By morning, Matt and Wyatt were already prepared for the journey to Gold Nation. No time to waste, and Matt in particular still had yet to figure out how to deal with the inevitable confrontation with Beth - he had agonized over it all night, and now it was certain she knew the secret he had tried to keep from her all this time. The flat, cold look on her face whenever he couldn't help but try to catch her gaze gave that much away. And if he had hoped deep within his heart that she had forgiven him - well, that wasn't happening.But it had been decades since she had died in his arms, thirty years. Couldn't she give him a chance? Couldn't she tell he had changed? Even if he had deceived her until now, it was only because she would never have given him a chance otherwise. So maybe...But for now, he needed distance to let her forget her hatred. Every second they were anywhere near each other, it seemed her coldness toward him only grew, so some space was the only thing that might softe

"...I suppose I don't have a choice in the matter, since I'm being kept here." Matthew looked around the room with a meaningful glower and a tight smile. There would be no way for Andrew to take that as anything but a condemnation of his prisoner state. Neither of them were idiots, so if Andrew Troy thought he was going to mistake his circumstances for anything but forced captivity, then he must be out of his damn mind. "So what is it you want my help with?" he asked. "Assuming it's something I can assist you with in the first place.""Nothing too challenging for your abilities, I assure you," said the man. "But it's come time to choose a side at last.""A side? Against -""The rogue wolves. Their attacks are mounting, and I'm not going to sit around playing cool politics anymore when there are lives of actual innocents on the line. Before, they were only chess pieces to be played with or traded off, but things are different now. I'm not my father, or anyone else who came before me t

"And you're laughing, why?" Andrew asked testily. "You don't seem to understand your situation here. Or have you finally gone senile after the way you've been spiraling all these years?"Wyatt laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. Andrew had always been sharp and clever, more than he had been at his age, but Andrew had one glaring weakness he had never been able to surmount: being humiliated. And laughing in his face while held captive in a dark prison cell normally reserved only for the most scorned of criminals, betraying not one ounce of fear or the respect Andrew craved so badly but giving him disdain instead - weakness, weakness, weakness.And it was well-deserved. Because Andrew had underestimated him. Did he really think the Alpha King of Gold Nation, his father who had come before him and taught him every trick in the book even if not through orthodox means, could be so careless that he would unwittingly fall into a trap as bland as this, without preemptive measures in

No. This wouldn't do. Beth paced back and forth in her bedroom where she had cooped herself up for hours now. Daniel had left four days ago which meant he and the warriors would only be a quarter of the way to the border by now, but the dark thoughts that swarmed her every night when she tried to sleep warned her that peril could befall them at any moment even from within Silver Nation.She should have gone with him. Strategically speaking, she and Daniel were the only leaders of value worth targeting, and the Heether pack was in unfriendly terrain for any rogue wolves to try to attack. The sister packs that surrounded their territory would make any invasion unlikely without great preparation that the rogues weren't known for. So while that meant she was safe here - she should be with Daniel, because that meant an attack on him was almost imminent. Whether from by rogue wolves or from Andrew's forces that he believed were working with them in the shadows, surely they would be ambus

She was in her bedroom. Too bad there were so many damn people in this pack house, it was like there was an entire village's worth of residents just on this floor. Not that she and Daniel would have been able to sneakily do anything anyway...The walls were thin enough probably that anyone would be able to hear if they got up to...things.But she was so lonely. Or maybe she was just frightened. She wanted Daniel's touch more than anything, not because of lust, but because she was at a crossroads where she was sure she was supposed to be - the right time, the right place to make a difference. Wasn't that why she was here? It couldn't be a coincidence. An espionage coordination effort to alert the entire nation as soon as the rogue wolves began making their move, she was the first in line to find out if anything happened.And in the future, she had learned things in hindsight, valuable things that she had been too late to utilize. But in this life, she might know it before it even happe