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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

STONE

“Stone!” Zuri shouted from the bedroom.

After leaping up from my office chair, I hurried past the other warriors that I had called in for a meeting and ran straight out of the room to find my mate. She had barely been resting for thirty minutes. If that fucker had?—

“Stone!” she said, zipping through the hallway toward my office. “We have to go.”

“Where—”

Before I could even get out a word, she grabbed my wrist and continued toward the back door. I dug my heels into the ground and stopped right at my office, catching Zuri’s wrist and leading her into the room with the other wolves.

“We have to go,” she repeated, a bead of sweat rolling down her forehead.

“You have to rest,” I said.

“If we don’t—” She inhaled sharply, her gaze falling to my neck and her lips quivering. “If we don’t go now, then everything … we’ll …” Another rapid breath. “We’re all going to die. He’ll kill everyone in Durnbone. I saw it.”

“Who?” James said.

“Derrit,” she said, hyperventilating now.

I placed my hands on her shoulders and drew my thumb across her mark. She relaxed her shoulders just a bit, her body still tense. She stared up at me through teary eyes, lips quivering hard.

“You have to believe me. I spoke to the Moon Goddess.”

“The Moon Goddess?” one of my warriors whispered. “When?”

“Just now.”

“Are you sure it was her?” James asked Zuri.

“I’m positive.”

“How do we know this isn’t one of Derrit’s games?” James asked.

I believed that Zuri had seen the Moon Goddess. She had seen her while I slept in the room the other night, but I … I wasn’t sure what to think right now. What if it had been a dream to help Zuri through this? What if it really had been Derrit messing with her still?

“I’ve seen the Moon Goddess many times throughout my life,” Zuri said.

“I know you have,” I said to my mate, loathing the fact that part of me didn’t believe that this was the Moon Goddess. “But do you think it is a coincidence that she came back again after Derrit visited you?”

Zuri dropped her gaze, tears trembling in her eyes. “I-I don’t know.”

The warriors began chatting skeptically among themselves about Zuri’s visions of the Moon Goddess. As far as I knew, nobody in my pack had ever had visions of the Moon Goddess similar to hers, and I didn’t want Zuri to think they were poking fun at her.

Or worse, didn’t believe her.

But we couldn’t run into things, especially with Derrit.

“Either way,” Zuri said, balling my shirt in her fists, “we have to do something.”

“Why don’t we sleep on it? We have warriors posted every half-mile around our borders,” I reasoned with my mate. “Then, tomorrow morning, I will call a meeting with the packs around Durnbone, and we can talk.”

“It will be too late,” Zuri whispered.

“Too late for what?”

“Y-you’re going to die,” she cried, collapsing to her knees and shaking her head. “I saw it, Stone. He decapitated you. Your head was at my feet. Durnbone was in flames, crumbling, turning to dust. Girls were … girls were being raped. Boys taken as slaves …”

“Fuck,” James murmured from the other side of the room, running a hand through his messy hair. He looked up at me and spoke through the mind link. “If what she’s saying is true, then it’s just like the prophecy said.”

“Derrit hasn’t even made it halfway to Durnbone yet,” I said.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re wrong. T-they’re already here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Our spies said?—”

“Alpha,” one of my warriors, Calr, said through the mind link, “we spotted ? —”

Suddenly, the mind link ended, my thoughts to Calr empty, which meant that …

James sprinted to the back door, shifted into his wolf, and ran into the forest, where Calr had been stationed tonight. Zuri sat in tears at my feet, grasping on to my thigh, like if she didn’t, then I would disappear.

“You have to believe me,” she whispered. “If we don’t stop him tonight, then Derrit will kill us all.”