I’d shaken my head, grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward the ventilation duct. At fifteen, we weren’t quite fully grown, which meant our shoulders fit through the narrow opening and the rest of our bodies followed. We latched the vent back in place one second before guards pounded into the room, and Celeste’s hands covered my ears until the sirens went silent and it was safe to move.
After that, we slithered through the ductwork together, making guesses about turns based on our scanty knowledge of the building. We’d both been there before with Julius, but only to a few of the less sensitive regions. Our task at the moment was making it to the Council chamber on the top level. So every time we were given an option, we traveled up.
Unfortunately, the path was booby-trapped. Something I should have expected—it wasn’t as if ventilation shafts were a unique method of infiltration. But I took the lead, got cocky, and moved too fast. Halfway to our destination, I wasn’t prepared for the fact the walls had been greased.
I tried to maintain my grip, but it was useless. I’d already put all of my momentum into the upward motion, had assumed pressing my elbows against the sides of the ductwork would hold me in place the way it had last time.
To cut a long story short, I fell and struck Celeste. She lost her hold also and slid down three feet to the horizontal shaft we’d turned up out of moments before.
Only, a trapdoor that had borne our weight when we slithered across it earlier now opened beneath us. We tumbled through empty darkness, and Gabi was waiting at the bottom as we slammed into a practice mat not really soft enough to cushion our fall.
“Pitiful,” she scolded, her tone that of a disappointed teacher. “Did you fail to consider that run-of-the-mill ductwork is too small to be crawled through? Did you fail to notice how loud you were and to wonder why your clanging didn’t attract guards? It was clearly a trap. I taught you better. Let’s go.”
We hopped up. Well, I hopped up and Celeste tried to follow. But my sister’s ankle collapsed out from under her and she squeaked out a strangled sort of sound that suggested unbearable agony.
Gabi had grown harder toward us in recent years, turning tasks that used to be games into serious endeavors. The test we’d just failed had definitely been one of the latter and our teacher was far from pleased. Still, she reached Celeste before I did. Her arm looped around my sister’s waist to take weight off what later turned out to be a severely sprained ankle. Gabi’s other hand reached up to smooth tufts of escaped hair away from Celeste’s eyes.
“You’re going to be alright,” Gabi had told my sister, tone much softer than it usually was.
Now, in the middle of a circle of Vega’s wolves, I wanted to do the exact same thing. To wrap my arms around Celeste and tell her everything was going to be alright. Instead, I could only begin closing the distance between us as she cast words in my direction faster than her feet could travel.
“El! They’re moving the shifter children. In thirty-six hours. We have to get there first.”
Thirty-six hours from now was right smack in the middle of the day the prophecy warned coincided with the compelled sister matebrand. “You’re sure?” I asked, hating the way recent events made my reply sound like I doubted her word.
Luckily, Celeste didn’t notice. Either that or she brushed off the subtext. “I overheard Julius talking to Gabi. They’re going to put the kids somewhere with heavier security. Losing Finnegan has the Council spooked.”
It was hard, but I forced emotions out of my mind at that point. Yes, Celeste was flustered the way she had been ten years ago after spraining her ankle. But we were both older and far more capable than at that time.
We also had more responsibilities now, some of them self-imposed.
Since I lacked solid leads on the prophecy, the best I could do was be aware of its impending deadline while going about my usual business. Business that, today, meant backing up my sister who vibrated with the intensity of her urge to track down imprisoned children.
So I reached forward to take her hands before asking, “Where are they now?”
Well, I tried to take her hands. For the first time in our lives, Celeste twisted away from me, the distance that had sat between us ever since the oil rig becoming even more palpable.
Still, she trusted me enough to answer my question. “I don’t know. All I know is that Gabi is in charge of the transfer.”
I might not be able to fix whatever was going on between myself and my sister, but this was something I could handle. “Okay, I can work with that…”
“We can work with that,” Celeste corrected. “Gabi’s expecting me to join her for a workout first thing tomorrow morning.”
I nodded. “Smart. We’ll know her exact location at a specific time, which will make it easier to follow where she leads after you text her with a no-show excuse.”
“Nuh uh.” Celeste shook her head so hard her braid slapped the side of her neck. “I plan to slip a tracker on her so we can follow from a distance. You know Gabi’s a pro at noticing a tail.”
If anyone was going to plant a tracking device on Gabi, it would be me. But now wasn’t the time or place to argue that point. “We can talk about this in the van,” I suggested and was gratified when Celeste nodded at last.
Unfortunately, my sister wasn’t the only stubborn person present. As we started toward the vehicle, side by side but with more air than should have been present between us, a hand on my wrist swung me back around. Then Vega’s wrinkled face was pressing in so close to mine that our noses touched. “Aren’t you forgetting something? You don’t have permission to leave my territory.”
The words were spoken by my alpha not my aunt.
And Vega wasn’t the only alpha in the vicinity. A larger shadow blocked out the cars’ headlights as Orion growled, “You will remove your hand from Elspeth.”
“Or what?” Vega’s salty pack scent unfurled around us, the same scent that permeated the soil in her territory and had become part of my own personal aroma when I joined her clan last month. Meanwhile, the metallic underlay that marked her as an individual was matched by the steeliness of her subsequent words. “Our people have been allies in the past,” she warned, voice dropping. “Don’t make a mistake you’ll regret. This is my land and Elspeth is my pack mate.”
The scent that carried along with her words didn’t lie—I was Vega’s pack mate. And I depended upon that connection. The bond we’d formed had kept me sane after Orion broke our matebrand, had let me build a place for myself in the weeks between then and now.
I’d learned to be a wolf under my aunt’s steady supervision, to hunt with other wolves and live with other wolves and laugh with other wolves also. The idea of losing that pack bond made me light-headed.
But the imprisoned shifter children might not have allies like I’d had in Celeste while growing up among humans. Plus, my sister would take action to free those kids with or without me. I couldn’t afford to fail her again.
Meanwhile, the power of the outpack seemed to crackle just beyond the edges of my hearing. It reminded me of the prophecy, of the fact that Gabi might be my blood sister. Was that why the two deadlines coincided so precisely? Could I kill two birds with one stone by taking a single irreversible step?
So—“No,” I told my aunt, feeling our bond strain even as I spoke the words. “I have been in the past, but I’m no longer a member of your pack.”
I expected our connection to sever immediately. And I expected rage from Vega when that happened.
Instead, the thread of our bond stretched but didn’t break, which meant I could feel my aunt’s headache as she rubbed her temples. “Give us a moment,” she said to no one in particular. And even though her words lacked compulsion, pack mates seeped further into the darkness. Celeste and Finnegan stepped away also, heading toward the van that Donovan was turning around in preparation for a speedy exit.
Only Orion stayed beside me, his eyes as dark as the black had been behind my blindfold. Not as warm, though. Not nearly as warm.
Which was fine because I wasn’t feeling particularly warm toward him at the moment either. “I can handle this on my own,” I muttered, trying to tell Orion with a jerk of my chin that his current behavior was far from appropriate. He might be an alpha, but this was Vega’s territory. Over-the-top aggression would only make matters worse.
To my surprise, Vega was the one who excused Orion for keeping his feet planted. “You can’t expect an alpha to be rational about his mate. But you can be rational.”
“I am being rational…” I started.
