Chapter 16
Rowen
The four of us looked at each other, and I don’t think any of us felt we had the right words.
“That was a shitshow.”
I hid my smile. Okay, Diesel had the right words. How would I doubt that the gruff “fuck you all” beta would be silent?
“Before or after you spoke?” Wolfe growled as he looked out over the gathered tents. We’d been sent to this side chamber to wait for a “decision.” It seemed pointless after everything the shaman had just done, but still, Wolfe would give them no room to say he hadn’t complied in every way.
“They needed it,” Diesel said, leaning back in his chair. “That Deryn isn’t going to give a fuck what the Pack Council or the wiry old shaman says; he wants your land.”
Wolfe nodded. “Interesting that the claim he’s making is for the Hollow and not Stonefang,” he said.
“Why? The Hollow is stronger. Isn’t it?” I asked, and when all three of their gazes landed on mine, the same look of surprise mirrored on their faces, I knew I’d maybe insulted them. “What have I missed?”
Wolfe exchanged a look with Diesel before he spoke. “The Hollow isn’t the only land that holds something beneath it,” he began. “Surely you know that? You were sealed into Stonefang when Diesel left.”
“Yes, right.” I hadn’t forgotten, but I hadn’t put two and two together. “I never”—I cleared my throat—“I never felt Stonefang the way I do the Hollow.”
“You wouldn’t,” Diesel said, leaning back like we were having a casual conversation.
“You only just started to feel the Hollow. Your pregnancy helps, but before, when you were at Stonefang, you hadn’t completed the mate bond.
You were aware, like you know when rain is going to come, but you weren’t aware. ”
Killian was frowning. “That is a shit analogy. Everyone knows when it’s going to rain.”
Diesel rolled his eyes. “Fine. She now knows at which point the first raindrop will fall, better?”
Killian’s look was sullen. “I’d be better if you kept your mouth shut when it mattered and let the alpha do the talking.”
“The alpha was getting ready to kill the head Pack Council member.” Diesel sniffed. “You should be thanking me for saving his ass. Again.”
“You could have been killed!” Killian snapped.
Diesel was on his feet. “And I wasn’t because—”
“Could you both stop?” Wolfe said to them, he didn’t even raise his voice. “I’m trying to listen, and your bickering is annoying me.” He glanced at me. “And someone find someone here that can make Rowen some tea?”
Killian ducked his head outside and I heard him talk to one of our pack, who stood guard outside. “And test it first!” he added as he came back in.
“You think they’d poison my tea?” I asked him, only half-joking.
“I think you’d be a fool to think they wouldn’t,” he grumbled as he sat back down with a sigh. “This whole place gives me the creeps.”
“It was a place of power once.”
We were all on our feet and turning, looking at the shaman in disbelief.
“How the fuck did you get in?” Diesel growled looking behind him and seeing no obvious sign of entry.
The shaman snorted. “If I told you all my secrets, you’d be bored with my company.” He took the seat that Killian had been in. “Did I hear someone mention tea?”
“I’ll get you tea,” Killian mumbled, looking thoroughly thrown by the last few moments. “I need more tea,” he said to whoever was closest.
I looked over at Wolfe, my eyes widening as he watched the shaman with a mix of curiosity and hostility. “Why are you not in the chamber?” Wolfe asked.
The shaman shrugged. “Not really bothered with what they have to say.” He kicked his legs out in front of him as he sat, drawing my attention to the fact that the shaman’s feet didn’t touch the floor.
“They’re deciding if I’m a threat,” Wolfe told him.
“Bah.” The shaman grinned. “They know you’re a threat; they’re just deciding if you’re a threat to them.”
“That’s what I said,” Wolfe growled. “What do you want?”
I should have warned my husband not to speak so rudely, but this whole thing was grating on my last nerve, and I just wanted to go home.
“I want what they want, actually,” the shaman said, “but with less grabbing, deceit, and bloodshed.”
“Which means what?” I asked him, leaning forward.
“It means I want the Hollow secure. I want the land to be held by shifters, but the shifters it chooses. Not them.”
“What about Stonefang?” Diesel asked, looking uncomfortable, and I wondered about the dynamic between the tall man that was Diesel and the small shifter who was the shaman.
The shaman chuckled. “The Grumps have been on those packlands longer than I’ve been alive. They were ancient when I was young,” he said with a smile. “It’ll take more than a Pack Council to turn the Stone against the Fang.”
Wolfe looked more alert. “Stone and Fang,” he murmured. “Stonefang.”
