Chapter 23
Rowen
My eyes flew open, and I looked up into Diesel’s angry glare.
“Wh-what?” I was alert but disoriented, and curled up in the druid’s tent by the looks and smell of it. “How?”
“Because, unlike your druid, I can sense when you’re getting involved in things that you shouldn’t!” he snapped. “What the fuck were you doing?”
I scrambled to my feet. “The druid drugged me!” I yelled at him, bending down and picking up the cup. “Because my mate is an asshole!”
Diesel gave me a flat look, taking the cup from my hand.
“Your mate has always been an asshole. I don’t know why you’re only pissed off about this now; it’s not news to you.
” He sniffed the cup again. “And the druid shouldn’t be giving you valerian root.
Wildly ineffective against anyone with a grain of power.
” He looked me over. “A punch would have been so much more effective.”
I gaped at him wordlessly.
He rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, you tell me you’re a fighter, then get all female on me when I mention knocking you out.”
My wolf snapped close to my skin as I lunged forward, ready to deck the arrogant bastard, but he moved fast, his hand around my throat, and he had me in the air. I couldn’t help but remember the last time he did this, and from the look in his eye, he hadn’t forgotten either.
“Diesel—”
His grip was loose, even though it was holding me aloft. It wasn’t threatening or harmful. He gave me a look that pretty much asked if I was going to behave, and I nodded. He put me back on the ground. My fist connected with his jaw as my knee connected with his groin.
He laughed. The man was insane.
“You’re a dick.”
“Never claimed to be different,” he said with a grin. He looked me over, taking in my dark cargo pants and tank top. “Why aren’t you in a robe? Thought you were a druid?” He lit a cigarette.
“Why aren’t you with your alpha?”
“Your alpha is being reckless. I don’t agree with his decision. Then I felt you drowning in the spiritual plane and had to come and get you.”
None of that made sense, yet it made perfect sense. “Tell me without telling me that you’re a druid, or a shaman.”
He snorted, blowing out smoke. “I’m just a shifter, Rowen.”
“You just told me you came and got me on the spiritual plane. Normal shifters can’t do that.”
He took a drag of his cigarette. “Most shifters are lazy. Lack ambition. Sad really.” He turned and opened the tent flap. “C’mon, you need to see what your husband’s doing. He’s being…accommodating.”
The words Wolfe and accommodating shouldn’t be in the same sentence. I felt a shiver run down my spine at the thought of it. What was worse: Wolfe being nice to people or Diesel thinking he was acting recklessly?
“What’s happening?” I asked him as I followed. “Who was at the southern boundary?”
“Emberfell Pack.”
I frowned. “We saw Dex at the Pack Council. Why is he here?”
“Fantastic fucking question, could you get your husband to explain it to us both?”
“I see, it’s like that, is it?”
Diesel stubbed his cigarette out on his palm and pocketed the stub. “They’re seeking refuge.”
“Why?” I thought about it. “They’re a small pack. We have very little to do with them. Who are they running from?”
“That’s the question they haven’t answered to my satisfaction yet,” Diesel grumbled.
“Who did they say they were running from?” I pressed as I followed him.
“The Pack Council.”
I scoffed. “Bullshit.”
Diesel grinned at me. “And that’s why you’re coming with me.”
Wolfe and a shifter I didn’t know were just at the edge of the boundary as we arrived.
Dex barely had time to finish speaking with the male with Wolfe when Diesel and I stalked out of the tree line, and I saw three very different reactions. My husband looked resigned, Dex looked anxious, and the third one looked…interested.
Great.
I glanced at my companion. His shoulders were stiff, his jaw grinding, and his eyes narrowed enough to cut bark off a tree.
“Absolutely not,” Wolfe muttered under his breath.
But Diesel wasn’t heading for Wolfe. He was heading straight for Dex, and unfortunately…I was going to be dragged into whatever disaster was coming.
“Stay behind me,” Diesel murmured, lengthening his stride.
“No,” I murmured back, keeping in step with him.
Wolfe’s growl followed me. Diesel’s grin followed Wolfe’s growl. He loved that I didn’t listen. Infuriating man. I reached Diesel’s side just as he planted himself in front of Dex, arms crossed, stance wide.
Dex went still. Not afraid—cautious. Didn’t he know that Diesel thrived on caution?
