Chapter Twenty-two
LEON
Dusk was falling when Ruth returned. Karl had slept the rest of the afternoon, which injected a measure of cold realism into Leon’s planning. They were going nowhere anytime soon.
He tried a smile at Ruth, hoping to elicit some of the softness she gave Karl. No such luck. Her expression remained brisk and cool, eyebrows lifted like she was braced for inanity as she waited for him to speak.
Leon refused to be deterred. This was important. It was so important he was pretty sure it was in the Geneva Convention. “Can I get a comb?”
Her gaze ran over his hair. He’d done the best he could using his fingers, but it was a mess. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Anything else?”
He couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. “I need to stretch my legs,” he said. “Will you stay with him?”
“You can have thirty minutes,” she said, already rolling up her sleeves. “I need to give him a bed bath and change the dressing.”
Thirty minutes should be enough for the poking around he wanted to do, and Karl didn’t need him to lurk while Ruth was doing something so intimate for him.
He pushed up out of the torture device of a chair that was killing him by degrees, and looked at Karl.
He was still, but it looked like a normal healing sleep, his breathing even and his skin its usual color where he wasn’t bruised.
Leon leaned down and brushed a kiss against his temple, soft and barely there.
For Ruth’s benefit, if she was watching. Obviously.
He stripped off the clothes Ruth had quietly given him the previous night, leaving them in a pile outside the cabin before he shifted in the growing gloom.
To his surprise, no one followed him as he began to explore.
He’d expected some kind of surveillance, but he was alone, as if he’d slipped between the cracks. Perfect.
He ghosted between trees and darkened buildings, checking angles and noticing small, useful things.
The netting overhead wasn’t strong enough to bear his weight.
Chinks of lamplight seeped out around badly fitted logs, both help and hindrance.
The scent of fuel was strong as he passed a silent generator, and a cracked solar panel was tucked awkwardly under a tarp.
This was a place rationing resources, hoarding energy, watching its own shadow.
Whatever the reason they were hiding here, it shaped every part of their lives. It had to be a cult.
But even as he cataloged the layout, something else was turning over in the back of his mind.
Karl, and the way he’d been earlier, his eyes dazed, voice raw but soft.
There’d been no bossiness, no infuriating logic.
No walls. Just the feeling of someone caught in a moment they didn’t quite understand but didn’t want to let go of either.
Leon had felt it too, that closeness between them.
Something in Karl had reached for him, and Leon had reached back without thinking.
The nearest thing he could think of was how it had been when they’d been lying under the tarp in the rain, naked and touching.
A closeness that went beyond physical, which made little sense but which had been undeniable.
He shook his head, slipping around the corner of another building. It changed nothing. Karl had retreated again the moment he’d had the strength to do so. Maybe exhaustion was the only reason he hadn’t kept Leon at a distance for those few moments.
Or maybe—and this was the option Leon didn’t like—those moments had meant something, and Karl had decided against it.
Either way, Leon didn’t have time to dwell on it now. He needed to find answers about this pack. The more he knew, the better their chances of getting out of here alive.
One of the buildings from which light spilled was much larger than any he’d seen so far, and he could hear voices inside.
Curious, he eased his way in its direction, only to see Dan, the guy who’d helped with Karl, walking toward him.
He had his head down, looking to be in deep thought and unaware of his surroundings.
Leon took the opportunity to get out of his sightline by climbing the nearest tree.
Even the slight sounds he made against the bark didn’t rouse Dan from his abstraction.
Preparing to descend once Dan was out of sight, Leon paused.
Branches arched over the building he’d been making for.
Perhaps he’d be able to find out something of what was going on from up here and, unlike skulking around the building, he would have an innocent explanation if he were to be found.
He’d simply wanted to climb a tree. But he knew he wouldn’t be found, because Grandpa had been right—people never looked up.
It didn’t help him much. From there, the voices were louder, but he couldn’t work out any words because multiple conversations were being held simultaneously, all underlain by the clashing of silverware.
The scent of food made his stomach rumble and confirmed that this must be where the pack ate.
He hadn’t thought of it before, but it made sense that if they were conserving energy, a communal kitchen would be more efficient.
Plus the whole wolf thing, where they seemed incapable of doing anything independently.
He’d forgotten how annoying they were in that respect because Karl wasn’t like that.
For the things that mattered, he was basically an honorary cat.
