Wolf’s Vow (The Blueridge Hollow #2)

Chapter 1

Wolfe

The blood hadn’t dried yet.

It streaked across pine needles and stone like a warning, dark and wet enough to gleam under the moonlight. I crouched beside it, fingers pressed into the dirt, trying to picture how it happened. Where they came from. How long it had taken them to spill blood on this land.

Killian and Brand stood just behind me, tense and silent.

It was better that they were behind me, because I knew I was close to ripping this pack apart until I found answers.

Four shifters stood in front of me, and not one of them had yet to raise their heads.

The dead shifter three feet from us was a harsh reminder of what they had failed to do.

Defend their pack.

“Why didn’t you call your alpha for help?” Killian’s voice cut through the quiet like a blade—sharp, angry, and loud enough to make the youngest male flinch.

“We thought it was the change in patrol,” the young male mumbled. “They were due, but they never came. When we saw what it was, it was too late.” His eyes flicked toward me, uncertain. Braced. Like he expected me to rip his throat out for the answer.

I didn’t. I stood slowly and let the tension roll off me like a wave. The kind that pulled you under if you weren’t careful.

“Who was assigned to relieve you?” I asked quietly.

Silence was my answer.

Speak, I commanded through the mindlink.

All four flinched, and then an older male spoke, his mouth curled in something close to a sneer. “Stonefang Pack.”

Of course it was.

I didn’t get the chance to respond before I heard movement—slow, measured steps from the ridge line. Not rushed. Not reckless.

Cale stepped through the trees like he already owned the clearing. Broad-shouldered. Calm. Bleeding from a gash at the base of his throat, like he hadn’t even noticed.

He gave me a nod, then dropped into a crouch near the blood trail. His gaze swept over the ground, sharp and quiet.

“They came from the ridge,” he said, voice steady. “Used the runoff channel to cover their scent. Same approach as last time.”

“I’m aware.” My jaw tightened. “You were late for the change of patrol.”

“We were rerouted mid-patrol,” he said without looking up. “New orders.”

“Brand?” I questioned the shifter beside me.

“There was no change in the patrol routes,” Brand snapped at Cale. “Who the fuck did you take an order from that wasn’t me or your alpha?”

Cale stood, almost as slowly as I had, his eyes steady on mine. Not challenging, not quite. “The alpha’s mate.”

Behind me, Killian muttered a curse under his breath. Brand cleared his throat, a subtle reminder to his packmate to shut the fuck up.

The four Hollow shifters were watching me, but they were listening to Cale.

“Rowen changed the patrol route?” I asked Cale, and he simply nodded. He’d come with the Stonefang Pack, and he was one of the ones I would have preferred stay behind.

He was never aggressive. He never challenged my authority. He never spoke out of turn. But everything he did was bordering on insubordination. He was clever. He never overstepped, and he never stood out; he was just…there.

All the time.

On the brink of rebellion but never quite crossing the line.

I turned, my eyes meeting Killian’s, and I saw the warning in them to hold it together. I took the moment to force my anger down, and then I looked back at the shifters in front of me. Cale was still bleeding.

He didn’t try to avoid my gaze. Didn’t challenge it, didn’t shrink from the fact he just told me he followed Rowen’s order instead of mine. He just stood there, calmer than the damn mountains above us.

“You take orders from my betas or me,” I said, as calmly as possible. “No one else.”

“Not your mate?” It was the sneering Hollow shifter who spoke, and I knew I would pay for this later when she found out.

“I am the alpha of this pack.” My voice was firm, not hard, not loud, not angry.

Firm. “Since the attack on Blueridge Hollow a few weeks ago, security of the pack is of the utmost importance.” I looked at each one of the shifters in front of me.

“Unless Brand, Killian, or I tell you otherwise, the order you receive in the morning for patrol duty stays as it was. If you are told it has changed, you ask me.” I met their gazes one by one.

“Each of you has accepted me as your alpha. Whether you approve of me or not”—I made myself not look at Cale—“you have accepted me. So you don’t need to physically come and find me to confirm a change in your patrol route. Do you?”

“I’m never sure if you can hear me,” the young male admitted timidly.

Why the fuck is he on patrol? I demanded of Brand and Killian. He’s likely to jump at his own shadow.

We need everyone, Brand reminded me. This territory is larger than you think.

