers and Roads

Kor threw his head back, his laugh booming across the clearing. “It don’t take working eyes to see that shit, Orion.”

I elbowed him gently, and he got me right back, almost knocking me off the rock. We tussled a little more, then settled against each other, and I wondered how the hell I was supposed to function not knowing where he was. “What do we do?”

“We fight,” Kor answered, bowing his head. “We don’t lose sight of our end game. We don’t let them gain power over us again.”

“I overhead what you said. About some of the Wolves thinking maybe winning a victory against the humans is a good thing.” I dragged my tongue over my bottom lip and just let myself feel the swirling indecision in my gut. “And I felt it in you.”

He let out a bone-deep sigh and turned his face upward. “If the situation was different—if I could trust a single Wolf in the government right now to do this for the good of our people, I might sit back and let it happen. But they don’t have our best interests in mind. They don’t care who wins, as long as they don’t lose what little power they’ve managed to gain. And I have no doubt the humans have promised them endless resources to live a comfortable life while they throw us all back into cages.”

I extended my claws in frustration, then curled my hands into fists and let them cut into my palms. The pain was distracting, grounding, even as it healed over. “I can’t live like that again.”

“None of us are willing to,” Kor said. “And that’s why we fight. I don’t have a clear picture about what victory will look like. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to see it. But it has to end somewhere.”

I could picture it though. I could picture decades of freedom—of rule by someone who let us simply exist. I wanted it so bad, it tasted like copper in my mouth, and I swallowed against it. “I’m ready to go, I think.”

He turned his face toward me, then reached up and curled his hand around the back of my neck. I took his scent, as much of it as he could give me, knowing it would be the last time my Alpha and I would be in the same room for some time. I leaned in first, and he followed, and our foreheads knocked together.

Kor and I had been circling each other for most of our lives. I loved him more than I loved myself most days, but it was different now. Now, my heart—my very being—was wrapped around Zane, and Kor had been pulled to the other side by his human Omega.

It felt natural, if not slightly terrifying, but knowing there would always be a place for each other—that the bond would only break when one of us died—gave me the strength to embrace what was to come.

“We should get back,” he said after a beat.

The beginning of the end. I nodded against his forehead, then pulled away and waited for him to take my arm. We said nothing as we made our way to the cabin, and as the scents of our beloveds drifted around us the closer we got to the house, the more it became real.

It hurt. But I was ready.

Parting ways was easier than I anticipated, only because of the weight on our shoulders and the knowledge that we didn’t know what was waiting for us beyond the border. The journey to Canada had been an easy one for the small group, but even Kor had to admit he didn’t know if they were being watched.

Still, knowing that Kor and Misha were taking steps to stay safe while shit hit the fan all over the globe helped me breathe a little easier when I climbed into the car beside Zane. He took it upon himself to drive the first leg, and I appreciated it, feeling too wrung out to concentrate properly.

Aisling followed close behind with the Betas, and we had a handful of stops planned, but nothing overnight. It was easier to trade off and get back to Corland, keeping ourselves a moving target.

I settled back as the scenery whipped by in a blur of greens and blues, and I let Zane keep his hand on my knee like he needed to reassure himself in all ways that I was there.

“Did he ask you to go with him?”

Those were the first words either of us had spoken in nearly an hour, and I startled in my seat a bit, turning to look at him. “Who? Kor?”

Zane clenched his jaw and nodded. “I assumed he would. You’re his Second.”

I was, yes, but I was surprised to hear Zane thought Kor would tear me away from him. I glanced up at the sign saying the border crossing was coming up in a few miles, and I let out a short breath. “I would have said no if he had. But he didn’t.”

He made a slightly surprised noise as he began to slow down for the small queue of traffic. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but I knew we were all on high alert considering what was going on in our country, and that we had no way of hiding the fact that we were Wolves.

“I can’t help but wonder what the hell he’s up to.” He blew out a puff of air and shrugged. “Do you think his human will be able to offer any help at all?”

“I think he just might. A few weeks after I let myself get to know Misha,” I said, letting an old memory rise to the surface, “he was telling me about his job. His former job,” I corrected, because I knew there was little room for an ancient historian in war. “He had been working on this…I don’t know, a project, I guess. He was researching the history of Wolves in human society.”

“I remember Kor saying something like that,” Zane said with a slight frown.

I shifted a little in my seat, trying to ignore the anxiety creeping up my spine as we got closer. “He said historians had been debating about the appearance of Wolves, because there were no documented cases until sometime around the first century.”

Zane glanced over at me, a smile playing at his lips. “Oh?”

I smiled back. “He said a lot of scholars claim that the lack of evidence means that it was either a recent genetic mutation—or the really messed up people believed that a group of humans, you know…”

“Fucked a bunch of Wolves?” Zane offered with a smirk.

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