Chapter 26 Rowan
“It’s here somewhere,” Cade said, frustration cutting through his usually steady tone.
“How exactly did you lose an entire safe house?” I asked lightly.
Cade shot me a look sharp enough to draw blood. I caught the twitch of his hand and smiled to myself, knowing I was probably going to get spanked for that later, but poking the bear had become addictive. I now understood why Ryker enjoyed it so much.
“I didn’t lose it,” Cade snapped. “It’s an underground bunker. We found it on a mission years ago and kept it secret in case of an emergency. There’s snow on the ground. I’m trying to find the hatch. You can help if you’d like.”
“We’ll fan out,” Ryker said. “Kitten, you’re with me.”
He laced his fingers through mine before I could argue and tugged me along.
We spread across the clearing, dragging our boots through the snow, scraping and kicking at the ground. Minutes passed with nothing but the crunch of ice and the low whistle of wind through the trees.
Then Talon’s voice rang out from the far side.
“Over here!”
We converged on his position as he stamped the ground hard. The sound that answered back was unmistakable. Hollow and metallic.
“Found it,” he said, already dropping to his knees to clear the snow away from the buried hatch.
Suddenly, something crashed behind us.
The sound was violent and sudden, snapping the air apart.
Killian roared, thunderously loud, stealing the breath from my lungs. My heart stopped beating.
Everything happened at once.
Talon shifted mid-step and launched himself toward the noise. Ryker yanked me back against his chest, turning his body into a shield as Cade spun toward Killian, weapon raised.
I tried to see past Ryker’s shoulder and gasped.
Killian was on the ground.
A massive wolf loomed over him, jaws snapping inches from his face. Killian had one arm braced against the beast’s chest, muscles straining as it lunged again and again, trying to tear into him.
Talon shifted and hit the wolf like a battering ram.
The impact threw both of them across the snow. They rolled apart and came up circling each other, teeth bared, hackles raised, low warning growls vibrating through the clearing.
The other wolf lunged.
They crashed together in a blur of fur and motion, teeth clashing, bodies slamming hard enough to shake the ground.
Cade and Killian moved to assist, but they never made it.
Two more wolves burst from the treeline.
One slammed into Cade, knocking him off balance. The other barreled straight into Killian as he rose, sending him skidding backward through the snow.
Suddenly, they were all engaged.
Each of them locked in brutal struggles with their own attacker, grappling and striking, fighting to keep teeth away from throats.
Ryker raised his gun, tracking targets, but there was no clear shot.
Too much movement. Too close.
Then he lifted his rifle and fired into the treeline.
What was he firing at?
I called to my wolf, narrowing my eyes and letting my vision sharpen. Shadows moved from tree to tree, stalking forward. So many of them. Ryker fired again. The crack of the shot split the forest, and the shadows scattered. Fast, low shapes darted between the trunks, circling closer.
The wolves fighting Cade, Killian, and Talon broke off almost simultaneously and retreated, backing away with deliberate precision. They regrouped at the edge of the clearing, forming ranks with others emerging from the woods.
Suddenly, dozens of wolves surrounded us.
Teeth bared. Fur raised. Yellow eyes glowing with intent.
“Stay behind us,” Cade ordered.
The men closed ranks around me instantly, weapons raised, bodies angled outward to shield me on all sides.
“They’re shifters,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Ryker muttered. “And not the friendly kind.”
Cade raised his voice. “We don’t mean anyone harm! Our pack is seeking asylum in the northern shifter colonies. We’re former soldiers fleeing New Arca.”
The wolves answered with a chorus of growls.
A voice cut through the noise, stern and commanding.
“You’re Arca soldiers!”
The wolves parted.
A man stepped forward from between them. He was bare-chested despite the cold, tall and broad, older than my alphas, but far from weak. Gray threaded through his hair, and deep lines marked his face, the kind earned through years of leadership and violence.
Behind him stood three large copper wolves.
The same color as my coat.
I had convinced myself that I was different.
Not just an omega, not just a shifter, but my red coat and blue eyes set apart even from the rarest of them.
It was easier to believe I was alone than to wonder where I fit in.
But as I looked at the copper wolves behind him, their coloring mirroring my own, that certainty wavered.
Maybe I wasn’t an anomaly after all. Maybe I never had been.
“No, we were Arca soldiers,” Cade said evenly. “Not anymore! We have just as much reason to consider them enemies as you do.”
