Page 112 of Wolf's Reckoning
And I was still burning.
“Go to bed, Rowen,” Wolfe said quietly. “Try not to climb out the damn window,” he added as he headed to the kitchen.
“What will you do?” I asked, knowing he was giving me time. Time I desperately needed.
“Don’t worry about me,” he told me, opening the fridge. “Just get through this. No doubt there will be something else to dodge when it’s past.”
He sounded tired. No, he soundedexhausted, and it was because of that, that I kept my head down and slipped into the bedroom, closing the door firmly behind me.
I lay on the bed, still damp from us from earlier in the night, and closed my eyes. I had a lot to think about, and I didn’t know where to start.
Chapter 27
Wolfe
I didn’t like feeling watched.
I liked it even less when I was right about it.
The druid’s words still clung to me like smoke. I’d left Rowen in that room with her jaw set and her eyes wild, and every part of me had screamed to turn back. To drag her out of the Hollow and keep her somewhere safe. Somewheremine.
But that wasn’t how this worked. Not with her. Not with this pack. Not with the rumors circling like vultures on the wind.
It had been a long night, and though she’d done everything I asked, eventually, I could still taste her need on my tongue. I’d dealt with it the only way I knew how: I’d gotten up off the too-small couch, closed the door behind me, shifted to my wolf form, and run as far away from her scent as I could.
In the small hours of the morning, Killian had tracked me, and together we had done a wide sweep of the territory.Something had pulled at me, tugging me back to the Hollow, and it wasn’t my wife’s heat.
We’d come back to the pack, and the pack hall already had elders gathering in it. I’d sent Killian and Brand in to investigate while I followed the sense of “offness.”
I stood on the ridge just beyond the Hollow’s main perimeter, staring down at the pine-split valley that had been quiet only a day ago. Now, the birds were silent. The air trembled with a warning only wolves knew how to hear.
The wind was wrong. It came from the north, thick with smoke, ash, and something fouler—panic.
“They hit Deep Hollows,” Killian said as he came up behind me, his voice tight. “Middle of the night. A lot of casualties. Survivors are saying they were a pack of rogues,” he sighed. “But they were organized, Wolfe. It’s too clean for a random strike.”
I didn’t speak. He knew what I was thinking.
“Deep Hollows?” I turned and looked at him. “One of the males who came for her hand was from there, right?” He nodded. “We need more information,” I said eventually. “Is someone feeding them our movements?”
Killian shrugged. “I don’t know, but your neweldersare getting jumpy. They’re questioning the mating pact. Wondering if this union made Blueridge Hollow more of a target.”
A low growl scraped up my throat. “The union didn’t make us a target. Leaving Stonefang without an alpha present might have made myotherpack vulnerable. Malric’s dying madethispack a target.”
“Your elders don’t see it that way.”
Of course they didn’t. The moment they didn’t controlsomething, they turned on it. Like a rabid dog too far gone to remember who fed it.
I turned my eyes back to the ridge. “Send a scout team, I’ll send Brand with them. They need to be quiet. I want to know what’s left of Deep Hollows before anyone else does.”
Killian hesitated. “Brand’s on Rowen.”
My jaw flexed. “Switch it out to Cody. He’s…likeable.”
Killian snorted. “Cody isnotlikable.” Killian looked around us. “Cody might actually just kill her and ask you for forgiveness afterwards. Maybe.”
Rowen had barely looked at me since the heat snapped between us and nearly brought us to our knees. She’d been turning inside out from it, and still somehow fought it to fightme. She was still running from everything it meant. Still resisting what we both knew now couldn’t be denied.
She was mine, and every instinct in me howled to protect her.