“You are wary of the mindlink?” I asked the youth. Then let me try it. He looked surprised and then looked to his companions. It’s only you and I that can hear, I reminded him. Say something.

You’re very loud.

I didn’t hide my grin quickly enough, and his cheeks reddened in response. I’m too loud? I asked, making the conscious effort to lower the level of my thoughts, which I’d never had to do before.

That’s better. He actually looked relieved.

“When you want to ask me about patrol changes that haven’t come from me, then you ask.” I looked each of them over once. “Understood?”

“We didn’t change patrol,” the one who sneered a lot spat. “We did as you ordered.”

“And I wasn’t only talking to you,” I reminded him sharply. “Do you understand, Cale?”

“I do,” he agreed. “But you told us when we came here that she was your mate and a leader of this pack… Are you now saying she isn’t?”

This is why I disliked him so much. It wasn’t that he asked the difficult questions; it was just that it was him asking the questions.

“I’ll speak to Rowen about this.”

Smooth, Killian snickered in my head. Perfectly dodging the question asked.

Cale lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “She changed the route, and she wasn’t wrong, caught the tail end of them.” He gestured to the gash at his neck. “I guess someone has to keep these Hollow shifters alive.”

“But he isn’t alive, is he?” I pointed to the dead shifter not far from us. “So who exactly do you think you saved tonight?” I stepped closer. The scent of blood and pine clung to him, thick and sharp. “I asked you a question.”

“We chased them away from here, and we lost one, but how many did we save by chasing them away?”

“Watch your tone.”

“I am,” he said, looking past me to my betas as if seeking confirmation that he hadn’t done anything wrong. “Are you?”

The anger in me flared—quick and hot, like the edge of a shift. I tamped it down before it broke the surface, and I turned away instead and faced my betas.

“Brand. Burn the remains. Scout the perimeter. I want a full report by dawn.” My beta bobbed his head at the command. I spoke over my shoulder to the others. “Everyone else, go home.”

The others moved fast. Too fast.

Cale stayed behind. I could feel him behind me, and Killian moved slightly so he was in my direct vision. Once more, I saw the subtle warning in my second.

“You’re bleeding,” I said to Cale without turning.

“This whole pack is bleeding,” he said.

There was no comeback to that. I walked away before I did something I’d regret. Or worse—something I wouldn’t.

You shouldn’t let him get to you. Killian walked beside me, the reproach in his tone just enough to raise my hackles even more.

He pisses me off.

“And you let him see that he does,” he reprimanded me. “Do you know who we lost?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, older shifter. I think he lived out past the last iron marker.” I wanted to hit something. “There might be a wife…”

“Speaking of—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I snapped.

“Of course you don’t want to hear it,” Killian said with a scowl. “But you really need to fucking hear it.”

I didn’t need to hear it because I already knew.

My wife, my mate, was actively going out of her way to make my life hell.

The pack had been attacked by a band of rogues a few weeks prior, and Blueridge Hollow had lost three of their own.

They were not prepared, and the attack had brought it home to them how underprepared they were.

I’d enlisted backup from my Stonefang Pack, trusted shifters who were loyal to me and well-trained.

It hadn’t gone over well at first, but the twenty or so that showed up were reluctantly accepted, and then, for some fucked-up reason I still hadn’t figured out, the rest of Stonefang Pack had arrived.

Nearly every single one of them.

Stonefang Pack was known to move around a lot.

There was no one place in our territory that we called home, but we still had a territory, and they’d left it.

It had taken days of subtle negotiation, but between Killian and me, we’d sent half of them back.

Along with a third of the fighters I’d asked to come here.

While none had said it, I wondered if it was because they felt insecure and unprotected since I wasn’t there, so sending some of the better fighters back had been my solution.

I also knew I had to travel between both packs, but Blueridge Hollow was becoming increasingly challenging to manage as the days went on.

Not to mention the challenge my wife presented every single day.

I thought that, during the initial attack and immediately afterward, a truce had formed between us.

We shared the same house, the same bed, and the same pack.

Rowen was difficult at best—stubborn, independent, opinionated—and had a fire in her that rivaled the sun.

But when Stonefang arrived unannounced and unexpected, she’d seen it as a move to erase Blueridge Hollow.

How she got to that assumption was beyond me, but Rowen was stubborn, and once the idea was in her head, she took it as a personal attack every time Stonefang did something.

“Are you ignoring me?” Killian demanded, interrupting my thoughts.