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3

SKYE

B y the time the plane landed on a snow and ice covered runway, my nerves were shot and my brain was turning faster than I could keep up with. Whatever medicine Dimitri had given me was starting to wear off, and the jarring jolt from the wheels touching down made my stomach roll with nausea as my pulse hammered against my temples.

The roaring inside the plane was deafening as the flaps lifted, slowing our arrival. I glanced over, relieved to see that Tate was still out of it.

The plane slowed, the noise receding, as Dimitri unhooked his belt buckle across from me and stood up before the plane coasted to a gentle stop. He jerked his head at the guys in the back and called out a few words in Russian that I didn’t understand.

He looked down at me. “We’re switching to a helicopter.”

“Why?” I asked, looking out my window at the small building that served at the airport. There was no one around. Dirty snow mounds lined the airstrip, but a fine mix of snow and ice was still coming down.

“The pack is located in the mountains. We can’t land a plane there, so we have to switch. Usually we’d drive, but there’s a storm coming in from the North that we won’t beat. The last place we want to be is driving up a narrow road on the side of a mountain when it starts coming down.”

The mechanical beep of a lock behind me had me twisting in my seat to see the door opening as the two men unlocked it.

I could make out a vague shape in the dim light. A man was slumped over in his seat. From this angle I couldn’t tell if it was Elias or my uncle, though. Still, panic made me stiffen in my seat, my fingers curling around the armrest until my knuckles were white.

Dimitri’s hand touched my shoulder lightly. “They can’t hurt you, Skye. They won’t wake up for several more hours. Besides, we won’t all fit in one helicopter. They’ll be in a second one behind us.”

“Tate’s coming with us,” I told him, shrugging away from his touch and unbuckling my belt as the plane coasted to a stop. I shot a glance at her, not willing to be separated.

A smile tugged at his lips, a mixture of amusement and compliance. “Okay.”

He turned to the front of the plane and snapped out another sentence in Russian to the men in the front of the plane. One headed for the small galley separating the interior of the plane from the cockpit and the other came towards us.

I stood up, warily watching the newcomer as he headed towards us.

He was tall enough that the blonde spikes in the front of his hair nearly brushed the ceiling. He had to angle his large body to move down the aisle to his, his icy blue eyes flicking from me to Tate and then settling on Dimitri. He settled his massive hands on the headrests of the seats on either side of the aisle, his tattooed knuckles curving around the leather until it squeaked in protest.

“This is Alexei,” Dimitri told me, standing between us. “He’s going to move Tate to the helicopter, okay?”

I narrowed my eyes at him before looking at Tate. I wished like hell she was either able to walk on her own or I could lift her myself. Something told me Dante and Ryder would have my ass for letting some strange guy carry her around.

“No,” I said finally, giving Alexei another glance, trying not to stare too long at the tattoo on his throat, before shifting my gaze to my brother.

Dimitri shot me a look. “You want me to leave her here?”

“No, you’re going to carry her,” I informed him coolly.

At least I knew Dimitri.

Sort of.

Okay, not really, but I definitely didn’t know this Alexei guy, so that meant Dimitri was my only choice. Plus, he was my brother, so that had to count for something, right?

“Me?” Dimitri pointed at his chest, his eyebrows lifting as Alexei snorted behind him.

“Yes, you. Or is that beneath the prince?” I snapped archly. If he said I was the princess, that made him the prince.

Judging by the way he glowered, my barb landed exactly where it was aimed.

Behind him, Alexei outright laughed. “Oh, I like this one,” he said, his rough voice accented and bemused. His smile made him seem less menacing and almost boyish.

“Shut up,” Dimitri grumbled, shoving him back a step with an open palm to his friend’s massive chest before looking back at me. “Fine. I’ll carry Tate. That means you stick to Alexei’s side, got it?”

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“We’re on pack land, but I’m not taking any chances. I didn’t save you only to have you kidnapped an hour before I brought you home.”

Home .

Something about that rankled, but I let it slide. Russia, this place, this pack , wasn’t my home. My home was an ocean away, and I needed to get back to it as soon as possible.

Dimitri missed nothing, and noticed the way I stiffened when he said home .

“As soon as we get to the pack, we’ll find out what’s going on back there,” he said, his tone gentler. “If anyone could survive that explosion, it’s Remy.”

I knew that. I did. I believed it with every broken fragment of my heart.

But the not knowing was the worst sort of torture.

I pushed down the rising tide of anxiety that was cresting, physically shaking my head to knock the thoughts away.

“You think we’re not safe here?” I asked softly, watching as he bent and gathered Tate gently into his arms before lifting her and cradling her against his chest.

“I think the shifter world is currently being thrown into chaos,” he admitted. “It would be stupid for someone to attack us, and the likelihood is pretty non-existent. Then again, I never expected Elias and his pack to blow a hole in the middle of Wyoming and kill dozens of Alphas either. Until we’re with our—”

I flinched and stiffened up.

“— my pack,” he corrected easily, “I’m not taking any chances.”

I nodded reluctantly and waited for Alexei and him to turn and head down the aisle before slowly following.

The air grew cooler as we moved to the now open door, but I wasn’t expecting the frigid blast of arctic air that slapped me as I stepped outside the plane. It ripped my breath from my chest, and I almost ducked back inside the warm interior of the airplane.

