Chapter 21
Rowen
Ever since the attack, the Hollow had turned into a machine.
A bruised, exhausted, overworked machine—but still moving.
Wolfe’s commands echoed across the clearing with steady certainty, even when his voice was quiet. Killian led the patrols along the ridge as if he’d spent his whole life mapping battlefields. Diesel had the young wolves doing drills so brutal I saw more than one of them throw up in the dirt.
The pack wasn’t hesitating anymore. Shock had worn off, leaving resolve and fear. But we were learning to live with that.
I stood with the druid near the Heartwood, the air around us thick with herbs and ash. They burned another twist of dried sage, and the smoke curled toward the ground instead of the sky.
“Protection,” the druid murmured. “Nothing more.”
Nothing more, but their hands were trembling.
“Will the land hold?” I asked.
“The land always holds,” they said, “but the ones on the land do not always listen.”
I didn’t know if that was meant to reassure me or warn me. A small group of Stonefang wolves approached, dropping satchels of supplies at our feet. One bowed his head deeply to me—too deeply—before backing away as if afraid to linger.
The attack had changed everything. Or my pregnancy had. Either way, things had changed.
“Brand was successful at Four Winds,” Killian called out as he jogged toward us. He held a rolled message in his hand, tied with a thin rope. “They’re sending thirty of their best fighters. Quietly.”
“Quietly is good,” I said, taking the message, scanning it. Seemed Tyler was acting under the will of the Pack Council and not his father.
“Yeah,” Killian said, lowering his voice. “Quietly means they don’t want the Council to know they’re helping you.”
Wolfe joined us then, coming from another direction, wiping sweat from his brow. His wolf was simmering just under his skin, a constant presence that didn’t ease even when he touched me.
“How are things here?” he asked, seeing the scroll in my hand. “Why is she just getting this now?” he asked Killian.
“Things here are steady,” the druid said, answering the first question. “And Rowen and I just returned from the western ridge, which is why he didn’t get us the first time he came by.”
Wolfe frowned. “Why is the southern ridge failing all the time?” He looked between the three of us. “What’s wrong that it doesn’t hold like the others?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” the druid snapped. “It’s just the most traveled.”
Wolfe didn’t look convinced, and with a glance at Killian, he left us again, and I felt his absence immediately—not just as his mate, but as someone who was suddenly helping hold up a pack half-expecting war by nightfall.
“You’re trembling,” the druid noted.
I didn’t bother denying it. “I feel everything,” I said quietly. “The wards on the ridges. The unrest. The Hollow keeps…pulling at me.”
“Because the land is unsettled,” they said. “It looks to its druid and its daughter.”
“I’m not—”
“Legacy doesn’t need your agreement,” they cut in, adjusting a line of herbs across the ground. “Only your presence.”
I crouched to help them, placing the branches where they pointed.
My hands were steadier when I moved. Purpose had a way of doing that.
It was so strange to me that only a few weeks ago I was still trying to prove I could lead this pack, and now here I was, handing over the leadership to my husband, while I knelt in the grass and waved a bunch of burning sage at a tree.
If my father could’ve seen me, I was sure he’d have fallen down laughing. Not that he would have been ridiculing me, it was just a huge shift in my personality; I hardly recognized myself.
“My mother never did this with you?” I asked the druid suddenly.
They shook their head. “No, she watched when she was required as part of a rite for the pack, but she very much wanted to remain beside her husband. She never sought anything…extra for herself.”
My eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Extra,” I mused, mulling it over. “I fear there was a dig in there, druid.”
Their lips twitched. “Hmm.”
I was going to argue with them, but then the ground shifted under my fingertips. Not physically. Not visibly. But something moved through it—like a thread of breath, warm then gone.
The druid stiffened. “You felt it.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “What was that?”
“Something unwanted.” Their gaze sharpened. “Shaman.”
My stomach dropped. “Are they here?”
“No,” the druid murmured. “Watching. Not interfering.”
Not interfering. I think that was almost worse. “What do you think they want?” I asked.
“I don’t profess to know the way of a shaman,” the druid said simply. “Maybe they simply want to understand what the Council is too blind to face.”
I straightened slowly, the hair on my arms rising. The shaman hadn’t felt like a threat—but he hadn’t felt friendly either. Just old. Older than any of us had words for. Not physically. His center, his soul was old.