“Old magic lives beneath the rock there,” the shaman said with a nod. “Hard to cross.”
Wolfe’s eyes flashed silver. “You followed me there?”
The shaman nodded. “Needed to see the land react to you.” He glanced at Diesel. “Such power around you, it’s hard to see all the threads at times. Out there, on the barren land, your tie to Stonefang was clear.”
I felt a wrench of disappointment, and I felt guilty for it. The shaman missed nothing.
“You hoped the Hollow’s tie was stronger,” he told me.
Wolfe blinked and looked over at me, the question in his eyes. “Rowen?”
“I…I don’t know,” I admitted. “You have two territories and one pack. I know you’ll be gone sometimes. I guess I just…” I grimaced. “I’m sorry, it’s selfish.”
It was Killian who spoke first. “You’re newly married, newly pregnant, newly—” He looked at the shaman. “New,” he finished lamely. “No one will think less of you because you want your mate beside you.”
“Newly new.” The shaman kicked his legs as he smiled. “I can feel her,” he told Killian, leaning over conspiratorially. “You don’t need to hide secrets, not from me.”
“Comforting,” Diesel grunted.
“Will I offer you comfort, wild one?” the shaman asked, and I saw his sly smile. Diesel growled at him in warning, and the old man laughed with delight.
“What do you think they’ll do?” Wolfe asked the shaman.
“Or should I ask the other question I have?” He didn’t wait.
“I see it now, you pushing me to go to the Hollow. I bet you encouraged Rowen to go home and think she needed a political marriage,” he mused.
“You’ve had a hand in us since the start. Why?
“No hands,” the shaman assured him. “A gentle hint, nothing else. You did the rest. Luna knows where her mated pairs are and who is standing in their way.”
“You knew she was my mate?” Wolfe asked carefully.
“No.” The shaman appeared to think about it. “I knew there was a reason why you needed to go, but if you remember, young Wolfe, it was your beta who raised his concern over the political allegiance on offer to your mate.”
Killian grunted. “Still should have kicked that guy’s ass,” he grumbled.
Which reminded me that Dex had been in the chamber. “Why is Dex here? Out there, it was alphas and their betas, but he is neither.”
“He is ambitious,” Wolfe reminded me with a sneer. “He wanted the Hollow; the Pack Council wanted it to be led. He looks like a follower. I guess that was good enough for them.”
“We should kill him on principle.”
Even the shaman turned to look at Diesel in surprise.
The dark-haired man shrugged. “What? I don’t like loose ends.”
“If we killed everyone who was ambitious, they’d call us the Pack Council,” Killian muttered. “Wolfe? I don’t like it.”
Wolfe sighed. “The Pack Council, never been an advocate for them either.” He glanced at the shaman. “Present company excluded.”
“You shouldn’t like it,” the shaman said, just as the entrance flap was tapped. “Tea.” He pointed at the entrance unnecessarily.
There were only four cups, and I wondered if it was Killian or Diesel who’d do without.
Wolfe poured, much to the dismay of the serving male.
I needn’t have worried about who wasn’t taking the fourth cup, as both Killian and Diesel shook their heads.
Wolfe handed me the cup and saucer, doing the same for the shaman, hesitating slightly, suddenly unsure how to hand a blind man a hot drink, when Diesel suddenly lunged forward and knocked my teacup from my hand.
“What—”
The shaman grabbed the cup from Wolfe, hissing at the heat, but he inhaled deeply. “Nobody touch it,” he told us all quietly. “Beta of Wolfe, you told your pack member to test the tea. Where are they?”
Killian rushed from the room.
Diesel was checking my hands. “Did it spill on you?”
Wolfe took my hands from his beta and checked himself.
“I’m fine,” I told them both. “I didn’t even get a chance to sniff it,” I added with a shaky laugh.
Killian came back in, his face grim. “Omar is gone.”
“Traitor?” the shaman asked.
Wolfe shook his head before remembering the shaman couldn’t see him. “No, the six with us are loyal. I tested them myself.”
The shaman nodded. “Find his body if you can before you leave.” He stood.
“Blackroot with a little extra,” he said aloud, but I had the impression he was talking to Diesel.
“Distinct but not pungent. Keep alert.” The shaman looked at Wolfe over his shoulder.
“You need to go back to your land. They won’t hold off their attack. ”
“I thought you outranked them?” Killian asked him quietly.
“Sometimes rank doesn’t come into it when it’s about greed and power. Be careful, daughter of the Hollow, there is worse coming.”
He left silence in his wake. I stood and took the three steps to get to my mate’s side.