Climbing back down, he prowled further. The emptiness of the settlement made sense now he knew they were eating, and he filed the knowledge away. This might be their best time of day to make a break for it. Michael’s pack wouldn’t hear anything over the noise coming from the building.
On the other hand, Ruth might be more likely to check on them at this time of day rather than the dead of night. He didn’t much like the idea of an entire pack close on their heels as they ran. No need to make decisions yet, not with Karl still as weak as a kitten.
He’d just rounded the corner of another of these identical buildings when he froze. Michael’s voice, annoyed and strident, was coming from inside.
“D’you think I don’t know that?”
A woman’s voice answered, but Leon couldn’t make out her words. He crept closer and pressed against the wall, straining his ears.
“…we become the monsters.” Her voice was much softer than Michael’s, but he could hear it clearly now.
“I know, Hailey. It’s as if you think I want to. But if we don’t, are you willing to take the risk? Will you be able to look Jo in the face if Charlie’s killed as a result of us trusting outsiders again?”
“We don’t know—”
“Yes, we do.” Sudden fury and sheer alpha power in Michael’s voice had Leon fighting an instinctive hunch. “We know exactly what happens if we trust an outsider.”
“Then we move. Pack up and start again somewhere. We’ve done it before. It’s better than… It’s the only way.”
“It’s not the only way.”
“It’s the only way I can live with.” The woman drew a sobbing breath.
“I know what it means to move us all, what it takes, Michael. God knows I’m exhausted at the very idea, but we don’t have any other choice.
Look”—her voice took on a new urgency, as if she’d hit on something that might clinch her argument—“if you were to dispose of them and the cats discovered it, what do you think they’d do?
They’d never rest until they found us if they knew what we did to their prince. ”
“You think he’s really a prince?”
There was a long pause. “I don’t know,” Hailey said slowly.
“He acts like one, but perhaps all cats do. But why would he say it if he’s not?
And what about those other cats he mentioned?
Cats don’t go around in groups from what I’ve heard.
He wouldn’t have them with him if he weren’t important, would he? ”
“What about them? Odd that we haven’t seen any of them yet if they’re out there.”
“Good point,” she said.
“This is a pack, not a democracy, Hailey. What I say goes. Unless you want to issue a formal challenge?”
“You know I don’t. But there’s a reason you made me your beta, and I’m telling you now that this isn’t you. It isn’t us.”
An even longer silence and then a weary sigh from Michael.
“I know,” he said. “I know. But I have to keep the pack safe. Oh God,” he said with a laugh that contained no humor whatsoever, “don’t look so tragic.
I haven’t decided yet. Find Ruth and some of the others and start working on options for where we could go if we were to move. ”
Leon moved swiftly away and headed for Cormack’s house. He didn’t know if he was supposed to be out and about, and if Hailey was looking for Ruth, it was one of the first places she’d go.
He sat down again by the bed, where Karl was sleeping, motionless under the blankets, only dragging his gaze from Karl’s face when Ruth spoke.
“I don’t think he woke fully,” she said.
“Just enough to get some more painkillers in him. He didn’t say anything, but he was looking around.
Settled again once I told him you’d be back soon. ”
God, for Karl of all people not to be fully alert…
Leon realized how much he’d come to depend on the way Karl absorbed every detail of his surroundings, making swift, firm decisions, and expecting everyone—by which he meant Leon—to do what he told them.
It was annoying as hell, yet somehow, he was missing that know-it-all bossiness.
He turned in his chair as the door opened.
The woman who entered looked about the same age as Michael and had the blue eyes that seemed so common in this pack, but the resemblance ended there.
Her long hair, tied in a plait, was blonde, and she was tall and willowy, with no outward indication of the forceful personality he’d just heard standing up to her alpha.
“How is he?” she asked Ruth. It was definitely the voice he’d heard.
Leon had stood respectfully at her entrance. She was on their side, for now, and he hoped he could convince her to stay that way. Help wouldn’t be coming anytime soon from the ranch. No one would be searching for them because no one knew they were in trouble.
“He’s improving,” Ruth answered.
“I need to see you.”
And with that, both women left. Hailey hadn’t even looked at him or Karl.
If he hadn’t overheard her conversation with Michael, Leon would have assumed either she was rude as hell or she deemed them of no account.
As it was, he had the uneasy suspicion she hadn’t wanted to make any kind of contact with them so that Michael’s decision would be easier for her to live with.
His heart kicked hard in his chest. They’re really going to kill us.
He sat next to Karl in the lamplit room and tried not to feel like they were out of options.