Unfortunately, Ransom’s pack-leader potential showed itself in more ways than oratory smoothness. Because while I’d forgotten the male’s teasing smile, he hadn’t forgotten my precarious position here in the territory he commanded.
“Mai Fairchild.”
My eyes shot open as my name rolled across the sea of shifters between us. All around me, werewolves murmured, swiveled, turned as a unit to peer into my face.
I, on the other hand, was gazing directly at their pack leader. His lips, I noted, had curled back up into that faint, mocking smile. His neck bowed ever so gently like a king overseeing his subjects. And his words were soft as he told me: “I’m now ready to receive your oath.”
Chapter 24
My oath. “I...” I cleared my throat, blinking furiously as I struggled to find a way out of the trap that had closed around me while my attention was focused inward. Somehow, when I’d told Gunner I was willing to swear myself to his brother, I’d assumed I’d think of some clever compromise during the intervening hours before I was forced to actually live up to my boast.
But Ransom’s eyebrows rose as he eyed me impatiently. And any ingenuity I might have once possessed refused to show itself upon command.
So, thinking of Mama’s recent bombshell and the precariousness of Kira’s hold on reality, I accepted the inevitable and took the only path I could see toward my destination. “I, Mai Fairchild, swear to protect and uphold the Atwood pack to the best of my ability....”
The words gushed forth as if they’d been waiting for an outlet for weeks on end rather than being forced awkwardly from my lips by a force greater than myself. I was willing to protect the Atwood pack, I realized...at least the portion of it I’d spent the last few months living amidst.
Because Gunner and Tank and Crow and Allen and Elle and Liam had been more than mere companions. They’d hunted with me and trained me and protected my sister with their lives.
Pack mates. They were pack mates and I was glad to acknowledge that connection with an oath.
And as I spoke, the debt-bound tie that had clenched my gut for months gradually loosened. As if promising to be part of Gunner’s pack was all that had been required to allow my first full breath in several days.
For half a second, in fact, I could almost see the younger brother there beside me. Could sense Gunner’s delight as he accepted the binding I’d created and offered a similar oath of his own in return.
“I swear to protect you and yours also,” the alpha murmured, the warmth of his promise soothing skin pebbled by the morning chilliness. “I welcome you into our pack.”
Then I was back in the forest, one very unimpressed pack leader glowering down at me from the crest of the hill. While Gunner had taken my oath as a heart-felt promise aimed at a group he cared for, Ransom understood my verbal slipperiness to be a personal affront.
And that was the difference between the brothers, wasn’t it? Gunner had no need to make others feel smaller to increase his own stature...while Ransom had literally perched himself on the highest point in the forest in an effort to dominate his clan.
Means, motive, and opportunity. I shivered as the likelihood that Ransom really was the Master punched me in the gut.
But before I could follow that thought path any further, Ransom dismissed my evasion with a curt: “Enough of this.” His eyes flashed but his tone remained full and firm as if he’d gotten exactly what he desired when he continued. “We’ll meet back here to compare our kills at sunset. Ladies, I assume you want to hunt together. As the weaker sex, you deserve a fifteen-minute head start.”
I WOULD HAVE CHAFFED at the chauvinistic send-off if the aroma of jasmine hadn’t begun dissipating at that exact same moment. The owner of the scent appeared to be moving away from me rather than standing before me. Which meant...maybe Ransom wasn’t the Master after all?
Gladly, I leapt upon any thread leading me away from tying guilt to Gunner’s brother. The speed with which the pack princesses fled, however, left me little energy to quibble over who might have spilled Mama’s jasmine perfume all over herself. Instead, we were deep in the forest before I caught up to the slowest female, fox agility barely making up for my shorter stride as we pressed through tangles of weeds and bushes as a pack.
Then, finally, wolf tails were slapping at my muzzle, which meant I was close enough to search for the floral odor’s source. Not that my fellow runners let me. First a clawed foot struck my eye as I veered away from a thicket of brambles. Then, blinking furiously to regain full vision, I changed my trajectory, was pushed sideways a second time, and realized the females were actively attempting to exclude me from their midst.