Diesel and Killian were poised, ready. Wolfe shared a look with them both, and they nodded to his unspoken question. Wolfe looked down at me. “We leave now. You ready?”
“I am.”
To hell with the Pack Council’s decision. Someone just tried to kill me, or Wolfe, or all of us. Either way, they’d made their first step in this war, and we weren’t waiting for the next one.
In the corridor, Wolfe spoke quietly to the small guard we’d taken with us. Diesel slipped away and I knew he was going to look for Omar. He was a Stonefang shifter, and I felt bad that I would have had trouble identifying him had I been asked.
We left the large tent quickly. Not running but not leisurely. There were no guards. The Pack Council was so sure we’d do as they said and wait for their decision. We were at the tree line when the shadow became a man as an older shifter stepped out onto the path.
My heart lurched, and Wolfe pushed me behind him. “You’re either stupid or brave,” he told Lewis, my father’s old beta.
“I’m just an old man who is looking to see a girl he’s known for a long time.”
“You tried to kill Axel,” Wolfe growled. “You never waited to see if Perry would live. Did you think your ‘sorry’ meant anything to the boy bleeding out on the grass?”
Lewis flinched, but it didn’t stop him from trying to see around Wolfe to look at me. “The boy wasn’t supposed to be there, neither was your man. I planned to fail, I never wanted what’s happening now. It wasn’t supposed to go this far.”
“Well it has,” Wolfe growled, stepping closer. “What do you want?”
“They won’t stop,” Lewis said with a defeated sigh.
“Blueridge Hollow has always been coveted by them. Malric didn’t feel it like some do, like maybe you do,” Lewis told Wolfe, grudgingly.
“I knew Rowen would; her mother was tied to the earth, and the druid was always hovering near her.” The old beta rubbed his forehead.
“They said you would try to take it from her, house her at Stonefang, sever her from her birthright.”
“You think I am so weak that I would go?” I asked him, stepping around Wolfe. “All my life, you barely spoke to me, and now… My father trusted you the most.”
Lewis looked down at his feet, then when his head rose, he wasn’t meek or afraid.
He was angry. “Your father put it into their heads that the land was worth something more than trees and a mountain. The way he controlled those rogues for all those years. The rogues weren’t trying to claim the Hollow; they were protecting it. ”
My father was part of this? “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” Lewis gave me a look I’d seen many times in my life. He may not be one to use his words, but his looks spoke volumes. “You were never dumb, Rowen. Don’t let grief blind you as it did me.” Lewis rolled his head from side to side, preparing himself. “Okay. I’m ready, do it.”
He was inviting them to kill him. I knew Wolfe heard my gasp of shock. I felt bad for letting it slip free, but it was just so…inhumane.
“Your punishment is banishment,” Wolfe said slowly. “Your daughters are still at the Hollow; they never left. They are loyal to me, to my wife, to our pack.”
“They won’t talk to me,” Lewis told us, his voice breaking.
“It’s lonely being a traitor,” Wolfe said, reaching out to me and taking my hand. “Next time any of my pack sees you, will be the last.”
We filed past him, leaving behind a man who was not only a traitor to my pack but a traitor to my heart. The tears fell silently as we walked, and my alpha and Killian both, Luna grace them, neither of them mentioned it. They let me grieve.
I stumbled when I heard the cry not five minutes later. Wolfe’s hand tightened on mine.
Diesel.
He’d warned him. “Next time any of my pack,” not him. Not me. Any of the pack.
Diesel joined us not long after, carrying the body of Omar. He didn’t say a word, and Wolfe never acknowledged it.
One from Blueridge Hollow, one from Stonefang. How many more would fall because of a Council’s greed?
“I want to go home,” I told him.
“Diesel, we need to shift,” Wolfe said gruffly.
“Strap him to me tight,” Diesel answered. “I’m not leaving him.”
The efficiency with which Killian and Wolfe strapped Omar’s body to Diesel’s wolf made me realize they had done this before.
It was a terrible thing to recognize. I wasn’t sure if it was worse for Diesel—carrying a fallen comrade over your shoulder as a man or on your back as a wolf. Which was worse?
Or were they both just as soul-destroying?
“Everybody shift,” Wolfe commanded. “We stop when we set foot back on the Hollow.”
We ran.
I knew that, as we put distance between the Pack Council and us, we’d probably done what they wanted, which was to run. They’d say we fled, and it would give them a reason to chase us.
Let them come. We’d seen everything we needed to see by coming here.
Now they would see what we needed to show them.
A pack united, and a land that was not theirs to take.