Page 18 of Season of the Wolf

When I shook my head, she didn’t offer any further explanation, which only made me curious.

“Who came?”

Big, brown eyes blinked up at me. “Dallas,” she began, “Beth, Chris, Luke,” she went on, adding the last names hesitantly. “There was also Nick and his brothers.”

My body went rigid, only now aware of the danger she put herself in.

Because of me.

The prevailing feeling within me, since opening my eyes, had been weakness, but now the word took on a whole new meaning. It had nothing to do with the bad blood that existed between Nick and I, but hadeverythingto do with the sudden reminder of all Evangeline needed protecting from.

Starting with him.

“I went to the Elders, asked them to let him go free in exchange for his help,” she went on, adding to the mounting reasons for my pulse to race. It was hard to tell if she’d done all these things because she was too trusting, or … if me being captured had simply made her desperate.

“He almost died trying to help me,” she added. “Trying to help …you.”

There was such conviction in her tone. It was there whenever she spoke of Nick in the past, but it had faded last I remembered. With it’s return, I guessed it meant this ordeal had led to her forgiving him.

Which mightalsomean she’d let her guard down with him, trusting him again when he was just as much a threat today as he always was. She couldn’t afford to forget that. Especially now, with me in no position to protect her.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it, but I … there was no other way, and—”

“Don’t apologize,” I cut in as she stammered.

The last of what I needed to say was particularly hard to admit. Mostly because I didn’t want her thinking I condoned it.

“You did what you had to do.”

I wanted to add to that a reminder, something I told her once when she’d run into the woods when I’d been attacked by mutts—she was never to run toward danger. Definitely not for me. She’d broken so many rules to save me—mine, the Council’s. Although, if they handed Nick over to her, she must have done this all with their blessing. Which left me with the sense that no one but me was qualified to look out for her.

She leaned in, placing a soft kiss to my lips—one that, if I’d been stronger, might have turned into more.

“Be back,” she announced, standing from my bed with a dim smile. “I suppose it’s time to share you with everyone else now.”

*

It wasn’t a shock that, between Elise and Hilda, Hilda was the most frank with me. Elise, emotional and unable to form words for the first several minutes, sat holding my hand on the side Evangeline hadn’t taken.

“Things have mostly been calm here,” Hilda began, adding, “Almosttoocalm, if you ask me.”

Elise’s gaze lowered at the very moment my brow tensed.

“He’s fully aware of the Damascus facility,” Hilda continued, “and others like it, operating without his knowledge, fully aware that a member of the Bahir Dar royal family is alive and likely residing here, and yet … he has yet to do more in Seaton Falls territory than send in a handful of mutts. There’s even been talk of evacuating the town’s human population to minimize casualties.”

I focused on the wall while thinking.

“Has he called a meeting with the High Council?” I asked.

Hilda shook her head and the grave expression she wore said it all. “According to what we’ve been told, they haven’t heard a peep.”

She was right … this wasn’t good.

“He hasn’t been completely quiet, though,” she added. “Every day, the news reports a new animal sighting, a new name to add to the list of missing persons. All men. All athletic in build.”

Sebastian hadn’t changed his stripes. This—creating an army of mutts—when his back was against the wall wasn’t a new tactic. This was the exact move that enabled him to be the victor of the Lunar War.

This was how he slaughtered so many of my comrades, Elise’s sons, her husband.

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