Chapter 11, The Predator’s Eye
Varg
The Dead Woods was a kingdom of silence and iron, and tonight, the silence was absolute.
I stood on the obsidian ridge, a shadow carved from the mountain itself.
The blue-white glare of high-intensity searchlights cut through the fog, sweeping across the shale in mechanical, sweeping arcs.
Silas was overcompensating. I could taste it on the wind, the sound of humming security fences and the low, distant howling.
“The perimeter is locked down,” Torin’s voice grated through the mind-link.
He was a mile to my west, belly-down in the freezing needles.
“They’ve tripled the guard. Every fifty yards, there’s a Sentinel in tactical gear, eyes glued to the border. They aren’t looking for a hunt, Alpha. They’re holding their breath.”
“Silas is rattled,” I projected. My voice wasn’t a roar, but a low-frequency hum that settled the nerves of my sentinels.
“He knows his border was violated. He knows one of his own walked onto my soil and I let her walk back. Now he’s flooding the line with bodies to prove to his pack that he still owns the dirt beneath his feet.”
“The scouts are restless,” Rhys added from the southern pass. “The men want to push back, Varg. They want to show them what they’re made out of.”
I felt the ripple of aggression through the link, the younger wolves were testing the leash, their heart rates spiking. They wanted to dance on the edge of those searchlights just to see the High-Ridge flinch.
“Control yourselves,” I snapped, the command hitting the link like a slap.
“No border crosses. Not even a tease. I want zero engagement. The first wolf who pushes the line, even by an inch, will spend the next month on solo patrol at the North Tower. You can count the ice-cracks in the wind until your ears freeze off.”
The collective pulse of the pack dropped instantly. The North Tower was a godforsaken needle of rock where the wind never stopped screaming and the temperature stayed well below zero. It was the graveyard shift of the Dead Woods.
“Withdraw the scouts to the interior,” I ordered. “Let the High-Ridge waste their batteries and their nerves. Let them stand in the cold and watch the fog until they start seeing shadows where there are none.”
“And if they move into the Gray Zone?” Torin asked.
“Then we remind them why they built the walls in the first place,” I replied, the ice of the mountain vibrating in my chest. “But until they set foot on our soil, we let them rot in their own paranoia.”
I turned back into the frozen heart of the woods, the darkness swallowing my form. The High-Ridge could guard their border all they wanted.