Chapter 25
Wolfe
The attack didn’t happen at dawn.
It arrived earlier—in a kind of darkness that felt chosen.
Cold. Breathless. Expectant.
I sensed it before the alarms went up—the shift in the wind, the drag in my wolf’s gut, the land tightening like a held breath beneath my feet.
They’re here.
Killian’s voice erupted through the link a second later. “North ridge. Movement. Fast.”
I was already running. Diesel caught up beside me, his boots pounding the ground, and his wolf snapping at the edges of his skin as if it wanted to break free and kill something.
“Rogues again?” he growled, voice heavy with sarcasm.
“No.” I didn’t need to smell them yet. I sensed the difference—deliberate, trained, packless but not wild. “Council soldiers,” I answered. “Possibly a scouting party. Testing us.”
Killian met us at the rise, chest heaving, eyes bright. He jabbed a thumb toward the tree line below. “They didn’t try to hide. They want us to see them.”
Perfect. I wasn’t in the mood for subtlety. “Let’s go out and meet them, then,” I growled.
Diesel caught my arm. “You sure?”
“I’m not hiding from these bastards, are you?”
Killian and Diesel grinned in response, and all three of us took off our clothes and then shed our human forms.
The first wolf burst out of the darkness—larger than a typical shifter, muscles tight from relentless training and harsh living.
Trained. Disciplined. Elite hunters.
Diesel snarled through the mindlink. “They sent their good ones first. How flattering.”
The second wolf followed, then a third, forming a line of bodies slipping into view like shadows peeling off the forest.
“Hold fast,” I ordered over the link. “Hold your positions.”
Diesel and Killian did as ordered while we waited for the Pack Council’s scout party to reveal themselves. Arrogance made men cocky.
My pack was ready behind me; I could feel them approaching. Cody led the way with wolves at my back. The ridges leading into the Hollow were fortified, and traps had been set—just as we had planned.
There would be no panic and no hesitation. They trusted me to make it through the first strike.
The Pack Council wolves reached the base of the ridge and slowed.
Killian sounded smug. “They’re waiting for us to jump.”
I stepped forward slightly. “Then we don’t.”
I waited, listening to my pack through the mindlink, waiting for the signal.
Behind me, twenty wolves lowered into crouches.
To the right, Emberfell watched, their fighters mixed in with mine.
We’d dispersed them among our fighters, but they were spread out through the pack, never enough to suddenly feel the surprise of their attack should they betray us.
However, the more time I spent with their pack and Jaxson himself, I realized there was no ill will between us.
Their only focus was on one thing: revenge.
Their hatred and attention were directed at the Pack Council, and while I initially thought that would make them reckless, Jaxson’s pack listened carefully and considered everything we said.
I was more concerned about some of my pack acting on impulse than about the Emberfell one. Even Dex, and it didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t surprised me.
If we made it through this, then I would be proud to call Emberfell allies. Hell, I was proud now.
“To our left,” Diesel grumbled. “Say the word, Alpha.”
The Council wolves looked up, eyes shining with challenge, aware they’d been seen and not trying to hide.
I gave them silence in return.
The first of them moved.
“Wait,” I commanded my pack. They could see us, but I knew we looked hesitant, not patient.
More wolves surged up the slope in response.
“Wolfe?” Rowen sounded sharp in my head. “No mercy, Alpha. No fucking mercy.”
I loved my fierce wife.
“Now,” I snapped and my pack launched.
The impact of shifter meeting shifter hit like thunder—bodies colliding, claws scraping, snarls ripping through the air.
I crashed into the nearest attacker. We rolled once, twice, teeth flashing.
He tried to go for my throat. He didn’t succeed.
My jaws clamped around his shoulder, and I felt the crunch of bone. He screamed, scrambling to get away.
My pack shouted information to me throughout the skirmish. It soon became clear that this scouting party wasn’t here to win. They were here to gauge us and see how long we could hold the line.
Diesel sped past, slamming a wolf into a tree so hard that the bark split. Killian tore another wolf off a smaller member of the pack before the bastard could do much damage.
Throughout the line, wolves howled, and the Pack Council’s shifters fell back as the ridge held. Too soon, the Council wolves retreated, bleeding and staggering back into the trees.
The others followed—not dead, but injured. Shaken and surprised that we were prepared to fight back. I wondered if they had been so arrogant they didn’t expect resistance or discipline.
I shifted back to human form as they disappeared into the dark. The whole ridge waited—panting wolves, the air thick with the kind of tense silence that comes after the first test of war.