“You smell off,” Diesel announced.
“Diesel,” I warned, thinking there were perhaps better ways to do this.
He didn’t even blink. “I’m not wrong. He smells off.”
Dex’s brows lifted. “You mean tired? Or grieving? Or the smoke we walked through to get here?”
Diesel leaned in, sniffed him again, and straightened slowly. “No. I mean off. Like you’re hiding something.”
Dex stiffened.
The male beside Wolfe tried to take a step forward, protective, but I held up a hand. “No. Let him speak. Diesel won’t attack without cause.”
Diesel scoffed. “Won’t I?”
“You won’t,” I said firmly. “Because I’ll knee you in the balls again.”
He paused…then nodded once. “Possibly.” He turned back to Dex and jabbed a finger at him. “You were at the Pack Council when we were there. You heard every lie they spat. And you walked out without saying a damn thing.”
Dex’s jaw tightened. “It wasn’t my place to intervene.”
“Bullshit,” Diesel snapped. “It’s everyone’s place to intervene when the Pack Council pulls that kind of shit.”
The stranger stepped forward again, and I realized he must be the alpha, but Wolfe held out a hand to stop him.
“My alpha ordered me to observe,” Dex said quietly. “Not speak. Not fight. Not drag Emberfell into a conflict we weren’t ready for.”
Diesel bared his teeth. “You were ready enough to come running here the second they attacked you.”
“We didn’t know that was the Pack Council,” Dex said sharply. “We didn’t know if they were rogues.”
Diesel rounded on him. “And you know damn well those ‘rogues’ are being controlled.”
Silence fell heavy and fast. Their alpha cursed under his breath. Dex’s eyes dropped for half a second, and neither Diesel nor I missed it.
“There it is,” Diesel growled, stepping in closer, close enough that their chests almost brushed. “That look. The ‘I know something, and I didn’t tell you’ look.”
Dex blew out a slow breath. “I didn’t know for certain.”
“Now you do,” Diesel snapped. “So say it.”
Dex looked at me. Not at Diesel. Not at Wolfe. At me.
“The attacks,” he said quietly. “They stopped fighting like rogues. They were organized. Strategic. They aimed for our elders first…then our children.”
Diesel swore violently. My stomach dropped.
“Did you tell Wolfe this?” I demanded, and when he shook his head, I looked over at their alpha. “Why wouldn’t you want us to know this?”
The male swallowed. “Because I didn’t want to walk into your territory and point fingers at the Pack Council without proof. I thought you’d throw us out.”
Diesel laughed. No humor. “We still might.”
“Diesel,” Wolfe snapped.
He lifted both hands. “What? I’m just saying what everyone here is thinking.”
Dex squared his shoulders. “If the Pack Council is controlling rogues, then none of us are safe. Not Emberfell. Not Blueridge. Not Stonefang.”
The Hollow pulsed under my feet—sharp, warning, angry—and I shuffled my feet.
Diesel’s head whipped toward me. “You feeling that?”
I nodded slowly. “It’s reacting to his words.”
“Or to him,” Diesel muttered.
Dex looked exhausted. “I’m not your enemy.”
“Not yet,” Diesel said. “But I’m watching you.” He leaned in, low enough that only Dex and I heard it. “And if you lie to my alpha again, I’ll gut you before he even gets the chance.”
Dex didn’t back down. “Then let me prove myself instead.”
Diesel snorted. “Good. I love watching people fail.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Diesel—”
“What? I’m being honest with him.”
“He threatened to gut me,” Dex said, baffled, looking to his alpha and Wolfe for support.
“He was being nice,” I said to Wolfe, trying to defend the male beside me, and then remembered that Wolfe knew Diesel better than I did.
The other alpha looked at Wolfe. “Should we go?”
Wolfe sighed. “No.” He held out his hand to me, and I walked over, taking it and squeezing his fingers in warning, because he and I had a fight coming; it wasn’t just Diesel who was pissed at him today. “This is my mate, Rowen.”
“Jaxson, Alpha of the Emberfell Pack.”
I nodded. “The second oldest brother.” I remembered meeting Dex all those months ago when he came to court me. To court my pack.
“I am.” He looked at me curiously.
“Your brother told us, when he came here the first time.”
“Ah, that.”
“Indeed,” Wolfe murmured. “That.”
