Chapter 10

"Boss!"

Blaze's wolf wagged his tail in welcome, then the shifter transformed back to two feet to greet us with human pleasure in his voice. His mate, though, appeared far less excited by our presence.

I was disappointed but not surprised by Sarah's standoffishness. After all, half a year earlier, the same woman had led me to believe that she and I were forging a bond of friendship. At the time, I'd done everything I could to protect Sarah from Wolfie's brother, even though those efforts threatened my own pack-leader status. I'd integrated her into Haven's clan, had hauled her out of All-Pack so Dale could assist at her birth, and had defended her when her husband came to call.

In exchange, Sarah had repaid me by siding with Ember's father when the latter attacked Dale's clinic with a pack of werewolves at his back. In the scrimmage, our oldest yahoo—Wade—had been killed. Then, without an apology, Sarah had fled the scene with Justin, making us all believe that she and her husband had planned the entire foray together from the start.

So I knew I should be furious with the girl now, especially since she greeted us four-legged with fangs bared and with the hint of a growl rumbling deep within her lupine chest. But it was hard to hate a teenager who was clearly terrified of losing the man by her side. Proving my analysis of the situation was on point, the pack princess forced her way between the two human bodies when Fen attempted to embrace her friend, thrusting the other woman aside. Yep, someone had territorial issues she needed to work out.

"Sarah, it's okay," Blaze said, doing his best to mollify the wolf at his feet. I could see that our youngest yahoo was fully bonded to the pack princess, but it was harder to tell whether Sarah had transferred her loyalties to him in return. In the absence of more data, I figured the best option was to give Sarah the benefit of the doubt...and to keep treating her like a potentially rabid dog.

Exactly what we should have done in the first place, my wolf griped.

"We're not here to force anyone to go anywhere they don't want to go," I promised, ignoring my wolf and looking directly into Sarah's eyes as I spoke. I hadn't meant to add an alpha compulsion into my voice, but apparently my lupine half felt differently. So I wasn't surprised to see Sarah's muscles relax for a split second before she curled her lip back into a snarl and stiffened her spine in a defensive stance once again. It appeared that the pack princess wouldn't be won over so easily.

Before I could decide which tack to attempt next, Fen entered the conversation. "I was worried sick about you," she told Blaze, thumping her friend on the shoulder in lieu of the hug his mate had refused on his behalf. "You should've called us, dude."

"Yeah, I know." Blaze's eyes were on the ground as he waited for the expected reprimand from his alpha, which gave Fen and me an opportunity to exchange a quick glance. My shoulder shrugging up while her mouth quirked in reply, proving we were of a single mind on the issue. Yeah, Blaze had been a stupid teenager...but that's why we called the younger members of our pack yahoos. We were all here together now, so Blaze's past actions were water over the dam.

"Don't worry about it," I absolved the prodigal yahoo. And at my words, his inner wolf immediately perked up in response. If only my own problems could be solved so simply.

Speaking of problems, I figured it was high time to get to the point before Sarah bit someone. So I laid out our current conundrum as succinctly as possible.

As I spoke, most members of our group relaxed onto the ground in human form, but I was sad to see that Sarah resolutely remained wolf. I knew she had to be taking in the story that so deeply affected her offspring, but the pack princess didn't so much as twitch an ear as I explained why we'd taken the time to track her down. Instead, she continued peering resolutely away from us into the darkened woods.

"So that's where we stand," I finished. Soft-hearted Blaze was swayed by my plea, I could tell. But rather than speaking up, the yahoo turned to look at his mate, accepting the reality that Sarah's decision was the only one that really mattered. After all, she was Ember's mother, the only shifter who could legally pry the bloodling out of Justin's clutching hands.

If the pack princess was willing to make the effort, that is.

I wasted a moment wishing that I'd brought the wolfling in question along on our nighttime hunt. Surely our lovable pup could have swayed even the skittish and uptight pack princess over to our point of view.

