Chapter 15
“Jena, honey, you can let go now.”
Her eyes flicked open at Felix’s voice, then narrowed. The wolf she’d been straddling stared at her, his tongue lolling like it was laughing
“I knew that,” she muttered, weakly pushing off the were to roll to one side and flop onto her back. Chainsaws rumbled in the distance, despite rain misting down through the thick pine boughs above.
“You okay?” Felix asked, his brow knit.
“Yep. Just gonna lay here.” Fuck it. She was done.
Beside her, the were’s form shimmered, and Kelsey’s twin brother Liam abruptly grinned down at her. Oh, God. It would be him. “Looking good, Jena.”
She slapped a hand over her eyes. “Please go put on pants.”
He laughed and jogged toward a trailer raised up on blocks, then disappeared inside. Three more of the things stood in close proximity, set at angles between the massive pines. Looked like they’d officially made it to the other side of the tracks.
She shot Felix a look. “Tell me you didn’t know.”
“Oh, I totally knew,” he said. “But I’ll take dealing with Liam over your bloody remains any day of the week. Those Westside weres were not messing around.”
Jena winced, a hand on her side as she struggled to sit. “Yeah, I got that impression.” She raised the edge of her shirt. The angry red gash hadn’t stopped bleeding. Damn. She gingerly touched the bruising that had set in. Ugh, it was swollen and hot.
Felix hissed air through his teeth. “That looks like it hurts.”
“It does. I probably contracted gangrene or something from that hatch.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how it works, but it could be tetanus, hepatitis, or—”
“Thanks.” She glowered, dropping her shirt as she cut him off. “I don’t understand why Kelsey’s saliva didn’t heal it.”
“Need me to try?” Liam asked, puffing his dark curls aside, his stupid grin too wide as he came over, pulling on a tee. He wasn’t quite as buff as Chase, but he came close, and he was a thousand times more trouble.
“No,” Jena and Felix said together. God, the last thing they needed to do was to encourage Liam Montgomery to get physical.
He put a hand to his chest. “I’m hurt, guys. I thought we were friends.”
Felix rolled his eyes. “Don’t we have somewhere to be, friend?”
“Oh, yeah,” Liam brightened up, like he’d totally forgotten about why they were there. “My dad wants to see you. I’m sure Kelsey’s already filling him in.” He turned, waving a hand over his shoulder and started past the trailers.
Jena groaned, her thigh muscles pinging and twitching. Felix reached down to help her up. “Come on, it’s not like you have to go to the prom with him.”
“No, you did that.” She cocked a brow, brushing clumps of damp pine needles off herself. Ugh. They were all in her hair.
A chainsaw cut out, and a yell split the air. Jena glanced deeper into the forest at a sharp crack and the sound of branches snapping, followed by a whump that went right through the soles of her shoes. Jesus.
“Don’t remind me,” Felix muttered, peering in the same direction before heading after Liam. Jena limped along, taking up the rear. “Worst decision ever.”
Yep. That it had been. She couldn’t help but scowl remembering talking Felix down from the “polycule proposal” after he found Liam canoodling with Jenny Rys. Felix had been crushed.
“You know he married her,” he said a moment later, like he’d been thinking about the same thing. He slowed his steps to match her pace.
“Who, Jenny?”
“Mmm. They had four kids, and then she left him for Pete Randall. That was five or six years ago. Someone said Liam headed out west after, but I didn’t hear anything about him being back.”
“That’s shocking,” she said, still picking needles out of her hair. “You’d think they would’ve flagged him at the edge of town and sent out an emergency broadcast like they did for me.”
“True, the gossip dost flow,” Felix allowed. “But trust me, there were no broadcasts when you came back, emergency or otherwise. I’m in charge of issuing those for the town. There were, however, a flurry of posts on the church message board.” He frowned, trying to smooth his ruined tie.
“Like that’s any better.” Jena grumbled, glancing toward the sound of a chainsaw starting up again. “Have you ever met his dad?”
Felix shook his head as they picked down the rutted path after Liam.
Some kind of big equipment had recently driven through here.
“No. Our relationship was more of the ‘let’s hook-up under the bridge outside of town’ kind of romance.
You know how things were back then. No one aside from the pack was allowed into their territory and fraternizing frowned upon.
His dad’s still a recluse, but I did meet his mother at a bake sale once. She seemed nice.”
“Mmm.” Jena hummed. She did know how it’d been, which made all of this so much weirder.
The only reason they knew any of the Eastside weres was from school.
