Page 86 of Flock Around and Find Out

The woman didn’t move. Worse, the movement caused her head to loll slightly in an unnatural way.

Porter dropped from a crouch to his knees, then shook her harder. “Grey, wake up.” A thread of panic bled into his voice.

The others must have heard that sound, because in moments, Kelvin, Ruben and Blake all rounded us as well.

“She’s burning up,” Porter said as he pressed his hand to her forehead. “You didn’t notice?”

“Weres run hot,” Ruben offered before I had to say a word. “He wouldn’t notice a fever, especially in his current state. Is it the poison?”

The words were difficult to follow with my clouded thoughts, but I tried. It was important, I knew that much even if I didn’t understand most of it.

“She reeks of the venom,” Porter said. “Her breathing is erratic as well. We need to hurry—I don’t know how long she’ll last like this.”

ThatI understood perfectly well. It had me looking forward, in the direction of where the power pulled me. It had called to me since we’d arrived, this promise of peace, of power, of everything I could want in that way. It was home.

It warred with Grey, with the pull I had to her, which was the only thing that had kept me from taking off so far. However, with Grey as she was, there was no reason to hold back anymore. We needed to move fast, to get to whatever called me.

I’d come here to save the Weres, but now that was the last thing on my mind. All that mattered was saving Grey.

Chapter Twenty-One

Porter

I held Grey against my chest, my arms around her, as the scent of poison spread through her small form.

It had started just past the edges of the shallow wound, but now it even hung on her breath with each exhale. It was a sharp scent, acidic, and it was increasing.

I’d chosen to hold her—over the arguments of the others—because it made sense. I was stronger than the Mind, but less useful in a fight than the others. At least, that was how I justified the choice.

The realities were that I disliked harming others, had a distaste for killing, but that didn’t make me incapable of it.

I just didn’t care for the idea of handing her over to anyone else.

It was strange to see her this way. She shook in my arms, soft whimpers escaping her lips with each step.

In the time that I had spent around her—limited as it had been—she’d always seemed so much larger than she was. Perhaps it was the attitude, the zest for life, but something about her made her appear bigger than any of those she was around.

She never wilted, not for a moment, even when things got difficult. Even when faced with execution, she hadn’t so much as flinched.

So having her trembling in my arms forced me to recognize her in a wholly different way. The truth was that I knew little about her, even still. I hadn’t known her prior to when she’d sought my help after she’d been framed for murder. I was still trying to understand her, to understand what she was.

We reached the base of the mountain, our pace having picked up greatly since Grey had fallen unconscious. She’d kept us slower before, but now? Now we knew we had to hurry. Even Galen appeared more focused, as if this had helped him grapple control back from this thing that had infected him.

“We’re close,” Galen said, his voice rough, betraying how he struggled. He turned toward a path that wound up the outside of the steep cliff. The path had crystals on it, as though almost made out of them fully. No dust coated the path, nothing that made it seem as though it had gone unused, but that didn’t mean much.

I hadn’t tasted dust on the breeze, either. Perhaps there wasn’t any here. This place didn’t follow the rules I knew about, so I dared to take nothing for granted.

I headed up the path, moving quickly, with Galen and Ruben at the front and Kelvin and Blake behind us. Even with our speed, I knew they watched for danger carefully.

It only took another ten minutes or so to reach a large cave opening, an amber glow spreading out on the path outside the entrance.

Galen’s eyes were wide and empty, nothing showing of the person he had been, of his human side. It seemed the wolf spirit within him had taken over entirely. There was nothing else left of him inside.

I’d never seen a Were come back from this far, but Galen was unlike most Weres. This was not a case of a Were losing his mind naturally. I could only hope that once we finished this, it would resolve the problem, that it would fix him as well.

I hoped that not only because I wanted to avoid the upcoming war, but because I didn’t want to see the Weres fall. Even if we solved the Were problem, I didn’t trust that an alpha other than Galen would manage to keep them in line, that he would avoid war and violence as best he could.

Those weren’t the only reasons, though. I thought about the pain Grey would face if we failed, or if we succeeded but Galen didn’t pull through. I didn’t want to watch her suffer in that way, the way she would blame herself, the way she’d hold that all on herself. None of that was what I wanted, so wehadto find a way to bring him back.

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