Page 62 of Wolf Marked

“What do we do now?” Kalle shouted over the roaring storm. “The storm is getting worse, and we’ve lost both trails.”

“We should go back.” Bec hitched up his hood and squinted at Astrid through the snowfall. “It’s too dangerous out here now.”

“We have to find Erec,” Astrid yelled back. She gripped her spear tighter, and the simple action had her frozen knuckles throbbing. Nothing was going to stop her from finding Erec and making sure he was all right. Not the storm or the cold or a lost trail. Nothing. “I’ll go on. You two can go back to camp.”

Kalle shook his head, blond curls swinging in front of his eyes. “No way. Filip will have our hides.”

“And Boden,” Bec added in.

Astrid huffed, her warm breath briefly hovering like a puff of smoke. “Then it looks like you’re coming with me, because I’m not leaving Erec behind.”

“We’re just scouting Jerrick’s camp. We have strict orders not to attempt a rescue,” Bec said sternly, and Astrid scolded herself for the slip. As her father’s good friend for many years, Bec had always been the one to follow orders, and she knew that if she was going to try and get Erec out of Jerrick’s clutches, she was going to have to be sneaky about it. But now that Bec knew her intentions, it was going to be even more difficult to get around him.

She nodded in an attempt to seem accepting. “Right. Well, I’m going to scout then.”

When she turned, a gust of wind blew past her, carrying the sharp smell of blood with it. Erec’s words jumped from her memory about blood clinging to the earth, leaving a more lasting trail, even after rain or snow. Pulse galloping, she glanced over her shoulder to see Bec’s and Kalle’s nostrils flaring, picking up the scent, too.

But whose blood was it? She hadn’t seen any wounds on Erec when Jerrick’s minions had struck him unconscious and carried him away. Maybe the blood was newer. Maybe they had hurt him along the way. Her stomach plummeted, and the more the air rushed past them, the stronger the scent became. It was leading farther south.

Where Jerrick’s camp was.

Astrid was off in the next second, running as fast as the knee-high snow would allow. Without having to utter another word, Kalle and Bec were at her heels. The storm pushed against them, slowing their steps and slapping across any exposed skin, but they clutched their coats tighter at their necks and threw themselves against the wind. They followed the blood trail for another half hour. Until the sharp clatter of metal on metal rang out, causing the three of them to freeze.

Kalle’s large hands grabbed Astrid’s coat, and he tugged her behind a large oak tree with him. Bec squeezed in beside them and wiped his wet face. The trunk was wide enough to stop the wind from smacking into them, so Astrid took the opportunity to gulp in mouthfuls of much needed air.

“Did you see anything?” she gasped between frozen breaths.

Bec nodded and in the lowest whisper said, “We’re close. Too close.”

Meaning they were lucky the storm was raging like it was and the wind was in their favor, otherwise they would have been caught in a heartbeat.

“Did you see Erec?” She couldn’t help the excited little leap of her heart at the thought of him being near. She wanted to peer around the tree and look for herself, but both men had pinned her in between their bulky figures.

“No. It’s hard to see through the snow.” Bec leaned sideways slightly, just enough to peek around the wood. “There are no fires. Only one tent that I can see.”

“Where do they sleep?” Kalle added in. “How do they not freeze to death?”

Even Astrid thought that was extremely strange. In the winter, temperatures dropped to a deadly number. Not many could survive such conditions without ways to get warm, like fires or shelters. Not when in human skin, at least.

But wolves could. Maybe Jerrick’s men stayed in their animal forms most of the time.

“How many are there?” Astrid asked.

“Only two men that I can see. They’re sparring. Practicing,” Bec replied.

That’s where the sounds of metal clanking must have come from. “And wolves?”

He hesitated for a long moment. Then, his gaze whipped back to them, and he gripped his axe even tighter. “They’re in thesnow.”

Kalle’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

Astrid could feel Bec’s panic rising as his eyes locked on a mound of white fluff a few paces away from the tree and them. Her own nerves twitched in response.

He pointed to it with his axe’s handle. “In. The. Snow.” He mouthed the words instead of saying them. “There.”

She stared at it, not knowing what to expect, but then, the snowy knoll in front of them rose slowly and fell. Like it was breathing.

Not good.

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