Chapter 21
Jason
Ahowl splits the darkness.
Sharp.
High.
Panicked.
It knifes straight through my half-dreaming brain and drags me into consciousness, like I’ve been ripped out of my own body.
I jerk upright in Violet’s bed, heart slamming hard enough to bruise bone, breath already coming fast because that sound is wrong.
It’s not a warning howl or a territorial call.
It’s not a roll-call yip or a where-the-hell-are-you bark.
It’s a howl that gives fear life.
Buff.
My stomach drops so violently I swear I feel the mattress tilt. I grab blindly at the nightstand, fingers shaking, fumbling until they hit my phone.
4:07 a.m.
Too early for anything but nightmares. Too late for this to be nothing.
“Jason?” Violet’s sleepy voice brushes my shoulder, soft and confused.
Another howl rips through the quiet, closer this time, frayed at the edges. It’s full of a terror I haven’t heard from Buff since we were kids and the world was much, much crueler. Every instinct I have lights up at once.
Go.
I swing my legs off the bed, already grabbing my jeans, my pulse roaring in my ears like a storm breaking loose.
“Something’s wrong,” I rasp, not trusting my voice to be steady.
“Stay here. Please.” Whatever’s out there made Buff howl like that, and anything that can scare him, could sure as hell come for us next.
Violet stirs lightly behind me, murmuring something as she curls deeper into the blankets. I guess she didn’t hear me, or any of this. Good. I’d rather her be asleep than afraid.
The air outside is cold enough to sting my skin, biting at the sweat still drying on my chest. My breath is visible in the pre-dawn dark as I sprint toward the tree line, bare feet pounding against the ground, muscles already burning with the shift trying to claw its way up my spine.
I let my wolf surge just close enough to sharpen my hearing, the world snapping into brutal clarity. Every twig. Every rustle. Every panicked echo of Buff’s voice in the distance. The forest feels wrong, too still, like it’s bracing with me. Waiting.
Buff barrels into me before I reach the clearing, slamming into my chest hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. He’s in human form now. Barefoot, scraped, wild-eyed, shaking in a way I’ve only seen once before.
The night we were cast out.
The night everything we knew burned.
“Jason.” He grabs my shoulders, fingers digging in like he’s trying to anchor himself. “You gotta run. You gotta run now.”
My stomach drops. “What happened?”
Buff’s mouth opens, but nothing coherent comes out—just fragments caught on his breath. His fear spills into the air, sharp and metallic, stinging my tongue. My wolf recoils.
“I—I did it,” he chokes finally, voice cracking. “I sold it.”
My blood runs cold.
“Sold what?”
Buff’s eyes, always quick to spark with trouble or mischief or unhinged excitement, are empty now, hollowed out by something bigger than panic.
He swallows hard, shoulders shaking. “The necklace. My mother’s necklace.”
My heart caves in. “No.”
It’s like he slammed his fist right into my sternum.
That necklace was everything to him. The last tie to his mother.
The last proof she ever existed. He never took it off.
He slept with it as a kid, clutching it in his palm, convinced if he let go, the nightmares would swallow him the same way they swallowed her.
“You didn’t,” I whisper, because anything louder might break us both.
His eyes shine, but he keeps talking like if he stops, he’ll fall apart. “I did. I had to.” His voice cracks on the last word, splintering like old wood. “I got enough for one fake ID. One ticket north.” He shoves the envelope at my chest with a shaking hand. “You can get out. You can go.”
For a heartbeat, the world blurs.
Not from fear.
Not from anger.
From the sheer, brutal weight of what he just sacrificed for me.
For us.
“Buff…” My voice breaks, a rough scrape of disbelief and grief and fury and love all tangled together. “You sold the last piece of her for me?”
“No.” His jaw trembles. “I sold it so at least one of us doesn’t die.”
“What do you mean?”
Then, the words sink in. Actually, they punch a hole right through me.
He’s serious. He’s terrified. He thinks he’s dead already.
And the worst part?
