Chapter Eleven
Cole
The others are still talking in the meeting room, voices rumbling like distant thunder, but none of it reaches me.
My wolf is clawing at my insides, frantic, wild, desperate to get to her.
Every breath burns because it isn’t filled with her scent.
How am I supposed to sit here and pretend to lead and protect the pack when half of me is missing?
The not-knowing is unbearable. Is she safe? Is she scared? The thought of her facing any danger alone hits me like a punch to the chest.
My pulse hammers, my wolf pacing and snarling, and beneath all the fear is something fierce and undeniable: I need her.
Not just to protect—though the instinct is crushing—but because she’s already lodged under my skin, already the center of every beat of my heart.
And I’m hanging on to my control by threads that are unraveling fast.
“Cole,” my mother says.
I snarl at her. I’ve never done that before. Then I take a quick step back. I just threatened my own mother.
I turn on my heel, ready to rush from the room. She grabs me by the shoulder.
“Cole! She’s back. She just drove through the gates.”
“What?” Everything snaps back into focus.
“She’s back, and-”
I bolt out the door. I am desperate to shift, to let my wolf out, but I won’t because I need to be able to talk to her as a human, and if I’m in wolf form, she won’t understand me.
My mother is running after me, shouting my name. I can’t hear anything, can only focus on running towards the main road. I can hear the screeching of the tires. Why is she driving so fast?
I’d like to think she’s that eager to be with me, but given how things ended between us earlier…
The car reaches us.
My mother reaches me. The council is hot on her heels.
Alexis jumps out of the car. The back door flies open, and Robert slinks out.
“What the hell?” I demand.
“Cole, you’re not listening! I was telling you that Alexis is coming, and the Frostbane pack are hot on her heels!” my mother shouts at me.
Dax is wearing an earbud. I can hear someone talking on it. “They’re at the gate now, demanding entry.”
With my mate next to me, my head is clearing.
“Tell them to wait five minutes,” I growl.
Dax does, and then glares. “They say we’ve got two and then they’re coming over the gate.”
Alexis grabs Robert by the arm and drags him over to me. “Talk,” I order him.
“I was only trying to help!” he hangs his head.
“I was trying to make werewolves immune to silver. My grandfather used to tell stories about a ‘ghost ore’ that protects us from silver. It was in an old abandoned mine. You can recognize it because it glows. I went exploring this summer and found it, and I started experimenting with it.”
“Experimenting on shifters?” I glare at him.
“I didn’t know how else to test it,” he mumbles. “I thought…I thought I could help shifters, and also, maybe they’d finally…”
“Respect you? Treat you better?”
He nods miserably.
“So you coated the silverware with real silver and tested it on the customers after feeding them altered food?”
“It works!” he cries eagerly. “It just needs to be refined!”
I shake my head at him. “Did you think about how humans will react if they find out we’re immune to silver? Right now, they feel like it keeps them somewhat safe from us.”
Robert’s lip pouts out in protest. “But they outnumber us by so much, and we have the right-” He sees my glare and his shoulders slump.
“You know nothing about diplomacy or shifter-human relations, and you have run the risk of starting a war in which thousands of our brethren are killed, and thousands of humans,” I snarl at him.
Darius’ pickup truck is approaching.
Dax bares his fangs. Alexis gasps in dismay.
Tears fill Robert’s eyes. “I deserve whatever I get,” he mumbles, as Darius and five of his pack members park and pile out of the pickup truck.
“No you don’t!” Alexis cries out, her voice shaking with emotion. “You’re 17. You were trying to help. You had no parents to guide you. And you’re taking responsibility for it. I won’t let anything happen to you, Robert.”
And tiny Alexis slides in front of him, ready to face down a pack of wolves to protect this young boy. My brave mate.
The roar of Darius’ old pickup hasn’t even finished echoing off the buildings before the air tightens—charged, restless, full of the kind of energy that makes most shifters stiffen. I don’t. I’ve seen Darius mad before. If we need to get into a death-match, I’m more than ready.
The truck screeches to a stop at an angle so crooked it looks like he tried to parallel park and then remembered halfway through that he doesn’t believe in parallel parking.
The doors slam open. Darius climbs out first—massive, furious, and stomping forward like the pavement insulted his mother. His eyes blaze amber, his shoulders are bunched tight, and behind him five of his pack spill out like backup dancers in a very angry musical number.
They fan out behind him in perfect formation, moving fast and synchronized.
Dozens of our men have gathered behind me by now. Our pack responds with low growls.
Their scents hit next—dominance and adrenaline.
Darius’ glare snaps from me to Robert, and his jaw flexes.
“He’s our problem now. Give him to us,” Darius growls. Then he lets out a sneer. “Unless you want him to be the latest Moonstone pack member.”
Well, isn’t this a wonderful gift the universe has just handed me?
“I accept,” I say promptly.
Pack war averted.
Maybe.
Darius’ eyes widen in shock. “I…I wasn’t…I didn’t mean…” I’ve never seen him at a loss for words before. It’s hilarious.
“An Alpha always keeps his word,” I remind him.
It was very recently that my brother loudly bragged that he would dance the can-can in a tutu before he allowed a human onto our pack territory.
And not long after that, he danced the can-can in a tutu at his mating ceremony. To a human.
Darius’ eyes blaze with anger. “He deserves public execution.”
“He’s certainly in a heap of trouble,” I agree, nodding. “Our pack council will discuss how to punish our newest pack member.”
“Are you kidding me? Are you doing this just to piss me off?” he snarls at me.
I let the corner of my mouth quirk up in a smile. “No, but it’s certainly a bonus.”