We fell. Air pushed fur into my eyes and it took me longer than it should have to realize Orion was shifting. Furless and two-legged, he continued plummeting as I joined him in humanity…
…Then he wasn’t beneath me any longer. He’d grabbed onto rock and swung himself into what I now realized was a ledge indenting the side of the vertical cliff face.
Seconds later, I was at the same level and cactus-scented hands were there to help me follow. Not that I needed Orion’s help. Instead, I vibrated with pleasure as a handhold—there was an actual wooden bar attached to the stone!—allowed me to swivel my body’s vertical momentum to the horizontal. Unlike a marathon run in fur form, this I’d trained for.
I wanted to laugh out loud as my gymnastics lessons finally paid off. But I maintained silence, knowing the Bellwethers would be above us at any moment. Knowing also that Ari and Hailey might need our help.
Hailey’s feet struck the ground beside mine just as I turned back toward the emptiness of the crevasse to assist her. Her grin looked only slightly brittle in the reflected moonlight as she whispered, “That was fun.”
It had been. But Ari wasn’t able to transform himself as speedily as the rest of us. The teenager was still half wolf when he reached the handhold. There was no way paws could cling to a wooden dowel…
Orion grabbed the teenager’s left front leg and I grabbed his right front leg and we pulled him in between us, fur transitioning to skin beneath our fingers while Orion’s naked proximity did funny things to my insides. The two of us took a long step backward at the exact same moment, dragging Ari along as he finished shifting. Then we were pressed up against the wall while the sounds of wolves approached above our heads.
Claws clicked across stone. Hoarse panting proved I wasn’t the only one who’d found the marathon exhausting. But they didn’t slow or stop. They must not have taken the time to follow our scent trail.
Which made sense. It was faster maintaining a sight line on your prey, a sight line the Bellwethers must have assumed they simply lost due to us picking up speed on the far side of the rocky outcrop.
Eventually, though, they’d use their noses, would discover they weren’t following our trail after all. And when that happened, we needed to be long gone.
To that end, I felt along the wall, expecting it to end within arm’s reach on my left side. That space had seemed dark and solid a moment earlier. Now, though, my fingers didn’t strike stone the way I’d expected them to. Instead, there was much more open air than I’d thought was present.
Air scented by fur. And when my fingers made contact, it wasn’t with rock but rather with warm skin that I knew didn’t belong to Ari, Hailey, or Orion. Not when all three of them were on my right side rather than my left side.
We weren’t alone on this rock ledge. No, we shared it with a dominant werewolf.
Chapter 10
Before I could react, Orion pushed past me. A slap of hand against skin broke the silence, but it didn’t sound like an assault. Especially not when paired with a murmur from Orion that was almost too quiet to carry the extra distance to my ears.
“I’m in your debt.”
“We’re even,” the male voice countered. “You kept my pack safe for almost a year then gave them back to me.”
Despite both men’s cordial tone, the air stank of alpha musk. And I realized who Orion must be speaking with—the alpha who I’d decided wasn’t likely to have any information about outpack poetry. Prince.
As a newcomer to the desert with the smallest clan anywhere along the outpack boundary, I’d half expected Prince to lose so much standing during his oil-rig imprisonment that he had to flee afterwards. But he and Orion had made an alliance before that point, each promising to protect the other’s pack if necessary. As a result, Prince’s clan had spent the months when they lacked an alpha enfolded into Orion’s hidden canyon homeplace. This secret entrance to Prince’s territory must have been an escape route shown to Orion in case his pack mates needed to be similarly evacuated.
In other words, the pair had each other’s back. Which meant I should have relaxed. Would have if I hadn’t been the one responsible for Prince getting trapped at the oil rig in the first place.
Since that had been my doing, I was prepared when a large male hand emerged from the darkness beside me, groping for my face. I wasn’t the one who blocked the offensive, however. Instead, Orion grabbed Prince’s wrist, his throaty growl descending into silence only because wolf claws once again plinked above our heads.
We all froze. Waited as what sounded like a single wolf sniffed back along the path in the opposite direction. Chief Bellwether must have realized we were no longer in front of them. Had sent back a scout to figure out where we’d gone.
So fast. I’d hoped for more time. Orion must have expected more time also or he wouldn’t have wasted our single spare moment talking to Prince. Now, even our breathing sounded too loud as we waited to be discovered.
On the other hand, without knowing about the wooden handhold, surely it would seem impossible for anyone to survive a fall from where we’d stepped into thin air. The wolf above us would nose around, puzzled. But surely he couldn’t find us…
I was wrong. The scout didn’t nose around. Just passed right by where we’d stepped off the edge.
Maybe we’d gotten unbearably lucky and the passage of so many feet had covered up our scent trail? Regardless, all five of us pressed our backs against the cool stone wall behind us, waiting until the scout passed out of earshot.
And as my thundering heart rate slowed, I was able to pay attention to the way Orion’s hand grasped Prince’s wrist inches from my eyeballs. Both of their arms boasted tattoos, although only Orion’s were magical in nature.
In addition, only Orion’s were intimately familiar to me…or at least, his tattoos should have been familiar since they mirrored my own. But only half of the inky remnants that had been present a few hours earlier now marked Orion’s left forearm. Meanwhile, skin that had recently been inked had gone bare while also appearing sunburned, just the way my skin now felt.
I lifted my own arm and winced when I saw the paucity of tattoos there. We’d lost so much so fast.
“My fault.” Orion’s breath in my ear was prickly as cactus thorns. “I asked the outpack for assistance with the special effects. Didn’t expect the cost to be so great.”
So he hadn’t merely rolled around in the desert sand and picked up static electricity before facing down Chief Bellwether. That was disappointing. Still, I couldn’t let Orion take all the blame when I shared just as much fault.
“I asked the outpack for help too,” I breathed back. “Didn’t give it what it wanted afterwards either.”
“While we’re apologizing,” Hailey murmured from beside my right shoulder, “I failed you. I didn’t have time to think through my question before I spoke it. It came out too vague to provide useful information.”
“And I’m sorry you had to haul me in here.” Ari sounded younger than sixteen, his words muffled as if he was speaking to his chest. “I should have been able to shift faster. Everyone else…”
“Never apologize for being who you are,” Orion interrupted, and I finally understood why he’d brought such an untried youth along on tonight’s mission. Ari was here for his own sake, to grow and learn, while Orion was being an alpha, solving two puzzles with a single foray.
Because what helped a single pack mate grow was good for the entire clan. That seemed especially true now as the exchange between Orion and Ari warmed all four of us.
Prince was the only one who remained chilly. “Let’s assume you all accept each other’s apologies,” he growled, less cordial than he’d been before being manhandled. He shook himself free of Orion’s grip, at which point it became clear that there was a rather innocuous length of cloth in the hand he’d initially extended toward me. “And now I intend to blindfold those of you who aren’t Orion’s pack mates, those of you who have no right to know the path we’ll be following. Unless, of course, we need to stand here and argue the point until your pursuers come back.”
Orion didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. Couldn’t complain when Hailey and I smelled like Vega the same way Ari smelled like Orion. We weren’t members of his clan and Prince had every right to decide what we saw in his territory.
So we let soft cloths cover our eyes, let Prince knot the blindfolds tight. Then I reached out to Orion for guidance, my fingers just barely grazing skin before he slid out from under my grip.
The scent of Prince’s surprise preceded his murmur. “You’d prefer I lead your mate?”
