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066 | THE WOLVES DESCEND
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Alpha Ares 067 | RUN
We could mindlink. It was dizzying, feeling the full force of Ares’s emotions slamming into me – and made more overwhelming still by the swarm of angry wolves converging on me.‘Run, Haile! Get out of here.’‘What about you?’ I mindlinked back to him, a spark of raw joy piercing through my fear. ‘I won’t leave you, Ares.’My eyes found his – still closed, his lashes still stark, dark, against his pallid cheeks. He looked… Dead. I gulped, turning in a tight circle as more wolves surrounded me. I had seconds to move – seconds until I was sealed in. None of them pounced, not yet, but I did not have long. ‘They think I’m dead. It was your idea, beautiful – to pretend. You have a chance. Take it! I’ll find you. I promise.’I made a choice.I ran.Claws and teeth caught my sides, but I barely felt the pain. It was an inconvenience, slowing me down, but it did not make me falter. I would not forsake Ares’s sacrifice… If that was even what it was. I had to hope it wasn’t.I shot through the
Alpha Ares 068 | CAST IN SHADOW
I twisted, my claws inches from her face – “No!” she cried, her body shaking with sobs. “Help me. Please, you have to help me. Don’t put me back in there. Or – or I’ll fight you!” She raised her fists, but the wet hiccups wracking through her made her seem anything but fearsome. I pulled back slightly, though I kept my teeth bared. There was something familiar about her face, something that I couldn’t quite place. She had grey eyes, wide with terror, and a lean body that might once have been lithe, muscular, before she’d been put in the cells. Now, her bones pushed at her pale skin, making her jaw and shoulders look unnaturally angular.Wait. My eyes narrowed, taking in brown hair, wan and lifeless, She wasn’t the boy’s sister – was she? The boy had said she was being kept in the Pack House, but he had already lied to me about how he’d managed to escape. If I could trust the Greyhide Canyon Warrior Wolf’s version of events, anyway. “You aren’t going to hurt me?” she managed to ask,
Alpha Ares 069 | HAILE SEREN BLUE
I stilled for less than a second, though it felt like an eternity as my gaze met theirs. Two wolves, both smaller than me, but bigger than Annia, both with shaggy coats of speckled grey fur, stared back.Annia trembled. I ran my tongue over the back of my teeth as I thought. There had to be another way out of this. They hadn’t yet pounced – so maybe they wouldn’t.Forcing my limbs to relax, I nodded to the grey wolves and continued strolling across the open expanse of snow. Fortunately, Annia caught on quickly and, though she kept her body mostly hidden behind my much larger one, she kept pace and kept her head up. Good. I knew every wolf in Blue Moon on sight; I could pick out an Omega or Warrior Wolf from their peers from half a league away. As Young Luna, knowing my pack inside and out had been part of my job. As we walked, I kept my fingers crossed – my paws crossed? – that Greyhide Canyon’s lower-ranking wolves wouldn’t know everyone on their roster, or at least not in their wolf
Alpha Ares 070 | WILDFLOWER MEADOWS
I clutched the knife – the knife that had been imbedded in my gut – and leapt at them. There was a sort of poetic justice to it, I thought.It was easy – too easy – to kill the Greyhide Canyon wolves. They hadn’t expected me to attack them in my human form. I moved without thought, my body falling into years of training and pure animal instinct. Now that Annia was safe, there was nothing to hold me back. No person for them to hold hostage, or for me to keep an eye on. I sliced the blade over their necks, my elbow jarring as I shoved through the thick fur and skin of the grey wolf; my mind was not with my body as I moved, though. It was a flashing red haze of panic. I thought only of Ares, alone and injured with Cendres.They fell to the ground. Blood seeped across the white snow, filling the divots where our paws and boots had churned it up. ‘Describe it to me,’ I mindlinked to Ares. ‘I’ll find you.’Although I was exhausted, my muscles drooping, held up limply by posts of bone and
