Chapter 29
Chapter 29
“How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.”
Alexandre Dumas
"For the record, I did not agree to this plan,” Scarlett hissed close to my ear.
“It’s a risk, I’ll admit it,” I murmured back, trying to keep my voice as low as possible, “But I think it’s a calculated one. We’re not going to get this opportunity again.” I crunched leaves and branches loudly under my shoes, hoping they hid our conversation well.
“They’re going to figure it out,” she whispered back, panic lacing her tone. Scarlett’s nervousness did nothing to inspire confidence, but she’d at least gone along with the plan.
“Almost everyone’s at the pack house,” I told her, “Even Alpha Enzo. It’ll take them a little while to realize we’re gone.” And by then, hopefully, we’d have put enough distance between us.
I was willing to admit that it wasn’t as thought out of a plan as I wanted it to be. We had no supplies – those had been taken from us when Enzo’s guards had captured us yesterday morning.
We, quite literally, had the clothes on our backs, and even those were borrowed.
*But we won’t get an opportunity like this again.*
There was no telling when there’d be another gathering at the pack house, especially a mandatory one. The violence of the reckoning had been disturbing, but it’d given us a small window of opportunity.
And I planned to take it.
“You don’t think they have guards patrolling the border?” She asked.
“Oh, I’m sure they do,” I said, “But that’s why we’ve got a tour guide with us.”
As if on cue, Liam, several paces ahead of us, glanced back. “Oh, I’m sorry, Luna. I didn’t realize you’d fallen behind.”
“No, it’s not your fault,” I replied sweetly, “We were just admiring all the foliage.” Thankfully, Liam wasn’t the most observant werewolf I’d met.
However, he probably was the most trusting.
I almost felt a little bad taking advantage of his naivety.
But not so bad that I was willing to give up an opportunity to escape.
*Let’s just hope he’s naive enough to avoid mind-linking his Alpha about this little “tour.”*
“How far do these lands stretch, Liam?” I asked him once he’d fallen into step beside us.
“At least ten miles each direction,” he replied without hesitation.
“Wow…that’s a lot of land to patrol,” I said as casually as I could. Beside me, Scarlett stiffened, and I prayed to whatever God had stuck me here that she would keep up the rouse.
“It is,” he said, clearly excited that I’d taken an interest in the topic. “But we switch off every six hours so that nobody patrols the same area too long. It’s easy to get sloppy that way.”
“So, no part of the land doesn’t get patrolled?” Another risky question, but when Liam didn’t even hesitate to answer, I knew he’d taken it as healthy curiosity (and not the vital information gathering that it was).
“No, we have to patrol everything,” he said, “But I can show you some of my favorite places on the border if you’d like!”
I stared at the enthusiastic expression on his face, and wondered if this could be a trap. Getting him to take us on this tour unsupervised, pulling information from him – it’d almost been too easy.
So easy that I had to at least consider the possibility that he wasn’t naive at all. That maybe Alpha Enzo had put him up to this.
He could use Liam as a distraction to feed me incorrect information and then thwart an escape plan at the last moment.
However, I had a hard time being suspicious of Liam. There was just something so genuine in his big, blue eyes – a sort of excitement that couldn’t be faked.
So, I said, “I would love nothing more than to see your favorite border spots, Liam.”
He gave me a big, toothy grin and began leading the way.
📖📖📖
“Oh, and over here! A lot of wolves like to run this path in their human or wolf forms,” he said, and pointed to a well-worn path on the forest floor. “As you can see.”
I nodded, and although part of me wanted to say that the Dark Moon territory was nothing special, Liam’s tour had proven the opposite.
It was all lush, green foliage and big pine trees, some that stretched higher than I could see. I could see different hiking paths that must’ve led to higher elevations, but Liam opted not to take us that way.
*You’re not wearing the right boots,* he’d said to me. *And Alpha will kill me if something happens to you.*
It was a sweet sentiment – and one that made me cringe when I thought about how I planned to take advantage of his sincerity.
Eventually, Liam led us to a large clearing that looked similar to the one the reckoning took place in…just empty.
“And this is the border,” he sighed, gesturing to the expanse of long, green grass that stretched so far I had to squint to see a treeline.
“Is there another pack here?” Scarlett was the one to ask this question, her eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t remembering learning about one that borders your territory.”
Liam shook his head. “No, there’s no pack here.”
“And Enzo hasn’t taken the land for himself? Seems a little uncharacteristic of him,” I chimed in.
“He wanted to, but there’s an old human man who lives on the land,” Liam explained, “He’s very…trigger-happy. Whenever we’ve tried to cross over in wolf form, he’ll just shoot at us or call animal control to deal with the ‘wild wolves.’” He paused for a moment, shuffling on his feet. “I don’t think any of us took it too seriously until he managed to actually shoot and kill one of our guards. After that, Enzo decided it wasn’t worth the risk of losing more people, and banned any wolf from crossing onto his property…so that’s why our border is here.”
A lightbulb went off in my head.
Liam didn’t know it, but he’d just cemented a crucial aspect of my escape plan. If Scarlett and I could make it across the border here, the wolves couldn’t chase us.
I shared a look with Scarlett, who appeared to be coming to the same conclusion I was.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think that a human with a gun would stop Enzo from completely pursuing us if we ran, but…
It might buy us some time.
And as if the universe had suddenly decided to work in my favor, Liam’s eyes glazed over as he turned to the treeline behind us. “Would you give me a minute, Luna? One of the guards patrolling this area has a question.”
I turned to look in the direction he was staring in, and sure enough, there was a large wolf with gray fur and yellow eyes staring at him. He was half-concealed by a bush, but even from a distance, I could tell he was massive. Certainly too large to ever pass for a regular wolf.
Liam’s eyes finally cleared from whatever he’d been mind-linking, and he glanced back at us. “Are you sure you’re okay if I go check in with him? I shouldn’t be gone for more than a few moments.”
My heart began thumping like a drum in my chest.
*Play it cool, Elsie.*
*This timing feels almost too good to be true, but…*
“Take all the time you need,” I said with as much of a smile as I could, “We’ll wait right here.”
He nodded, and without another word, sprinted off to speak with the guard in wolf form.
Scarlett nudged closer to me, whispering under her breath, “Should we…”
I waited until he was several feet away, his back to us, before I hissed, “Run. Now.”
And we did.
Straight past the border into the territory where the wolves couldn’t chase us.