Which suggested...they were all in cahoots with the Master? The idea didn’t sit right, not when I knew that these females had left several different clans quite recently in hopes of becoming Ransom’s designated mate. One might be my shadowy nemesis, but the chance that all twenty-odd females were working together to wreak havoc using my mother’s star ball seemed so slender as to be nonexistent.
All of these thoughts flitted through my head in the time it took for us to descend a steep hill and start back up the other side. I still smelled jasmine quite strongly—the only reason I hadn’t turned around to hunt more likely prey. So, pushing a hair more speed out of my dragging muscles, I leapt onto a tumble of massive boulders that allowed me to cut across the path of the earth-bound pack princesses, knowing even as I did so that I’d have no better luck invading the cluster from the front.
Only, the pack princesses were no longer pressing forward. Instead, as if reacting to an unspoken signal, the triangle of werewolves opened up into a circle at the base of the boulders, the lead wolf trotting backwards to sniff at a newly shifted female lying naked on the earth. The girl—because she probably hadn’t yet reached her twentieth birthday—was sobbing furiously. And for a moment, I lost the thread of my thoughts and decided the Master could wait until we discovered whatever had set the poor teenager off.
I was too far away to soothe anyone, but the lead wolf was shifting and pulling the younger woman into her arms already. “Shh, it’s alright,” Lucinda murmured. Because, of course, the female who had glared daggers at me the previous evening would turn out to be the unofficial leader of this temporary pack.
“But it happened again.” The girl’s voice quavered, her tone nasal and rough due to stopped-up nostrils. Meanwhile, my own nostrils flared as I noted the strong presence of Mama’s jasmine aroma emanating from the center of the circle of werewolves.
“Are you sure?” one of the other females asked dubiously. But I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I’d leapt down from my perch and padded past the milling wolves who were too intent upon the teenager’s story to hinder my approach.
Because I had a sinking suspicion I knew what the girl was so upset about. Especially given the evidence of Mama’s blood-gathering tactics from my dream....
Sure enough, the child answered with a gesture, lifting up both hands in front of her face palm-sides outward. “There’s no mistaking this,” she whispered.
And she was right. Because I’d seen those same blood-rimmed fingernails on my own hands when joining Mama’s hunt in my dream.
Chapter 25
“You need to leave.” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. Because I should have been debriefing the child to figure out how my mother had possessed her, should have been figuring out whether there was an obvious connection between the Master and his prey.
On the other hand, I didn’t really regret my instinctive reaction. Because this poor child couldn’t stay here to be used as some sort of magic-harvesting sex slave without her knowledge and consent.
Only now Lucinda was in my face, her long nails biting into the bare skin of my shoulder. “What have you done to my sister?” she demanded, clearly drawing kitsune-related conclusions that were more grounded in reality than I cared to admit.
“I haven’t done anything,” I countered, fo
rcing my star ball to remain quiescent despite the danger of two dozen angry werewolves pressing closer and closer upon me. “But it’s not safe for her to be here. It’s not safe here for any of you.”
Because while Lucinda’s sister was likely the easiest mark among them, I saw no reason Mama couldn’t slip into someone else’s skin if her Master so commanded. Even if I couldn’t find our shadowed enemy in this cluster of pack princesses, at least I could protect them...and cut off the Master’s easy access to werewolf blood at the same time.
And that quickly, Lucinda dismissed me as irrelevant. “Go tell your grandmother how to suck eggs,” she rebutted while turning away as if I’d ceased existing. The female dropped to her knees then scrabbled through the leaf litter, and for one split second I thought she might have lost her mind...
...Until a ziplock-coated cellphone emerged from the hole she’d so recently dug with her manicured fingers. “You were right,” Lucinda said into the microphone after two short rings ended with the sound of heavy breathing. “I need a pickup.”