The man’s eyes darkened. “I doubt that. Besides, there's no way to prove you aren’t spies! Even if there were, our pack no longer takes in strays. We have suffered too many betrayals."
"We aren't spies."
"Am I supposed to just take your word for it, after you’ve trespassed on our lands?”
“We didn’t know these were your lands,” Cade replied. “We thought the pack was farther north.”
“This is Shifter Territory. All of the Northern Borderlands are ours now,” the man snapped. “Crossing the wall is trespassing!”
The wolves howled in unison; the sound rising and echoing through the trees.
My heart hammered in my chest.
This was it. There was nowhere left to run.
We couldn’t go back to New Arca. That path had burned behind us the moment we crossed the border. If the shifters turned us away now, there would be nowhere else to go. This was our only hope.
The man’s gaze swept over us one final time.
“And the penalty for trespassing,” he said coldly, “is death.”
“No!” I lunged forward, ducking between the alphas, before any of them could stop me. Dropping to my knees in the snow, I threw my hands out between us. “Please! We need your help! Would you really turn your back on two shifters of your own kind?”
Instinct told me to bow, head low, face against the ground. My submission was all I had left. A plea without words.
How could an alpha, a leader of shifters, order the death of others like him, even if they did not belong to his pack? How could he turn away from his own kind so easily.
There were too many of them. Too many wolves. Even if we ran, even if my alphas fought, we would never escape.
So I stayed where I was, head bowed, breath unsteady, waiting to see whether he would choose law over mercy.
Cade caught me instantly, hauling me back and shoving me behind him as he raised his weapon. The others moved with him without hesitation, bodies closing ranks around me as the surrounding wolves snarled and stepped forward, muscles coiling, ready to strike.
“Stop!” the pack leader bellowed.
The wolves froze.
Their leader tried to see me through the shield of bodies.
“You have an omega with you,” he said, intrigued. “She is a shifter?”
“She is none of your business,” Cade snapped.
“If you are seeking asylum in our pack, she very much is,” the man countered. “Bring her forward.”
The surrounding circle tightened. Cade’s growl vibrated through his chest, low and dangerous.
I leaned in close, my voice barely a whisper meant only for him. “Please, Cade. It’s okay. Let him see me. Maybe if they see me, they’ll take us in.”
“No,” he said immediately. Final.
I grabbed his arm. “Trust me. I can help us.”
He didn't respond.
“You promised,” I whispered, desperation creeping into my voice.
This was the moment our agreement mattered most. Not in theory. Not in words. Here. Now.
Cade was afraid. I could feel it in the way he held himself, in the way his instincts pulled him toward shielding me instead of listening. He was terrified of me getting hurt, of losing me, and that fear threatened to cost us everything.
I had trusted him when every instinct screamed not to. I had followed his lead into uncertainty. Now I needed him to do the same for me.
I had proven I wasn’t just something to shield from harm. I could contribute and be a real member of this pack. And if he couldn’t trust me when death stood right in front of us, then the agreement between us had never been real.
For a long moment, he stayed rigid, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the threat ahead of us. Then he exhaled slowly and shifted his stance just enough to open a space at his side, never lowering his weapon.
I stepped forward.
The snow crunched softly beneath my boots as I stepped past the line of men, every instinct in my body screaming at me to stop. To hide behind them and stay where it was safer. Instead, I forced my body forward, lifting my chin and raising my eyes to the leader standing across from me.
The change in him was instant.
The rigid authority he wore like armor cracked, then fell away entirely. The man's alpha posture faltered, just a fraction, but enough to notice. His eyes widened, and his hand twitched at his side, then stilled, like he didn’t trust himself to react. His mouth parted, breath catching in his chest.
He didn't move a muscle.
Didn’t issue an order.
Didn’t look at the men beside him.
He only stared at me.
The silence stretched, heavy and fragile, as though any sound might shatter whatever was happening between us. His gaze traced my face slowly, searching, cataloging, as if he were afraid to blink and find me gone. Recognition warred with disbelief, awe with something dangerously close to grief.
I felt it then. The pull. Not like the bond I shared with my alphas, but something older and deeper. A thread I hadn’t known existed tightening around my ribs.
His breath left him in a rough exhale. His voice, when it came, was barely there. Stripped of command. Stripped of certainty.
“Isabel?”
The name hung in the air between us, fragile and irreversible.
To be continued…