A pack of Nachtwolves crashed through the windows of the living room, dining room, and other rooms of the house. At the same time, members of Jack’s pack came pouring in from the back of the house and up from the basement, which they’d accessed from the back yard via the sliding glass door. He learned all of this from mind-link messages. He didn’t have that capability from the Nachtwolves, but Bridge was in the front yard and told him what she’d seen as she was running to them to help.The council members didn’t have superpowers. They were just regular wolves, so it wasn’t as if they could hold off the dozens and dozens of wolves that were coming at them. No, they would certainly be kept in check by two packs who didn’t want to let them out of the house to pursue Everly.Granite shifted back into his human form, having no qualms about standing there completely naked in front of all of them. “Well, I see that it isn’t ju

With the council members locked in the jail cells, Jack was ready to go try and find Victor, but he was also nervous. “What about Jim?” he asked his dad.“Slate’s mom went to talk to him,” Victor replied. “Why don’t you let your mom and I take care of that. You need to go find Everly and get her as far away from here as possible. We’ll tell the school that both of you have mono. They’ll believe that. You have good grades. Jamie can write you excuses.”Jack nodded—that was a good way to get them dismissed for the last week of school before the end of the year, but they would have to figure all of this out before the spring semester. He knew how important it was to Everly that she graduate from high school with good grades so that she could go to a good college. It wouldn’t matter to her that she would be the Luna of his pack and had a guaranteed job and plenty of money for the rest of her life.Or

The darker it got, the harder it was to see Slate’s tracks. And it was also getting to be more of a challenge to smell Everly. The scents of the forest were beginning to mingle with Everly’s scene, and a rainstorm was beginning to blow in from the east—either that or a snowstorm, he wasn’t quite sure which one—so it was becoming difficult to stay right in the tracks of the last bike.Jack didn’t want to turn his headlight on for fear that it would attract unwanted attention. He’d heard from Alyson that the other packs were out and about, but they hadn’t come directly to the village. The council had told them that Everly was out in the woods, and they were in the process of trying to find her tracks so that they could hunt her down out there, wherever she was.That meant that Jack was currently in more danger than the pack members at home. But as long as he didn’t attract attention to himself, then he could protect t

The plan wasn’t working.Jack had begun to hear howling in the distance a little over an hour ago, but now that the sun was down completely, and it was pitch black out here in the deep woods, the beasts and creatures had come out to play.Following Everly’s tracks completely seemed to be a mistake. If he ran straight to wherever she was, whatever was following him was going to end up there, too. And that was the opposite of what Jack needed to have happen.He needed to lead them away from Everly but not end up in a fight where he was grossly outnumbered trying to fight off twenty or thirty wolves all by himself. He knew that was out of the questions as well. He could only take eight or ten other wolves at best, and that was if they were not that large or skilled.Something told Jack that the council wouldn’t choose packs that were weak or had unskilled scouts to send after him.As he continued to run, Jack could sense that the wolves that h

Jack’s legs were beginning to tire, but he heard familiar howling not too far behind him and knew that his own pack was close behind. So far, he’d fought off five attacks, including one by a group of six other wolves that he almost didn’t make it through. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he spotted a small hole between a tree and a bush that was just wide enough for him to squeeze through with just the right timing so that he could then turn around and bite the wolf that tried to follow him in the face, he would probably be lying on the forest floor bleeding out right now.But he wasn’t. He was running back the direction he’d come from earlier, when he’d veered off of Everly’s scent, trying to pick it up again, and he was desperately hoping he hadn’t run so far that he went past wherever she’d stopped while he was going the other direction. He still couldn’t reach her by mind-link, but he thought she had to be