Unfortunately, my own powers of persuasion appeared to be much more lackluster because Sarah had made her decision. She nudged her new mate once with her nose then started walking away toward the nearest tree line.

"Ah, come on, Sarah," Blaze begged, following after the pack princess and running his hands through her smooth fur to halt her escape. Despite Sarah's blood tie to our wolfling, the yahoo had spent much more time around the pup than his mate had and he clearly felt more responsibility toward the little bloodling. "Ember's a sweetheart," he continued. "You don't want Justin to get his hands on her, do you?"

For a moment, I thought the female might cave. The pack princess whined so quietly that I almost missed the sound from three yards away, then she surged upward onto human feet. Her feelings were apparently too complex to relay in lupine form.

"Don't you understand that Justin would love nothing more than to find an excuse to tear us both into bloody little pieces?" the pack princess rebutted. The moon had come out, and its light shone off Sarah's bare shoulders, adding a luster to her pale hair that made her even more beautiful than usual. So I couldn't blame Blaze for taking her hand even as she dashed our hopes.

"We have to stay off Justin's radar if we want to endure," Sarah continued, standing toe to toe with her new mate as she gazed up into his eyes. "It isn't a question of wanting, Blaze. It's a question of survival."

I could tell that Fen had been biting her tongue for several minutes now, and apparently this final refusal was the last straw. "So you plan to just roll over and let Justin tear your daughter apart?" the female yahoo demanded. Like the rest of us, Fen had spent so much time living by Wolfie's ethics that she was outraged at Sarah's refusal to do the right thing.

But Sarah, in turn, was outraged by our request for her to willingly walk into danger. "My daughter?" the pack princess sneered. "You mean the wolf pup that almost killed me as it was born? That thing isn't my child and I don't owe it one more instant of my attention."

David placed a restraining hand on Fen's shoulder as the latter surged forward, but he couldn't prevent her from hurling incendiary words at Ember's mother. "So you really are just a pack princess," Fen said, her tone making the words an insult.

"It's what I've always been," Sarah replied evenly. Then malice entered her tone as she continued: "Just like you've always been a half-blood werewolf, not good enough to lick the soles of my shoes."

An ominous silence fell across our gathering. Blaze and I were appalled at Sarah's poor taste, but David was apparently feeling something entirely different. The hand he'd placed on Fen's shoulder fell to his side as my cousin took a step away from the shifter he'd been courting for the last few weeks.

"Is what she said true?" my cousin asked. "Are you a...a halfie?"

Fen looked like she'd been slapped, and I would have given anything to spare her this public evidence of my cousin's old-fashioned sensibilities. I'd guessed he felt this way, but I hated to be proven right. Yes, David had enjoyed the female yahoo's company...but not so much that he was willing to overlook her tainted heritage.

"It doesn't change who I am," Fen said to the shifter who had once seemed poised to become her mate. I'd never seen the female yahoo anything except strong, not even when another of my cousins had broken her arm in his lupine teeth and forced her to run for miles on three legs instead of four. But now she appeared young and scared. And when David moved away from her outstretched fingers, she winced as if she'd been struck.

There's no point in drawing this out, my wolf told me. We lost. Sarah won. It's time to head to the Tribunal.

I closed my eyes for a second to shut out Fen's pain, David's anger, and Sarah's fear. My wolf was right—I couldn't solve this. Not here. Not now. And Ember needed us to stand up for her in less than twelve hours in a location that was many miles distant.

So I allowed my wolf to speak through my human mouth, drawing our confrontation to a close. "I was going to tell you that you're welcome at Haven if you ever need somewhere safe to stay," my wolf and I told Sarah, staring her down until the teenage shifter's inner wolf wilted beneath our combined anger. "But I can see you have no place in our pack."

Then, turning our attention to Blaze, we finished: "You on the other hand, can come home anytime. But for now, we have other affairs to attend to."

With a jerk of my chin, I gathered Fen and David to my side at last. Then, without another word, we shifted into wolf form and ran together back the way we'd come.

