Chapter 56

Chapter 56
Abigail's POV

I returned Olivia a faint smile, one so slight its curve was barely there, and pulled my gaze away. Just then, the stir across the plaza suddenly quieted.

The Alpha King climbed the stone dais at the center of the plaza. He wore a black robe embroidered with silver moons, and the pale metal crown gave off a cold gleam in the faint light filtering through the fog. Even across the whole span of flagstones, I could feel plainly the weight pressing down, wrapping around all of us like an invisible tide. When he raised his hand, the last of the murmuring drifted away with it.

"The rules of the Great Hunt are simple," he began, his voice low yet carrying without effort across the entire plaza. "You will enter Silver Wolf Forest in teams of three to five. The limit is seven days. Your task is to hunt the marked beasts, and your final standing will be decided by both the number and the quality of your kills."

He paused briefly, letting the words sink in, and then his tone turned sharp all at once.

"There will be no attacks between teams. No poisons, no traps, no methods of any kind turned against your own kind. Any wolf who breaks this law will be judged a traitor to the packs, and put down where they stand." He paused, and his gaze swept the whole assembly slowly and deliberately, as though he meant every one of us to feel that look land upon ourselves. "Security within the forest falls under the full command of the Alpha of Winter Pack, Nicholas Jackson. His word there carries the weight of mine."

Almost on instinct, I turned my gaze toward the northern ranks, landing on Nicholas where he stood at the very front, and then let it move past him to the warriors arrayed neatly behind.

Then my eyes stopped.

I knew that man.

I knew his lean jaw, knew the faint scar cutting across his left brow, and I knew that near-habitual shift in the way he stood, as though he were listening for a sound no one else could hear. Kael. Winter Pack's second-in-command.

In my last life, I watched with my own eyes as he drove a blade into Nicholas's lower back, at the height of the beast tide, in the very instant he was supposed to be shielding it. And I watched with my own eyes as Nicholas fell into the snow with that betrayal still warm in his flesh, his blood draining away drop by drop. Back then I was only a helpless onlooker, seeing it too clearly through the vantage of a soul, and for that reason remembering it too clearly.

Now that memory surged up violently, so vivid that the fingers hanging at my side began to tremble.

"What's wrong?" Elodie asked in a low voice beside me, having caught the change in me.

I bit down on my teeth, drew in a breath, and forced my hand loose. "Nothing. I just saw someone I don't much like."

"Who?" She followed my gaze toward the northern side, her brow knitting faintly. "Winter's people? They all look decent enough to me."

"It doesn't matter." I shook my head and cut the words off. "I mistook him for someone else."

That was already the closest thing to the truth I could give her. The rest of it was too absurd. I had no proof, only a death that had not yet happened, and to Nicholas, Kael was still the most trusted blade at his back. I couldn't warn him, or I'd sound like a woman half out of her mind. All I could do was watch him, and warn Nicholas when the right moment came.

As the Alpha King read out the last of the terms, his gaze made another slow circuit of the plaza, seeming to catch for the briefest instant as it crossed me. In that moment, something warm and unhurried flickered deep in his eyes, but that look vanished in a breath, moving on as though nothing had happened.

The feeling was familiar, exactly the same as what I had felt at the Temple. As if the highest power among us were watching over me for a while, yet for reasons I couldn't name. I pressed it down along with everything else.

The horn sounded then, long and low. The plaza soon broke apart into a flowing tide of bodies. The teams surged toward the tree line, splitting off toward the entrances scattered all around. Elodie grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward our side.

"This way." She lifted her chin, excitement pressed beneath her voice. "The eastern entrance draws fewer people. Whoever gets in first can pick the good spots. Finn, Dara, keep close."

The moment the canopy closed overhead, the world seemed to change its shape.

Elodie drew in a deep breath and lowered her voice. "Do you smell that? Another two miles in, the scents get all tangled. Spread out a little, don't bunch up. Whoever picks up a marked beast first, sing out."

"Whatever you say," Dara answered with a laugh. "Though Abi's nose is sharper than the three of ours put together. I say we let her lead."

I didn't refuse.

The forest, which two months ago had been to me nothing but a wall of tangled green and shadow, now unfolded like a book turned page by page. Moving through it, I hardly needed to work at telling one direction from another.

Fifty paces off, I could catch the slightest shift in a prey's scent. From a single broken stem and a lingering thread of musk, I could tell which way it had fled, and how long ago. Even at a hard pace over broken ground, my chest didn't tighten and my breath didn't scatter.

As the first hour was nearly gone, Elodie caught up from behind and gave a low laugh.

"Honestly," she muttered close to my ear, "did somebody swap you out for another woman while I wasn't looking? Two months ago you'd double over gasping after three laps."

I only smiled and said nothing, my steps never slowing.