Alpha Ares 071 | GAMMA WOLF
‘He left?’ I nudged Annia again, pushing her into a sprint. My muscles protested, but my urgency pushed me onward. ‘Why?’Ares didn’t reply.‘Ares?’ I tried again. And again. And again.Nothing.I ran hard, ignoring every ache and creak of my joints, ignoring the pulsing of blood pounding against my ears, my temples, and thundering against my still-seeping knife wound. We met the path without difficulty, and I turned blindly around the first corner – And ran straight into Cendres.I smashed into the rocky side of the path. My head knocked back; lights danced across my vision, but I clutched at consciousness desperately and managed to hold on. As my vision centred, two brown wolves became one, and I stared hard at Cendres as I pulled myself shakily to my paws.His eyes narrowed – and then he flung his head back and grinned. He made a wolfish laugh, a rumbling sound deep in his chest, and then shifted into his human form. Like Annia and I, his eyebrows, eyelashes, and the baby hairs a
Alpha Ares 072 | DAYLIGHT
I leapt to my feet. “Try,” I snarled, “and I will kill you, Cendres.” My hand reached uselessly for a knife that wasn’t there, but I shoved my fingers under my cloak and clenched my hand into a fist, making a lump beneath the fabric to create the illusion of a weapon there.He held both of his hands up, palms facing forward. “I have no intention of doing as he says. You can trust me. Why would I come all this way to patch up Ares’s wounds if I was just going to kill him anyway?”I huffed. “I guess.” Lowering myself back to the ground, I kept my narrowed eyes on the Gamma the whole way down. I still half expected him to shift and rip Ares’s head clean from his shoulders, but I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now, at least.“I know he wants me dead,” I said flatly. “Me. But not Ares.”“Like I said – I look at Naz, and I don’t even see my mate looking back at me anymore. He’s gone. Losing his parents last year changed him, but not… Not like this.”The memory of the matching
Alpha Ares 073 | VALERIA
I stilled, my body locking in place as I stared down at her. And then she groaned.I crouched down beside her. “Valeria?” I whispered, twisting at my waist and searching the pathway for her attacker. They had to still be close – too close. But there was nobody, not along the path or on the rocky outcrops above. I was hyper-aware of sound and movement as I brushed my fingertips over Valeria’s bloody muzzle. Her eyelids fluttered.She squeezed her eyes shut, her face contorting in pain, and then she shifted into her human form. “Ares – needs to – initiate you – into the – pack.” Her breaths sounded wet. I kept my gaze fixed on her face, purposefully ignoring the steadily growing pool of red spilling out from beneath her. “Not being able – to mindlink – is a real – pain.”My lips twitched. Valeria had been one of very few wolves that I’d been able to train with back in Winterpaw Warrior. Everyone else had wanted to kill me, and our fights have ended up bloody and brutal every time. But
Alpha Ares 074 | FOLLOWING A TREMBLING STAR
We raced across Greyhide’s snow-slick terrain. As we’d agreed, I sprinted with Ares on my back, never once looking behind me, letting Cendres and Annia fight off any attackers we faced on the way. I wanted to help them, but keeping Ares safe was my priority.I’d never been so damned excited to see a canyon before. Hoping to the stars and sun and moon and everything in the world that Cen and Annia would catch up with me, that they would both meet me when we were in safer territory, I surged along the side of the canyon. The sun rose and fell, and still I ran.‘You need to rest, beautiful,’ came Ares’s voice through the mate bond.‘Not until you’re safe,’ I replied, every time.‘You were hurt, too.’‘Not badly. Even the knife wound is healed now.’‘Yeah.’ His mental voice was thick with disbelief. ‘So you say.’It was true. Mostly. ‘I’ll stop when we can. But we’re still well within Greyhide’s borders.’‘Even Winterpaw Warrior territory won’t be safe. You were attacked in Blue Moon bef
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