Page 13 of Pack Captive

Ryden’s tall form strode towards us, backlit by flickering campfire light.

His blue runes were glowing brightly, much more brightly than we’d ever seen—another thing I wasn’t going to tell the Caller until she was safely locked in the Dawn Palace.

Ever since we’d come across her, the pack Warriors’ runes had been lit up like we were fresh out of a full moon ritual.

There was definitely something about her, and it would’ve taken a thousand Fenris wolves to keep Ryden from stealing her.

That fight in the valley had been nothing while we were mainlining power straight from Ayla.

Instead of waiting for permission, she gave him a filthy look, then turned and marched straight out into the wastelands, finding a stand of scraggly trees at the bottom of the hill.

I looked after her in frustration.

She was going to be treated like a princess in Lykos. We were doing her afavor.

Ryden couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Let her go,” he said. “The rest of her pack is here. She’s not going anywhere.”

“Not to mention the bracelet,” I murmured, watching her vanish into the stand of trees. Now that it was dark, she blended in with the shadows.

It was the only thing that was going to keep her from sneaking off on us, besides the pups being here, but Ryden shook his head. “Not when we have her people. We don’t even really need the bracelet.”

“True.” She would clearly follow them to hell and back. The bracelet was more to warn us if someone else stole her.

Ryden pushed his hair out of his face, looking at where she’d vanished with concern. “Did she eat?”

I nodded, scanning the darkness of the wasteland. “A little.”

It didn’t look like anything was moving out there, but the Fenris wolves had proven that they were as sly as the shadows they were made of.

Soon, we heard the faint noise of stone on metal coming from the stand of trees she’d chosen.

A wry grin crossed Ryden’s face. “She’s trying to take the bracelet off.”

“She’ll fail,” I said casually, unconcerned that she’d do any damage to it.

If she’d lost all her Warriors, she was clearly untrained. She didn’t have the skill to break through Yasemin’s enchantment.

But Ryden had stiffened next to me, staring hard, his body vibrating as he prepared to shift. I followed his eyes.

Therewasa shadow moving out there.

And it was heading straight for our Caller.

4

Ayla

I slipped behind a tree,making sure that I was perfectly hidden from view, and then slid down to my knees in the gritty dirt, pretending I was peeing like I’d told them I needed to do.

The wastelands were almost completely devoid of any living plants or trees. The one I hid behind was gnarled and dying, its branches blackened by a lightning strike, but it was wide enough to obscure me from the Azurans’ sharp eyes.

I smashed my ankle into a boulder, but I hadn’t expected the bracelet to break. After several more half-hearted kicks, I gave up and decided to go for the rope first.

There were small, chipped pieces of rock down at the base, scattered among its tangled roots, exactly what I was looking for.

I slid down low, my upper back braced against the tree to hold me upright while I searched.

I let my arms dangle down, using my sense of touch alone to shift through the rock shards in the dirt until I found one with a sharp enough edge.

---