Chapter 173 The Scent Beneath the Blood

Chapter 173 The Scent Beneath the Blood
(Felix)
The world narrows to movement and scent and the rhythm of my paws hitting the ground as we tear through the trees after them. Blood is still hot in my mouth. The forest is loud with it. Every broken branch, every churned patch of earth, every panicked misstep they make lights the path ahead of us like a trail set on fire. They’re running now. Seriously? Rider pushes harder, cutting left to intercept one of them as he veers downhill, but the bastard is fast. He’s apparently smart enough to stop trying to turn and fight us. He runs, throwing everything he has into creating distance.
“Left flank’s breaking”, I throw through the bond.
“I’ve got the ridge,” Kieran answers, Rage already driving uphill after the biggest of them.
“Right’s heading out,” Dorian rushes in, his tone lower, tighter. “They’re leaving the boundary.”
I feel it a second later. The shift in the land beneath us. The scent line thins. The edge of Red Moon territory is approaching, and they’re already crossing it. Rider slows. “Is it worth it?” I ask my brothers. Kieran doesn’t answer straight away, because Rage is still pushing forward, wanting to close the distance and finish what we started. I feel it through the bond. The same urge is burning in my own chest. Hunt. Catch. Kill.
“No.” Dorian sighs. “We don’t leave Red Moon chasing ghosts.”
Only then does Kieran pull back reluctantly. Rage slows, turning in a wide arc that pulls him back toward the tree line, and us. Rider huffs once, frustrated, but follows Onyx without argument. The wolves ahead don’t look back or slow down; they keep running.
Whatever. Let them run all the way back to wherever the hell they came from and tell whoever sent them exactly what waits on Red Moon land now. We turn as one, the adrenaline still pumping through us all. Home. Rider exhales hard and stretches his stride, easing back into the rhythm of the forest we know. Rage runs steady at the centre, and Onyx holds the right. The three of us move through the trees more slowly now. The scent of blood leads us back to the clearing where the fight broke out. The stench of blood hangs heavy in the air, layered over churned earth and snapped branches and the still bodies left behind.
I shift before the others do and head to one of the trees where I know we store clothes. Kieran shifts beside me, Dorian a second later, and I throw them both a pair of pants as we look over the bodies. 
“They’re not rogues,” I say, mostly to break the silence, as I scent one of them again just to be sure.
Kieran huffs once. “No.”
Dorian crouches beside the closest body, his gaze taking everything in without missing a detail. “They were bloody brutal,” he says. “They fight dirty, though.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair. “Which is always a fun surprise.” Kieran crouches on the other side of the first body and grips its shoulder, turning it just enough to get a better look at the markings in its fur, its structure, and build.
“Don’t recognise them. Do you guys?” he says.
“Me either,” I add. “But they’re not from around here.”
Dorian shakes his head slightly. “They smell like the North.”
I look at him. “You sure?”
“You can’t smell it? They’ve got that hint of mountain air on them,” he says.
I take a deep breath, which also helps slow my thundering heartbeat. I smell… Cold pine, sharper earth, something drier, and different to the way Red Moon sits. It’s definitely different to the southern packs we’ve crossed before.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Northern territories.”
Kieran exhales. “We’ll have to reach out. See if anyone’s missing people.”
“Or see who’s stupid enough to send them,” I mutter.
The silence settles over us. I drag a hand down my face and look around the clearing again. Branches are broken. The ground has been churned into mud and torn roots. Blood has soaked into the leaves, bark, and damp earth. The thick metallic edge of it all sits at the back of my throat every time I breathe. Nothing about this feels random. They came here for a reason. They crossed onto our land for a reason. And now we’re left standing in the middle of the aftermath, trying to work out what the hell that reason was. That matters just as much as the fight—maybe more.
Because if this wasn’t rogues, and it sure as hell wasn’t a simple trespass, then someone out there thought sending wolves into Red Moon territory was worth the risk. Someone thought they could cross our borders, find whatever they came looking for, and get back out again. A breeze moves through the trees. At first, it is nothing more than a cold shift against my skin, barely enough to stir the leaves above us. Then it strengthens, cutting through the clearing in a long sweep that lifts the scent from the bodies and scatters it wide. Blood. Wet earth. Foreign pack. All of it moves through my senses as I think.
Dorian goes still. “Do you guys smell that?” he asks quietly.
I frown. Damn this bastard and his good nose. “Smell what?” I’m already turning and pulling in a deeper breath. I’m trying to separate one scent from another through the mess of blood and torn flesh and overturned earth. At first, there is nothing but the obvious. The metallic heaviness of gore. The wet stink of opened bodies. The sharp, wrong trace of the wolves we just put down, clinging to the clearing and the trees around it. Then, beneath all of that, something brushes past. 
It’s… softer, thinner, buried so deeply beneath the blood that if Dorian didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t have caught it. There is a scent that doesn’t belong with the violence around us. Not pack in the same way the others were. Not an enemy. Not a threat. Rider goes completely silent inside me, and that more than anything makes my skin tighten. Kieran’s head lifts slowly, and I can see the exact second he catches it, too. His whole expression changes. The three of us stand there in the middle of the wreckage, surrounded by bodies and blood, but every instinct I have shifts with that one faint scent on the wind. Is that what they were looking for?