***

Our return journey was much more subdued than our previous adventure, and I wasn't terribly surprised to find only two warm bodies waiting by our car when we got back to base camp. My father, Ethan explained, had been unable to stick out even one full night as leader of his pack of three and had headed home on lupine paws around dawn. Glancing at me for permission, David turned on his heel still clad in fur and followed the werewolf who used to be his alpha down the long road back to Haven.

"No luck finding them?" Ethan asked as Fen and I slipped back into the clothes we'd left behind in the trunk of the car. I suspected my brother also wanted to ask why my companion was so grim, her usual welcoming banter replaced with a simple clasp of Ethan's hand before she pulled Ember up into her arms and turned away to face back into the trees. But after glancing between both of our faces, the teenager apparently decided it was better not to ask.

Ethan would have been even more curious if he'd possessed the shifter ears that enabled me to make out the "Sorry" Fen whispered to our little wolfling as she strode away to begin dismantling Ethan's tent. And was that a tear trickling down the young woman's cheek?

David had a lot to answer for, and I resolved to find a way to ease Fen's pain while mitigating her guilt at a later date. Our mission's failure and her parents' genetics hadn't been her fault at all. But right now we needed to get on the road if we didn't want to miss our appointment with Justin and the Tribunal.

Sighing, I turned back to my brother and answered his question at last. "Oh, we found them, alright," I said, doing my best to keep my annoyance with Sarah in check. Looking over at the wolf pup who currently pulling herself up Fen's back with her claws, I kept my explanation simple. "But they chose not to help."

I was in a hurry to get away from the bad feelings coating our campsite, so I'd already opened the car door when my wolf halted me in my tracks. Wait, she admonished. Look.

And even though I wanted nothing more than to reach the peacekeeping grounds and put this whole sordid story behind us, I took the time to peer more closely at my brother. I'd learned the hard way to listen to my lupine half when she chose to give me advice, and once again the wolf had picked up on something my human brain had missed.

Ethan was much more agitated than I'd initially thought, I saw now. Yes, he was abnormally jittery even for someone forced to spend the night wrangling a hyped up bloodling pup while attempting to bond with our slightly sadistic father.

Just what I needed—another fire to put out before breakfast. But I let the car door swing shut behind me without stepping inside, and I instead stood waiting for my brother to speak.

For all of the tough-guy image Ethan liked to project, I could tell he was afraid of whatever it was he had to say. Like me, he'd been raised with the Chief as his pack leader, which meant we were both used to verbal and physical slap downs if we so much as looked at an alpha the wrong way. Now that I was standing in our father's shoes, I shouldn't have been surprised that my brother was just as afraid of me as I'd once been when forced to admit to the Chief that I'd done something wrong.

Cricket will be thrilled that I've finally gotten to the bottom of her son's erratic behavior, I thought as I waited. But does Ethan have to confess right now?

Apparently he did. Standing to attention like a soldier, my brother did his best to look me directly in the eyes before his gaze slid away. Then he finally spoke. "I stole some F2F a few days ago," he mumbled, the words too quiet to be parsed by a human ear.

Good thing you have me around to translate, my wolf chimed in.

"Okay...." I responded. I had no idea where this was going, but Ethan clearly thought his confession was important enough to slow the start of our journey, so I kept an open mind and maintained an even tone. I had a feeling the least sign of disapproval would be enough to send my human brother scurrying for cover. "And...?" I said at last when he seemed unwilling to go on.

"And I think it's probably easier to show you than to tell you," Ethan responded.

Then, pulling a syringe out of his pocket, he flipped the plastic guard off the tip and plunged the point into the crook of his elbow. The motion was so practiced it was obvious the teenager had done this several times before, and I had a sudden vision of Ethan's ungainly walk and dilated pupils. Does F2F operate as a narcotic on humans who lack a wolf? I wondered.

The issue appeared to be moot. Because, as my brother depressed the plunger, I learned that Ethan did indeed possess a lupine half. And that wolf seemed every bit as uncontrollable as you'd expect from a teenager after one of his first shifts.