In theory, the town itself was neutral territory between the two packs, but they hadn’t lingered after class.
Kelsey working at Cups never would’ve happened back in the day.
Ahead, Liam had stopped by two massive pines. “Dad’s down in the hollow,” he said when they got close, the smell of a campfire teasing their noses. “It takes a day to get the bed of coals hot enough for the pig roast, and all this rain isn’t helping. You guys coming to that?”
Felix just looked at him, and Liam had the decency to blush. “Right…” He rubbed the back of his neck and started down the rocky slope.
They followed after, and Jena shivered as they stepped past the trees, a faint sense of magic prickling over her skin. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“A ward.” It was old, and oddly similar to the ones at the ruins. This one wasn’t keyed to ill-intent though…invitation only, maybe?
“No. I don’t feel anything except filthy and annoyed.” Felix shook his head, his ginger brows furrowed. “Come on, Liam isn’t waiting for us. Not like that’s a surprise.”
No, but feeling her mother’s magic here was, and now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure there’d been another, fainter ward as they’d crossed over the tracks into Eastsider territory. Of course, she’d been hanging on to stupid Liam for dear life at the time, so who knew for sure.
God, all of this was so weird. Jena took a deep breath as they hurried to catch up.
The trees here were set farther apart, but the canopy was somehow thicker.
Stumps dotted the spaces between them, and the forest floor was pristine.
A stream trickled down the hillside paralleling them as they got farther along the path, ferns and thick lichen decorating the stones.
Naiads turned to watch them pass, poking their sharp little faces around the greenery.
“Pretty,” Felix murmured, glancing from the idyllic scene toward a series of regular thumps punctuating the stillness.
It was pretty, and someone had roped solar lights through the lowest branches above.
They passed a smattering of damp picnic tables, and the smell of wood smoke got thicker.
A plume wafted up from behind an outcropping of boulders ahead.
Liam disappeared behind them. Guess that’s where they were headed.
Jena trailed a hand over the rough granite as they passed, a faint prickle of magic beneath her fingertips.
She chewed her lip, the faint regard of the node teasing her consciousness.
Granted, it was the same kind of stone that the pillars on the tor were made of, but it shouldn’t be resonating with them this far out.
Beyond the outcropping was a smoldering pit with tarps strung up around it.
Liam leaned against more of the stones, and Kelsey sat on a rock feeding the low fire.
A massive were in flannel was chopping seasoned logs into slats of kindling nearby.
He turned as they approached, and Jena sucked in a breath.
Her heart about stopped. It was Chase’s father—no, it couldn’t be, but…
“Ah, there you are,” he said. His smile was genuine as he set his axe down and held out a hand to Jena. “Phil Montgomery. Nice to see you again, though I doubt you remember me.”
She raised hers to meet it in a daze. “You’re a twin?”
He scowled as they shook, his palm callused and rough. “Don’t remind me.”
“Sorry?” Jena winced.
Phil grunted and nodded toward a picnic table away from the billowing smoke. “Have a seat, we need to talk.” He raised his face to sniff the air. “You’re hurt?”
“It’s nothing,” Jena murmured, her side throbbing. They went over to the table, and she gratefully sat, her legs officially jelly. Crampy, tingling, pinging jelly. Ugh. “Why is there a ward around the hollow?”
“Felt that, did you? I’m not surprised. Your mother spent a lot of time on it, here,” he said wistfully looking around. He ran a hand over his dark beard. “Damn. This is going to be harder than I thought. Where to start…”
“How about with the silence between the packs, otherwise none of this will make sense,” Kelsey said, handing them each a bottle of water with a chiding look at her father.
Phil frowned. “Yeah…that.” He sat across from them and buzzed his lips.
“He doesn’t talk about it,” Kelsey stage-whispered.
“Don’t you have coals to tend?” her father asked. “Tell Liam to keep chopping.”
She huffed at him and meandered to the fire. A moment later the rhythmic fall of an axe picked up.
“The silence came about because after the last alpha passed, Wallace and I had very different visions for the Montgomery pack. Mine looks like this and his looks like Sunnyside.” He frowned like he wanted to spit.
“And that’s entirely thanks to that piece of shit beta of his.
I wish to God they’d never met. Wally wasn’t always such a prick, but once he and Malcom started hanging out, he changed, and not for the better. ”
No surprise there. Jena cracked her water bottle and took a sip. God, that was good. Felix did the same, his eyes drifting back to the fire pit.