“He’s not here to help us?” I asked carefully.
“He’s not here to hurt us.” The druid met my eyes. “He’s here to witness what’s coming.”
Cold washed through me. “It’s happening soon, isn’t it?” I asked softly.
The druid set the last branch down with quiet precision. “War always does,” they said. “And truth.”
A howl tore across the clearing—Diesel’s bark of a howl, sharp and commanding.
Wolfe’s voice echoed through everyone’s skull. “To the southern ridge—now!”
I stood, heart thudding hard. I could hear my pack respond. Wolves surged through the land over the clearing, gathering their weapons, shifting, running.
It even felt like the wind changed direction. The Hollow pulsed beneath my feet once more, almost like it was answering the call.
I took one last breath, preparing to run to Wolfe, when the druid grabbed my arm and shook their head. “Not you.”
“What?” I asked, pulling away, but their grip was like a vise.
“His pregnant mate running to danger is not what your alpha needs right now.”
“Druid…” I tugged my arm. “No…”
They shook their head. “This is what my alpha asked of me. You stay here.” Their mismatched gaze held room for no quarter. “With me.”
I almost pulled my arm from their grasp, but my reaction was a mix of anger and confusion. “Wolfe told you to keep me here?”
“The alpha asked me to keep you safe.”
“He asked you to keep me away from the battle?” I demanded, glad they’d let me go, and I rubbed my arm reflexively. “He knows I can fight.”
“He knows you’re pregnant.” The druid gathered the herbs and satchels. “Come, you can help me catalogue this.”
My eyes had to be hanging out of my head in disbelief. “Wolfe needs fighters at the southern ridge.”
“And you are my apprentice. An apprentice druid, not a fighter.”
“I…” I stopped. I knew, just from that look of theirs, that I was stuck here. “If I wasn’t pregnant—”
“But you are.” The druid pointed to a half-full sack. “Come along, we can have tea.”
Tea.
“You couldn’t tell me I was barred from joining the fight?” I snapped at him.
“I did tell you,” he said, sounding completely reasonable. “I told you no harm would come to you or our child while I lived.”
It sounded completely romantic when he’d whispered it to me. Now it sounded like shackles around my wrists.
“This is bullshit,” I growled at him, letting him feel my frustration through the bond. “What’s happening? You can tell me at least. Right?”
I heard the hesitation, and my head turned to look southwards. He must have felt how pissed off I was.
“I need to concentrate on this, just now, princess. Stay with the druid. I love you.”
My hands curled into fists. I’d just been dismissed and what felt a lot like being put in my place.
His place as a wife, not an equal. If I replied right now, I wouldn’t be responsible for what I was going to say to him.
Instead, I picked up the satchel, slung it over my shoulder, narrowly missing taking out the druid in the process, and marched to their tent.
I was pregnant. I wasn’t broken.
The druid said nothing as they followed me to their tent. I didn’t balk from walking right into their tent and dumping the sack. I sat down on the floor and waited. The druid cast one look at me and rolled their eyes.
“Now I remember why he calls you princess,” they muttered.
I bit my tongue to keep from tearing them a new one. Instead, I sat and fought every instinct in my body not to run to the southern ridge and see what had called my pack there.
Was it the Pack Council? Why would they come from the south?
They were north of us. Had they slipped past our lookout points and made their way south.
Why? South was downhill, so we had the advantage with the higher ground.
What could they want there? I quickly ran through the packs that were located to the south of us. None of them were our enemies.
Some—few, I corrected myself—would be loyal to the Pack Council. But of those few, there were one or two big packs. Fighting packs. At the start of the rogue attacks, I was sure we would discover drifters from those packs were the ones who would fight us.
“Yellowrock,” I murmured, looking up at the druid as they made me tea. This was surreal. “Yellowrock Pack, they’re…unconventional.”
The druid snorted. “Inbreeding does that,” they muttered.
“They’re also beholden to the Pack Council for letting them keep their lines…
pure.” I wanted to stand and pace, but the druid was serving tea, and I couldn’t help but think that, while this was the most frustrating thing they’d ever done to me, it was also a lesson.
I just didn’t want to learn the lesson. “They’re unconventional but brutal. ”
The druid nodded. “Very efficient fighters.”
I waited. When they said nothing else, I widened my eyes with impatience. “Druid!” I snapped. “Is it Yellowrock?”