He thinks I’m the one worth saving.
I swallow hard, my throat burning.
“Buff, I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to,” he whispers, stepping back like he’s trying to force distance between us. “They know where you are now. They’re coming for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He sold you out.”
“Who?” But the question isn’t even in the space between us when I realize I’ve been betrayed. “Froggy.”
“Yeah, he told them where you are, and they’re coming.”
The wind cuts through the clearing, carrying the distant echo of something moving—fast—through the trees.
Buff hears it too, his whole body stiffening. “We don’t have time. Take it. Run. Please, Jace. If you stay… if you stay, they’ll take you like she was taken.”
His mother.
Pain explodes inside my chest, violent enough to stagger me.
I grab his wrist. “No one is taking me. And no one is taking you.”
My voice is low and fierce, but steady. A promise carved from bone. But underneath my false bravado, my blood runs cold. I have to go. Now!
I run a hand through my hair. I can’t. I can’t leave her. What’s to stop Froggy from telling the alphas where she is and how much money she has?
“Fuck!” I know what I need to do.
“Jason…” he whispers.
“I need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I need you to go back and clean up the camp. Violet is still going to need a guide dog.” I pull the collar I always keep with me out of my pocket, then hand it over to him. It feels like I’m handing over my life.
“Promise me you won’t let anything happen to her. Promise me you’ll take care of her.”
A tear slips down his cheek, and his lower lip trembles. “No, Jace. I… I’m not you.”
Sadness twists behind my ribs. God, he doesn’t even understand.
“You’re better,” I whisper.
Buff shakes his head hard, tears threatening to spill.
“No, I’m not—I’m not strong like you, I’m not brave like you, I’m not—”
“Stop.” I grip the back of his neck, steadying him. “Strength isn’t teeth and rage and stupid hero shit.”
He sobs, his breath hitching.
“Strength is staying,” I say quietly. “Strength is loyalty. Strength is loving someone enough to protect them even when it breaks you.”
He swallows, eyes flicking down to the collar crushed in his fist.
“You can be her safe place,” I tell him. “You just have to believe it.”
A small, cracked sound escapes him—half sob, half denial. “I’m scared,” he whispers.
“I know.” I pull him back into a rough, fierce embrace—the kind you give your brother before the world ends. “But you won’t be alone. Not really. She’s… she’s sunshine, Buff. She’ll love you without even trying. She’ll heal pieces of you that you didn’t know were broken.”
His shoulders shake.
“And what about you?” he chokes out.
I let him go and step back. “I’ll handle what’s coming. That’s what I’m good at.”
His face crumples, grief written in every line. “Jason, don’t do this.”
I offer him the faintest, saddest smile. “I’m not dying tonight, Buff. I just need you to live. Go,” I say again, voice steady, final. “She needs you. And I… I need her safe.”
He shakes his head once, violently, then sprints into the trees, clutching the collar to his chest like a lifeline.
I turn toward the sound of approaching wolves. And for the first time in years, I stop running.
I stand there only long enough to hear him reach the old campsite. I can almost feel him realize I never took the envelope. Never touched the money. Never had any intention of running.
His howl rips through the night.
Betrayal.
Heartbreak.
Grief.
“Come back!”
The faint, fading voice pushes through the shifter-bond like a knife to the spine.
“Don’t do this! Jace—please—don’t do this!”
I close my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I have to.”
Then I shut the bond.
Cut it clean.
I don’t go south toward escape.
I go north, toward the alphas’ scouts. Toward danger. Toward the only choice that keeps Violet safe.
The wind shifts.
Their scent hits me—anger, steel, wolf musk, silver oil, adrenaline.
I burst into their clearing.
Seven wolves stop mid-stride. Their hackles raise, teeth bare. The air thickens with the intent to kill.
I hold my hands up.
“I’m here to surrender,” I call out. My voice does not shake. “Take me to the alphas.”
The biggest wolf steps forward, lips curling.
No one speaks.
And then he lunges.
The world goes black.