Page 22 of To Challenge a Wolf

“There’s no time for thinking. Rhett, do they have guns? Do you smell any guns?”

“Shut up, Trevor,” Rhett growled. This wolf tried him as no other did, with his fiery reactions and his heart on his sleeve every minute of every day. Trevor was a good wolf, no question. But in moments of crisis, the scent of him stung Rhett’s nose.

“There,” Ezra said. “There it is again. Mal, it’s coming toward us from the tree-line, maintaining height. Y’all still can’t hear it?”

Rhett and Trevor shook their heads. Malachi started to, then went still and said, “I hear it now.”

“It’s directly above us,” Ezra said.

April gave a small whimper. In her hands, her plate began to shake; quickly she set it down. Malachi opened one arm from his side, and his mate got up and went to him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist.

“I’m sorry,” April said to the group.

“You’re not causing this,” Willow said. “The rogues are causing it.”

A low growl began in the alpha’s chest. The volume grew to a rumble like thunder, and Malachi’s eyes glowed like gold in a furnace. In the past few months, the pack had grown used to this new sign of Malachi’s nature. Unlike the others, who simplywerewolves, Malachi bothwasa wolf and somehowcontained…a wolf. Specifically the enormous pale wolf whose form he took every full moon. Rhett couldn’t fully grasp what Malachi experienced. Rhett existed as one mind, one will that showed up under the moon as a shaggy brown wolf and at all other times in the form he had now. When Malachi had tried to explain to him that, before the events of this past June, he had often inwardly clashed with the desires of “his wolf”…well, Rhett was weirded out and said so.

That conflict was over though. Malachi and his wolf, whatever the heck that meant from within Malachi’s brain—they were united now. All the time. And the peace he’d found had enhanced his strength to such a degree…well, Stone Helvering would want to experiment on him, if he ever discovered Malachi’s existence.

Rhett wouldn’t want Malachi’s DNA for all the strength in the world.

At the sound of righteous anger that rumbled from the alpha’s chest, the wolves in proximity bowed their heads. After a few moments, he grew quiet. The wolves relaxed as his authority, which sometimes felt like a physical weight in the air, lifted.

“I’d like to knock it out of the sky,” Malachi said. “But we don’t have the means.”

He glanced at Rhett as he spoke, asking for input if he were missing something. Rhett shook his head. “We don’t.”

“If we can’t remove their ability to watch us, then I want them to continue believing we’re unaware of them. If we disperse now, they might guess why, realize their error, and change tactics to something wedon’tknow about.”

“You want us to act like that thing’s not up there?” Willow shuddered.

“Can they learn anything new by watching us eat and socialize? Rhett’s fairly sure they utilized a drone before, so they already had basic information—a general head count as well as a breakdown of wolves, mates, and pups.”

Aaron snarled, unusual anger spiking in his scent as his chest gave a single heave. “I don’t want that drone looking at Ember.”

Malachi set a hand on his shoulder. “I know, friend.”

“I don’t want those rogues watching my mate, seeing how close she is with our pup.”

“You know they’ll both be protected.”

Yes. Every wolf in the pack felt a level of protectiveness toward Aaron and Ember’s unborn pup. The little one was pack already. Rhett would kill to protect it if he had to, same as he would for anyone else in his pack. Aaron’s fixation wasn’t needed, wasn’t strategically helpful, but Rhett decided not to mention it. Aaron would probably fight him, and he wasn’t in the mood to bruise one of his pack while under threat from real enemies. He turned his mind to useful strategies.

Malachi wasn’t wrong about the element of surprise. Until the rogues crossed the security perimeter and tripped the cameras, as long as they had the drone, hunting them could prove more dangerous than staying put. If they noticed Rhett leave the yard, they’d know his precise location every minute he hunted them,while he’d have no idea which direction to start hunting. How he hated a disadvantage.

Still he couldn’t be just another wolf in the pack. His skin itched for action. “I’ll go into the forest, see if I can track them.”

His alpha gave a low rumble of caution.

“I know,” Rhett said, “and I don’t think they can get past our tech, but we know they can’t get past my nose.”

“You want to go alone,” Malachi said.

“Alone, I can almost guarantee they won’t notice me.”

Malachi nodded. “Go ahead and scout for them, but do not engage. If you smell them, come for help.”

Yes, alpha.The words almost left his mouth for the first time in ten years. Words he’d been required to say to Stone. He didn’t know what had brought them to the surface now—or maybe he did. Vivian apparently brought all kinds of garbage to the surface.

---