They calmly poured tea, handing me a cup. “No.”
I was going to explode. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and took a gulp of tea. My nose twitched at the strong woody scent, and my eyes flew to the druid’s in recognition, in time to see the look of regret in their eyes.
“Valerian root?” I asked them in surprise. “You drugged me?”
“Sleep.”
I remember falling to the side, then nothing.
Blackness.
I floated over the endless sea of blackness. I was aware, but I was not awake. My body was weightless, and when I reached for the bond, it was there but so faint, so far away. Was this what it would feel like to die?
“Wolfe?”
Nothing. My hands tried to press against my belly, but I had no hands. I had no body. Valerian root was something that pregnant women should avoid. But I was a shifter. Human ailments weren’t my ailments. Still, while I floated, where was my body? Was my child safe?
Wolfe did this. I felt a pang of regret.
I didn’t know that for sure, but he was an extremist when it came to keeping me safe.
I was going to kick his ass. I was going to kick the druid’s ass.
And Killian’s because he would know they planned this.
And Diesel, this was the kind of shit Diesel would do.
I was going to kick a lot of ass.
Just as soon as I found my body.
“Hello.”
I spun, but didn’t spin, because I was floating. I searched the nothingness, well, not nothingness, because something had said hello.
“Was it me?” I asked.
“No.”
I screamed.
I felt like I was spinning, and then I wasn’t. I looked at the shaman. “You?”
He smiled. “Hello, Rowen.”
“How…” I needed to breathe. But there were no lungs to breathe with. “How is this happening?”
“I am on the spiritual plane,” the shaman told me easily. “You are too, but I don’t know why.”
I snorted. “Makes two of us, buddy.”
The shaman grinned. “Drugged?” he guessed.
“Valerian root.”
He made a face that looked a lot like appreciation. “Your druid is protective.”
“Or my husband is a prick, you mean?”
The shaman smiled wider. “Or that.” He looked around the darkness. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I looked at the dark and then realized it wasn’t black; it was a deep indigo blue. “You can see this?” I asked him.
“Yes. Here I see everything.”
I turned back to him. “Why do I think you are seeing more than I am?” I asked hesitantly.
The shaman gave me a warm smile. “Because I am.” He leaned forward. “Been doing this a lot longer than you, young druid.”
“Is my child safe?” I blurted.
“Oh yes. You are too.” He waved his hand in front of him. “You haven’t moved, this is just a…higher state of consciousness.”
That settled me, and I was grateful for it. “You’re watching us?”
The shaman nodded readily. “Of course. Long lives can be boring after a while. But between your pack and my own pack…life is very exciting.” He seemed far too happy with that. “It’s a nice change of pace.”
“Where is your pack?”
He gave me a look that pretty much translated into one of “Do I look stupid?”
“Fine. Be secretive,” I muttered. “So…what can you see that I can’t?”
“Everything.”
I made a very impolite sound. The shaman laughed. “You remind me of my Kezia. She is just as feisty as you, daughter of the Hollow.”
“Is she your apprentice?”
He barked out a laugh that was so loud I jumped. “Goddess no, she is a bundle of chaos. She is a fighter, that one. Terrible student.”
I felt resentful at that, but I didn’t know why. Yes, I did. I was a fighter. Or I used to be. “Is the Pack Council attacking us?” I asked him.
“Not yet.”
“Are you helping them?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m trying to stop them,” he said honestly. “I’ve been seeking allies, and I think I may have found that help with your alpha.”
I thought about what he said. He seemed completely open. It made me suspicious. “You didn’t ask for his help.”
“Not in so many words.”
I was feeling frustrated again. “You speak in riddles, shaman. You’d get on well with the druid.”
“Druids and shamans don’t usually make good companions.”
“Why is that?” I watched him “You are the vessel of Luna, and they are too.”
“I am a vessel of the Goddess, yes. A druid is a servant of the Goddess.”
Wasn’t that the same thing? “Um…what’s the difference?”
The shaman chuckled. “You will learn in time.” He looked over my shoulder. “Hmm, didn’t expect that,” he said. “Interesting.”
He disappeared just as I felt another presence.
Diesel’s wolf stalked towards me. He shifted into his human form and glared at me. “You’re not supposed to drift off,” he snapped at me. “Honestly, do I need to do everything?”
He reached for me, and I cried out at the sharp tug.
I woke up.