I had only been wearing jeans and a t-shirt when the bomb went off, and Dimitri definitely hadn’t stopped to grab my jacket.

Russia was freaking cold .

I tucked my hands under my armpits and ducked my head as I headed down the stairs. At the bottom, my sneakers hit the tarmac and a jacket was draped over my shoulders.

I glanced up at Alexei, his leather jacket more like a blanket on me. He didn’t seem bothered by the cold air in his ripped jeans and thin white t-shirt that showed even more inked skin. Aside from his face, I wondered if there was any place on his body left unmarked.

“Thanks,” I murmured, falling into step beside him as we followed behind Dimitri. I tried to focus on Dimitri’s back, and not the fact that the jacket wrapped around me smelled like sandalwood and smoke.

And utterly, devastatingly wrong.

My wolf would have pitched a bitch fit having another man’s scent on me if she were around.

I glanced down at the bracelet, wondering how long it would take until I was rid of it.

“It will be removed once we land,” Alexei told me, his voice pitched low like I might startle and run. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“Not really,” I replied. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “You and Dimitri are friends?”

Alexei grinned down at me. “Yes. He is my brother.”

The surprise must have been evident on my face because he laughed loudly beside me.

“Not like he is your brother,” he explained. “My pack brother. I am his beta. We’ve been friends since we were pups.”

I nodded, taking that in as Dimitri headed for the hangar at the end of the tarmac beyond the small building that served at the airport.

“We live there.” He pointed towards the mountains to the right of us, their snowy caps fringed with clouds against a gray sky.

Alexei tilted his head up. “This storm will be bad. Usually we don’t have storms like this so late, but winter was bad this year.”

“You live in the mountains?” My eyes narrowed, trying to see where their pack could live, let alone survive, in the snow and rock.

A secret smile lit his eyes. “Our pack has lived here since the beginning.”

“ My pack lives in Washington,” I said tartly, arching a brow that begged for him to correct me. “In the US.”

He nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets as the wind kicked up. I considered giving him his jacket back, but I was pretty certain I would arrive inside the hangar as a wolfcicle.

“Your country is strange,” Alexei remarked curiously. “Are your Alphas always so... wrong?”

I snorted. “They’re not all like that.”

“Dimitri spoke highly of your mate,” he said after a moment.

I stopped walking and he paused beside me, waiting patiently even as Dimitri moved on and into the hangar.

“Dimitri told you about Remy?” I asked, unable to stop the wobble from shaking my voice.

“Once we got into the plane,” Alexei replied, watching me with kind and assessing eyes. “He told us what had happened. The explosion, what the doctor had done. He regretted having to leave your mate and Alpha behind. And those of your friend. He said they were good men.”

“ Are good men,” I corrected firmly and slightly desperately. “They’re alive.”

They have to be, I added silently.

“I hope so,” he said. “I would like to meet them when this is over.”

“You would?” That surprised me. Why would he care?

“You are the printsessa of Narodnaya,” he told me solemnly.

“I’m the what?”

“It means princess,” Dimitri told me, coming up behind me with empty arms.

“Where’s Tate?” I demanded, looking around for her.

“In the helicopter,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Which is where we need to all be to take off and land before the storm hits.” He hooked a thumb in the direction of the hangar. “Unless you want to hang out in the airport where we can try to live off a vending machine for a week.”

“Fine,” I muttered, turning and stalking to the enclosed building where the helicopter rested.

A man stood by an open door of the helicopter, his dark eyes watching me curiously as I approached.

I moved towards the open door and he held out a hand to help me.

“ Printsessa ,” he said softly, ducking his head.

My head whipped around to look at him, but Dimitri all but pushed me into a seat across from Tate before climbing in and taking the seat behind me. Alexei joined us, taking the last seat beside Tate.

“Why do they keep calling me that?” I demanded quietly, looking at Dimitri.

He glanced behind us as the man got into the cockpit. They exchanged a few words in Russian before the man turned back to the controls and started flipping buttons. Above us, the ceiling retracted, peeling back to reveal the gray sky above.

“I told you,” Dimitri said, turning his attention to me. “It means princess.”

“You keep calling me that, too,” I replied as the blades of the helicopter slowly started spinning.

A smirk tugged at his lips. “Because it’s what you are.”

“No, I’m not!” I snapped.

“Yes, you are,” he countered evenly.

Annoyed, I opened my mouth to shut him down, but he beat me to it.

“You’re the daughter of Nikolai Dashkov, Alpha of the Narodnaya pack. In our country? That makes you his heir and the princess of our pack.”

“Heir?” I choked on the word. “Isn’t that you? You’re his Alpha heir.”

Dimitri shook his head. “Not since I found you.”

“That makes zero sense,” I shouted as the blades started turning faster, louder.

“Our pack was the first pack,” he told me smugly. “The first Alpha was female, and our pack has upheld that tradition since it began. Congrats, Princess. You won the shifter genetic lottery. You’re the first female to be born in the Dashkov line in over two hundred years, which makes you the heir to it all.”

My jaw dropped.

“Narodnaya is your pack,” he finished as the helicopter lifted us into the skies.