Diesel approached, blood streaked across his jaw, eyes burning. “That was the soft tap on the door,” he said.
Killian nodded grimly. “They were measuring our defenses.”
I looked down at the churned earth, the broken branches, the blood soaking into the Hollow. “No,” I said. “They were measuring me.”
Diesel spat onto the ground. “What’d you show them?”
I met his gaze. “That I don’t break.” I held his stare.
A howl rose from the eastern flank—a signal from our patrol there.
Killian stiffened. “They’re regrouping.”
“Good,” I muttered. “Let them try again.” The Hollow pulsed beneath my feet—a heartbeat, ancient and waiting.
War had started, and we’d told them exactly what kind of alpha stood between them and this land.
“Diesel? Hunt the bastards down. We’ll meet you on the other side.”
Diesel didn’t need to hear anything else—he charged into the trees, shifting mid-stride, a streak of muscle and fury vanishing into the dark. I grinned darkly. He hunted best when he was pissed.
Killian moved up beside me, breath still heavy from the fight. “You want me on the flank?”
“No,” I said, scanning the tree line. “Take two teams. Sweep the ridge. Anyone still breathing and not sworn to the Hollow or Emberfell goes under the dirt.”
Killian nodded once. Grim. Efficient. He shifted, his wolf bursting out of him, and the warriors behind us followed—eight bodies dropping to all fours and surging into the night after him.
That left me with a smaller group—just enough for a line, not enough to be caught if the Council had a second wave hiding just out of sight. I scented the air, my chest rising as my wolf flared again.
I could smell fear and blood. But not from us. Not from my pack. “They weren’t ready for us,” I muttered.
A younger shifter, Perry, swallowed. “Alpha, they’ll be back.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder, steady but firm. “Of course they will. But now they know what they’re walking into.” He straightened up, squared his shoulders. Fear wasn’t the problem. Fear without leadership was.
I lifted my head, scanning the tree line black as pitch. The Hollow wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t calm.
It was awake—a slow, rolling pressure in the earth that matched my pulse, humming beneath my skin as if it sensed the threat and was waiting for the next strike.
A low growl rumbled in my chest as my pack fed me information through our mindlink. “They’re testing the borders,” I said aloud. “Trying to find the weak points.”
“Do we have any?” Perry asked.
“Not tonight.”
A howl cut through the trees—Diesel’s. Not out of distress or pain, just a call for attention.
“Found something.”
I moved before the thought finished forming, and the world sharpened into scent and sound. The remaining fighters followed behind me as I sprinted after Diesel’s call, tearing through brush and stone. The forest flashed past in a blur until the scent hit me—sharp, fresh, wrong.
Blood that wasn’t the scent of someone I recognized, and beneath it, another scent—fear.
I skidded to a stop as Diesel appeared, pacing a tight circle around a trembling figure in the dirt—one of the Pack Council’s scouts, human again, bleeding from a deep gouge along his back. Diesel’s wolf bristled, ears flat, ready to finish him.
“Not yet,” I told him through the mindlink. I shifted back, crouching in front of the scout. “You got something to say?”
He flinched back, eyes darting to the tree line as if hoping someone—anyone—would come to save him. I didn’t need to tell him there was no one coming for him; from the look in his eye, he already knew.
“They…they said you wouldn’t fight,” he rasped.
A humorless grin pulled at my mouth. “Then they don’t know anything at all.”
“They said the Hollow would crumble. That the land would…would stall you.”
Diesel shifted halfway, snapping his teeth inches from the male’s throat.
“Speak plainly,” I snarled. “Or I’ll let him finish you.”
“They said the very land itself would turn against you if you fought the Pack Council,” the man gasped. “That the Pack Council governed the land and the land was theirs.”
My wolf surfaced. Lies. Propaganda designed to plant doubt in shifters.
I leaned in close enough for him to see exactly what kind of monster he’d been sent to face. “This land chose me,” I said. “And tonight, it chose the side it stands on.”
The ground churned beneath us once more—slow, territorial, signaling a warning to the outsider bleeding on its soil.
The scout whimpered.
“Kill him?” Diesel asked flatly.
I almost said yes, my mate’s instruction in my ear, but fear was a weapon too. “No,” I finally said. “Let him tell them what he saw. Let him tell them all they’re being lied to.”
Diesel stepped aside with a disgusted snort. The male hurried to his feet, faltered, then bolted into the trees.