“You and Gloria and anyone else?” The voice on the other end was masculine, hard—an unhappy werewolf. But Lucinda wasn’t cowed. Instead, she raised her eyebrows and surveyed the faces that surrounded us on every side.
“My brother will take anyone who wants away from this shithole,” she informed her audience. And, honestly, I couldn’t blame her for breaking up what should have been a carefully choreographed werewolf courtship and had instead turned into a frat-boy party minus the beers. Not even when her final words promised Ransom would be raging in the near future: “Who wants in?”
A moment of silence...then the rest of the pack princesses agreed in a flood of relieved acquiescence. To no one’s astonishment, Lucinda didn’t offer me the same pickup service she’d granted to the others. But, as the other females turned away in preparation to depart, she did toss me the powered-down cell phone in a gesture that came very much as a surprise.
“If you have anyone you can call for backup, I recommend you do so,” Lucinda told me. Then she, her sister, and the rest of the pack princesses shivered back down to four legs and set off north, toward what I assumed was the closest road.
UNFORTUNATELY, I WASN’T a werewolf with backup waiting. That said, there was one loose thread I’d left dangling that could be cleared up with a simple call.
“Stephanie Baumgartner, Social Services,” Kira’s social worker answered, her voice less effusive than I was used to. But, of course, Stephanie wouldn’t recognize this number. Wouldn’t know who was calling her out of the blue.
“It’s me, Mai,” I started before leaving honesty behind entirely. “My phone’s battery died, so I’m using a friend’s. Guess I wasn’t quite prepared for camping after all....”
Thinking of all of the events of the last twenty-four hours that I’d been totally unprepared for teased out a chuckle. And Stephanie softened, laughing right alongside me.
“Well, that’s the point of camping,” she responded, all grandmotherly wisdom. “It’s good for young people to learn there’s more to life than the internet. Fish to catch. Naps to take.”
“Mm hm,” I agreed. So I needn’t have worried. My hurried voice mail had done the trick to keep Stephanie happy and Kira’s court case on track after all.
But before I could get off the phone, the arbiter of my sister’s future continued onward with her litany of summer-vacation perks. “Hot dogs cooked over an open fire. S’mores! I think it’s been at least a decade since I’ve tasted s’mores.”
A tendency to ramble was one of Stephanie’s few flaws. Luckily, I was able to pull up the mapping feature on Lucinda’s phone while half listening and take advantage of the lull to determine where Kira and I had ended up. Unsurprisingly, this vast wilderness turned out to be part of Atwood clan central. If we just walked west far enough, we’d end up in the more conventional settlement most of these shifters called home....
“In fact, I think I’ll come up and join you. I’ve got the afternoon off and need to squeeze in one more home visit before the big day tomorrow. How does that sound?”
I’d already hummed my agreement before I realized what Stephanie had suggested. “Wait...what? No! We’ll be back in plenty of time for a home visit. And we’re not car camping. You’d have to hike in quite a ways to get to our site...”
“I’m old but I’m not feeble! Don’t worry—I can be there before dinner. What’s the address?”
I hesitated, imagining Stephanie waltzing up to a werewolf gathering to check how Kira was getting along. It sounded like a disaster, and I wished for the first time that Gunner hadn’t been so inclusive about including Kira’s social worker in pack events previously.
Because we’d taken Stephanie and her daughter with us to the movies one day. Had attended her youngest grandchild’s birthday party with presents in hand. The line between professional and personal had blurred proportionally...which was likely part of the reason Stephanie had gone to bat for us so firmly in court.
Now, though, she’d wonder if I rejected her offer to join us. Would wonder...and might change her tune at the final custody hearing we still had a thread of a chance of managing to attend.
“Mai? Are you still there? These newfangled phones have terrible connections....”
“I’m here,” I answered, buying just a little more time in which to ponder options. We’d have to set up a fake camp somewhere far from the gathering for Stephanie’s own protection. Gunner would be game, I knew that. And he could definitely make things work....
