Leading the Pack (Dragonblood Dynasty #9)

Chapter 1

Merric

The highway south stretches flat and gray through country that doesn’t want us. Eastern Oregon, sagebrush and nothing, the kind of land that makes wolves restless because there’s nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. My wolf hates it. I’m not wild about it myself.

Cameron sits in the passenger seat with his forehead against the window and his eyes closed. He hasn’t spoken in two hours. Before that, it was three words: “Water, please, Alpha.” Kid talks like he’s rationing syllables the way his body’s been rationing calories.

I pass him a bottle without comment. He drinks in small, careful sips. Learned behavior. Someone taught him that food and water can be taken away, so you make every drop count.

Six months in a Syndicate lab taught him that.

My hands tighten on the wheel.

Behind us, Rook drives the second truck with Dane riding shotgun. Sienna and Briar follow in the third. Three vehicles, six wolves, one broken kid, and about eight hours of road between here and Frostbourne territory. That’s if the roads stay clear and nobody comes looking for the cargo.

The cargo being a seventeen-year-old who carries magic the Syndicate would burn countries to reclaim.

Motherfuckers.

I check the mirrors. Clear. Check again. Still clear. Doesn’t stop the itch between my shoulder blades.

Cameron shifts against the door. The movement pulls his shirt collar, and I catch a glimpse of the scar tissue on his throat. Thick, surgical, deliberate. They didn’t just hurt him. They took their time. Methodical. Scientific.

My wolf snarls low in my chest. The sound doesn’t make it past my lips, but my grip on the steering wheel could bend metal.

Easy now. He’s out. He’s safe. We’re taking him home.

Home. Wherever the hell that is now.

The kid opens his eyes. Copper-gold, catching the late afternoon light… and my lungs forget how to work because those are her eyes. Exact shade. Brenna’s eyes in her son’s face.

I shut that down fast. Can’t afford it. Not driving. Not with the boy right there.

“Hungry?” I ask.

He considers it like the question has deeper implications. “I could eat.”

“Cooler’s behind your seat. Sienna packed sandwiches. Enough to feed a platoon, knowing her.”

He reaches back, careful with his movements. Everything about this kid is careful. Controlled. He holds himself the way animals do after they’ve been caged too long: alert to every sound, every shift in the air, every potential threat.

He eats the sandwich in measured bites. Doesn’t rush. Doesn’t waste.

I let the silence sit. Wolves understand silence better than most. Sometimes it’s the kindest thing you can offer someone who’s spent six months listening to their own screams bounce off concrete.

The sagebrush gives way to scrubby pines as we gain elevation. Better country. My wolf settles slightly. We’re heading through the Cascades’ southern foothills, and the terrain is starting to feel right. Trees. Ridgelines. Places where a wolf can disappear.

“You served with Aurora,” Cameron says it flat. It’s an observation, not a question.

“Helped them with a situation. Wouldn’t call it serving.” I shrug.

“That dragon. The big one. Jericho. He your friend?”

Interesting question from a kid who’s been inside a Syndicate research facility. Dragons would be monsters in his world. The things that held the cages.

“He earned my respect,” I say. “That’s different from friendship. But it’s worth more.”

Cameron turns that over. Nods once.

Bright kid. Doesn’t say much, but the gears are always turning. Another thing he got from her.

I grip the ring under my shirt without thinking. Thin gold band on a leather cord, warm from my skin. Brenna's ring. The one she threw at me in that field, and I never stopped wearing.

She’s dead now. And her boy is sitting in my truck with her eyes and her silence and a question I can’t bring myself to ask.

Is he mine?

Seventeen years old. I left eighteen years ago. I’m no kind of genius, but I don’t need to be.

But knowing and confirming are different animals. And this isn’t the time, the place, or my right. Not without certainty. Not without—

She’s dead. She doesn’t get a say anymore.

And that’s the part that grinds worst of all.

The radio crackles. Rook’s voice: “Rest stop in four miles. Fueling up?”

I key the mic. “Yeah. Quick stop. Twenty minutes max.”

I turn my attention back to the road and away from ghosts.

Pretty soon, I’m easing off the gas and pulling off the road. The truck stop is little more than a gas pump and a diner with a parking lot that’s seen better decades. Rook pulls in behind me and kills the engine. Sienna and Briar bring up the rear.

Cameron stays in the truck while I fill the tank. Doesn’t volunteer to get out. I don’t push it.

Briar’s out first, like always. Slim and silent, moving around the building. She checks the sight lines, the exit routes, the dumpsters that could hide a threat. Sixty seconds, and she’s back with a nod. Clear.

