The alphas had a gentlemen’s agreement to leave the land alone.
The answer was so obvious that if I’d been any older during Callum’s little tutorial, I would have berated myself for not thinking of it sooner. With a smile, I took my pen and circled the tiny slices of the map that fell between boundaries, grateful that I’d managed to remember and that Callum had told me in the first place.
In retrospect, though, it seemed like a weird thing to teach a kid who just wanted to learn how to tell a few lies and not get eaten.
Sitting back, I examined my work. It wasn’t an answer. There were five relevant pockets of land that fell in the center of the Rabid’s attacks, each one so small that they weren’t labeled with any city names on the map. Now, I just needed to figure out which one the Rabid was using as his base of operations.
A funny feeling wormed its way through my insides. It wasn’t entirely dissimilar to what I’d felt the night I’d run with the pack, or the starburst of determination in my brain when I’d realized that I needed to touch Chase, even if it meant breaking every rule.
I was a predator, tracking her prey. I was hunting, the same way Weres took down smaller game.
“I don’t need to hunt this Rabid.” I said the words out loud, trying to convince myself that they were true. Even if I knew where he was, killing him wasn’t my job. I wasn’t as well equipped to do it as Callum and the other alphas were, and this was what they were meeting about.
The last time I’d rushed into something, things hadn’t ended well. I thought of Ali in the other room, thought of everything she’d given up for me. If I got myself killed, she’d be the furthest thing from okay, and the twins needed their mother.
I had to wait. I had to let the Senate take care of this. If they knew what I knew, that this Rabid had been hunting on all of their lands, they’d want to take care of him as badly as I did. Any werewolf with even a lick of sense knew that challenging an alpha on his own turf was a good way to get yourself dead.
I looked back at the map, and thought back to the words I’d sworn to Lake. If Callum’s not going to kill the Rabid, I will.
Until and unless that happened, I needed to get rid of this feeling. I needed to step back, even if the part of me that had grown up Pack felt like stepping away from a kill was wrong. You didn’t come between a wolf and his prey, but I forced myself to let go of mine. Folding up the map, I wondered if I should share what I’d managed to uncover so far. I had no way of knowing if any of it was valid. No way of knowing how much of it—or how much more—Callum and the other alphas already knew.
Exhausted, but knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I leaned back in my bed. My breathing slowed, but my eyes didn’t close. I cleared my mind until Chase’s scent filled my nose.
If my eyes hadn’t been open, I would have sworn he was there in the room with me, but he wasn’t. Even with five hundred miles between us, we were connected. It wasn’t all-consuming the way it had been in the minutes after I’d formed the connection, but it was there, and as I stared up at the ceiling, I became aware of the fact that somewhere, Chase was staring up at a starlit sky.
I breathed in.
He breathed in.
As long as we were awake, there was no Rabid to haunt his mind, no memories to plague mine. There was just Chase and me and the uncannily comfortable silence of two people who felt as if they’d known each other for much longer than they actually had.
I saw through his eyes. He saw through mine. And for the first time since we’d come here, I felt like I was home.
Eventually, I did fall asleep, and in an ironic twist of fate, Chase wasn’t in my dreams and I wasn’t in his. In fact, my sleep was dreamless. Peaceful—until the sound of a heavy weight dropping onto my bedroom floor woke me up.
Four-legger. Wolf.
That was all it took for me to jump out of bed. I landed on my feet, and since I’d fallen asleep fully clothed, my knives were still sheathed to my calves. I had a silver blade in each hand before my eyes had even adjusted to the darkness. Moving on instinct, I put my back against the wall, scanning for the threat, and the moment I found it was the exact moment that the wolf in question slumped to the floor and melted into human form.
Lake. Worn-out and naked. I couldn’t do anything for the former problem, but for both of our sakes, I shielded my eyes and rifled around in my suitcase until I found something that would fit her. The sweatpants were short on her and the tank top was too tight, but she didn’t complain.
She didn’t say anything.
“Have a nice run?” I asked her. I would have asked her if she was okay if I hadn’t known for a fact that the answer was no. There was no sense in making her say it.