So I caved and told her: “We’d love to have you join us.” Then I rattled off the coordinates and hung up the phone.
Chapter 26
Not wanting to tempt my luck further, I re-hid Lucinda’s cellphone as quickly as possible before slipping into my fur form and sprinting into the trees. Because if an innocent human was coming to visit this evening, it had become even more imperative that I track down the Master now.
Unfortunately, the world was working against me. At first, the diffuse sprinkles making their way through the canopy felt good against my heated fur and the skin underneath it. But then the sky darkened to twilight, and abruptly it began to pour.
So, okay, I’d navigate back to the meeting spot based on landmarks rather than on scent trails. Over the hill behind me, past that gnarled mammoth of a something-or-other tree, then across the abruptly raging creek....
There had been at least a tendril of fur-flavor to the air guiding me up until this point. But now, as sodden branches drooped wetly against my backbone, I was forced to rely on eyesight alone. Turning in a slow circle, I realized I had no idea where I’d ended up.
Because the map on the phone had made the green blob of wilderness appear not much larger than my neighborhood back in the city. On the ground, however, the forest felt like an inimical being intent upon swallowing me whole.
In fact, I was almost certain I recognized the tree dominating this small clearing. Wasn’t that the same gnarled monster I’d passed by when scrambling up the scree slope on the other side of the creek earlier? Either I was walking in circles or....
I padded forward, reaching out one paw to tap at what should have been wet, scaly bark. Only...there was nothing there to pause my forward momentum. Nothing to prevent me from losing my balance and falling forward into the space where my eyes said a tree should have been.
Ice enfolded me. Darkness surrounded me. And when I pulled desperately at my star ball...I found only a weak spark of magic willing to answer my call.
Hopping backwards, I fell over my own four feet in a desperate attempt to escape the illusion. And now that I wasn’t in the middle of the magic, I could pick out a shape where the tree had previously stood.
A shape...who turned as I watched materialized into a slender, Asian woman. My mother, or at least a fragment of her through which raindrops continued to fall.
“I’m sorry,” Mama mouthed. “He made me do it.”
Then she wi
sped into nothing just as a wolf stepped toward me out of the trees.
HE. Of course the Master was Ransom. I wasn’t sure how I could have doubted my initial supposition, despite the thread of jasmine leading me away into the female subpack. Not when Mama had as good as pointed me at the clan leader the moment I stepped out of the woods and into the amphitheater. Not when Ransom himself had proven his sliminess every time we’d had a chance to interact.
Sure enough, the wolf stalking toward me now was rain-drenched but still distinctly cinnamon, the distinctive Atwood streak forming white eyebrows on his lupine forehead. Meanwhile, his ozone aroma carried toward me so strongly it proved the wolf wasn’t a run-of-the-mill member of the pack.
Ransom had been clever, using my mother’s magic to find and weaken me as I ran alone through the forest. But even though the playing field wasn’t exactly level, I was glad of any shortcut that helped me fix Kira’s problem now.
In other words, I was ready for our final showdown. So, rather than backpedaling away from the animal who was twice as large as I was, I pushed everything I had into one shift back to humanity. Then I sent my star ball fluttering toward my fingers to turn into a sword.
Only no weapon materialized. No magic remained to be called upon. Instead, the effort left me bent over and gasping for breath.
The wolf, meanwhile, strode steadily forward across the clearing. Wet leaves squished rather than crunched beneath his feet as he advanced. He raised his chin to inhale, then his jaws gaped open as if he couldn’t wait to feel my skin sliding beneath his fangs.
What would happen if the Master bit into a kitsune? Would I become bound to Ransom like my mother was, forced to obey his every command?
Now I did backpedal, fingers trailing across the leaf litter as I crabwalked backwards away from the menacing shifter. Ah, there. A rock the size of a duck’s egg. Rounded and hard, it fit in my palm and flew smooth and true toward my opponent, who was now no more than ten feet away.
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