“Diner’s got coffee,” she says. “Smells terrible. Want some?”

“Bring two.”

She goes. Briar doesn’t waste words or motion.

Everything about her is economy. She says what she needs to, does what she needs to, and gets the job done.

Good teammate. I’ve watched her track a scent trail across forty miles of rain-washed ground and never lose the thread.

She’s the reason I sleep at night. Well. One of the reasons.

Dane unfolds himself from Rook’s truck, and the whole parking lot seems to shrink.

Six-six and built like something you’d use to knock down walls.

He stretches, rolls his neck, surveys the area the way he surveys everything, with the confidence of a man who knows he’s the most dangerous thing in any given room and doesn’t need to prove it.

He catches me looking and lifts his chin. There’s a question in the gesture.

I shake my head. Nothing’s wrong.

Or everything’s wrong.

Same thing these days.

Dane walks to the edge of the lot where the pavement crumbles into dirt and dead grass.

He stands there with his back to us, face turned south, and just breathes.

I know what he’s doing. Scenting home. We’re hours out, but wolves can pick up territory markers from impossible distances if the wind is kind.

Sienna approaches the truck, going to the passenger side where Cameron is sitting behind the glass. I watch her lean against the door and say something through the cracked window. Easy. Unhurried. The tone you’d use on a skittish horse, except Sienna makes it sound natural instead of contrived.

Cameron opens the door. Gets out. She hands him something—a protein bar from her jacket pocket. He takes it. She says something else, and the corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. But close.

That’s Sienna. She collects strays the way other people collect grudges.

Rook materializes at my elbow. He’s good at that. For a man built like a barrel, he moves quieter than he has any right to.

“Kid doing okay?”

“Holding together.”

Rook watches Sienna walk Cameron toward the diner. Then he looks at me, and I know he’s assessing my responses. We’ve been pack brothers since we were fourteen. He’s my second because he’s the smartest wolf I know, not because he’s the toughest, though he’s that too.

“Merric…”

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“You’re about to say something I’m not ready to hear.”

He rolls the toothpick in his mouth from one side to the other. Considering. “Fine. I’ll say something else. You bypassed the I-84 junction an hour ago.”

I don’t respond.

“I-84 goes east. Toward home. Toward the stronghold. You went south.”

“I know where south goes, Rook.”

“So do I. South goes to Ravenclaw.”

I fill the tank. The pump clicks. I don’t look at him.

“You’re not taking the kid to Frostbourne first,” Rook says. Not a question. “You’re taking him straight home. To Ravenclaw territory. Into the jaws of every political shitstorm we’ve spent ten years avoiding.”

“That about covers it.”

“And the rest of us get a vote in this?”

Now I look at him. “Since when does my pack vote on where I drive?”

“Since where you drive might get us all in shit.” He holds my eye. Doesn’t flinch, doesn’t back down. That’s why he’s my second. “I’m not arguing, Merric. I’m asking you to trust me with the reason.”

I pull the nozzle free. Cap the tank. Take my time, because what I’m about to say can’t be unsaid.

“She told him to find me. Brenna. After everything I did to her, she told her son that if things went sideways, he should come to me. That I’d protect him when nobody else would.”

Rook waits.

“She’s dead because nobody stood for her people. Because I was too much of a coward to tell the elders to get fucked. I’m not making that choice again. Not with her son sitting in my goddamn truck.”

Rook’s jaw loosens. Just that; one small release of tension he’d been holding without showing it. He’d already worked out most of this. What I’m watching now is acceptance. The deliberate kind that means he’s in.

“The others will want to know.”

“Tell them. Tell them all of it. And tell them that anyone who wants to head to Frostbourne instead, I understand. No hard feelings. No consequences.”

Rook gives me a look that says I’m an idiot. “I’ll tell them. And then I’ll fill up my tank, because nobody’s splitting off and you damn well know it.”

He walks away. I watch him intercept Dane at the edge of the lot. A muted conversation. Dane’s head turns toward my truck, where Cameron’s empty seat holds the impression of a boy who weighs about forty pounds less than he should. Then Dane nods. Short. Final.

Briar comes back with coffee. She hands me a cup, glances at Rook and Dane talking, reads the situation in about two seconds flat.

“Ravenclaw?” she asks.

“Ravenclaw.”

She takes a sip of her own coffee. “Good. I was going to be annoyed if we drove eight hours to our stronghold just to turn around and drive eight more.”

Typical Briar. Practical to the bone.