There was an awkward silence, and since I’d missed the start of it, I wasn’t sure how to salvage this. Plus, my mate had let the druid drug me. So there was that on top of everything else.
“You told the druid to keep me away from the fighting?”
Wolfe’s fingers tightened slightly around mine. “I will do whatever I can to keep you safe. I won’t apologize for that.”
“They drugged me.”
Wolfe turned to look down at me, his eyebrow raised. “What do you mean the druid drugged you? Is that safe? For your or our child?”
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” I murmured to him. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Diesel was grinning, and I narrowed my eyes at him, which only made his grin wider.
“Why are we converged here?” I finally asked. “Shouldn’t we take this conversation into the pack hall at least?”
“We were doing that when you and Diesel arrived and…delayed matters.”
Diplomacy? From Wolfe? Was there a cosmic shift in the last twenty minutes?
My expression clearly betrayed my shock, because Wolfe laughed, the sound low and warm, and pulled me closer. He didn’t care that anyone was watching; he kissed me—slow, claiming, confident—and the bond flared in response, grounding the last scraps of tension shaking through me.
“Don’t look so surprised, mate,” he murmured through the link, smug. “I am Alpha of Stonefang. This isn’t my first time greeting a visiting pack.”
I pulled back just enough to raise a brow. “You know we’re not alone, right?”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, brushing his thumb across my jaw. “You know I don’t care. Right?”
Behind him, Killian let out a loud exhale of impatience, causing Wolfe to wink at me, laughter dancing in his eyes. He looked away from me and at Jaxson.
“Come, Jaxson,” Wolfe said, raising his voice for the group. “Rowen is right, we’re not conducting this meeting on the boundary like a pair of uncouth pups.”
Killian snorted. “Diesel is definitely uncouth.”
Diesel laughed. “Jealousy looks bad on you.”
“Not now,” Wolfe cut in, with the exhausted patience of a man used to herding cats with attitude problems.
He turned, pulling me gently with him as he gestured for Jaxson to follow. Our warriors parted to create a path—though none of them dropped their guard. Eyes followed every Emberfell Pack member who moved, assessing them with a scrutiny even I felt prickling along my skin.
I looked back, seeing Dex hovering at the boundary.
“Not him,” Wolfe told me, facing forward. “He was at the Pack Council when we were, and we don’t know how long he was there; for now, he stays outside.”
“Seems fair.”
As we walked, the Hollow pulsed under my feet—soft, cautious, curious. It seemed it also didn’t trust Emberfell yet…but it didn’t distrust them either.
Wolfe noticed my frown. “What is it?”
“The Hollow watches.”
A tic appeared in his jaw. “Is it reacting to them? Or the situation?”
I concentrated on the land under my feet as I thought about his question. “I think it’s all of us. I think it’s deciding.”
Jaxson had been paying attention to everything—and his head tilted slightly in my direction. Not submission. I saw the gratitude in his eyes, but I saw a flicker of something else, fear.
Wolfe caught the gesture, expression unreadable. “We’ll discuss the details in the hall. Numbers, injuries, routes of attack. And why you think territories are being cleared.”
Jaxson nodded. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
“And you’ll tell us everything,” Diesel growled from behind us.
Wolfe didn’t turn. Didn’t reprimand his beta. I liked that, I realized. He wasn’t afraid to let them be their outspoken, rough selves. He welcomed it.
I glanced back at Diesel and met his look. He was as solid as a rock, arms massive, smoking a cigarette, and looking like he’d just invented a new interpretation of the word intimidating.
Killian caught my eye, and he rolled his, making me smile. How funny times had changed. Not too long ago, I wanted them gone from my pack, and now here I was, communicating with them with just a single look.
Wolfe slid his arm around my waist as we walked, his voice dropping low. “How mad are you?”
“I expect groveling,” I told him, only half-serious.
He huffed a laugh. “Fair.”
The closer we got to the pack hall, the more wolves gathered—some curious, some wary, all silent. The air hummed with a tension that crawled down my spine.
Wolfe’s hand tightened around mine. “It’ll be alright,” he assured me.
It wasn’t exactly comforting. But it felt like the truth.
“Yes,” I breathed, looking around as my pack stepped forward to help others. Whatever was happening today—whatever Emberfell brought with them—it was only the beginning.
And we all knew it.