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“So, we’ve got what? A day to locate Max and get him on board, and then we break the rest out,” Aaron said.

“You were able to heal Rhydian, Jules, so tomorrow, we assess everyone else and see who needs seeing to. The guys are on board. They’re talking to the others, getting them ready for what’s coming, and will report any that are likely to be a problem to me.

We’re going to need clothes and food and supplies to get us out of here. Can you handle that, Sylvan?”

“Of course,” he muttered. “They think we’re going to protect them from the Great Rite’s slaughter. The people here will give us the shirts from their own backs for that.”

Brandon took my hand, his eyes burning as they stared into mine.

We knew exactly what was coming, something the rest of the pack seemed determined to ignore.

I wasn’t sure what we could do about it, the scale of the massacre was epic.

I thought of Tsarra and Adam, Conal and even Maud.

There was no guarantee any of them would survive.

“So maybe we should coordinate a complete evacuation,” Brandon said. He straightened in his chair, staring down the rest of the pack as they looked at him with mixed expressions of frustration and irritation.

“We don’t have time for—” Jack said.

“You didn’t see what’s coming,” he said.

“Brandon, we can’t—” Aaron said.

“You could use this to your advantage. Who’s going to see us if we’re in a huge group leaving Leifgart?

People will get hurt, killed, and it’ll put a target on their back, they’d need to know that before making a move, but we could at least tell them.

They are going to rape and kill kids, love.

We…we saw them do it, heard their screams. These people are irredeemable fucking monsters, and they are going to go on a rampage to strengthen their god so he can punch a hole through the portal and do the same to us.

We need to remove as much potential fuel as possible, to keep Sanctuary safe. ”

I squeezed his hand. With a quiet, almost expressionless tone, he managed to make a case to the rest of the pack that I would never have been able to. Sylvan’s eyes jerked up at this, shining with a light I rarely saw within them.

“That does make sense,” Aaron said with a nod. “What do the rest of you think?”

“How do we get the word around? Wouldn’t people be awfully suss if a bunch of newcomers said ‘hey, time to get out of town’?” Jack said.

“It won’t come from you,” Sylvan said, getting to his feet. “I told them of a prophecy to make things easier when I came back with you. Looks like now is the time to pretend it's true.”

He left us not long afterwards, and we finished our meal in silence.

I was dying for a wash after the sauce and smoke of the spit room, along with the stench of the cells, but that wasn’t in the cards here.

The toilet was a simple latrine, all water had to be pumped and carried, so to bed it was.

Hawk curled around Jack as soon as they lay down on the floor, Brandon and Slade waving me over so that I took my place between them.

Finn looked like he was going to join us before turning back to the door.

“C’mon,” Aaron said, rummaging in his bag. He took out a bottle of spirits and waved it at the other man. “I snaffled it from the kitchens.”

Finn just nodded and filed out.

“Is he going to be OK?” Slade asked.

“I don't know,” I replied, remembering his hands clinging to the bars of the cell. “You just want to go with him and take a drink of that bottle.”

“Volken piss? Not a chance. I want you to tell me about that dream.”

Slade lay on his side, looking down at Brandon and me, the moon spilling in through the curtains and over the side of his face. So, we did.

It was hard to try and encapsulate the entirety of what we’d seen.

So much of it was felt viscerally, and I found that words were kind of hopeless to describe a massacre of that scale.

Like, how could you use the same words to ask for a cup of tea or talk about the weather to describe something like that?

How did I make clear the way the kids’ screams felt like they slashed through every nerve in my body, leaving them bleeding in their wake?

But we tried, and the mood in the room grew sombre.

“Fuck,” Hawk said. “These cunts are fucking monsters.”

“I might feel like warmed over shit,” Jack said.

“But no one is sleeping after that.” He crawled over to us, dragging Hawk with him.

They were like two lions—one golden, one dark—as they prowled closer.

I felt conflicted as they approached, the same surge of attraction and want I felt for each of them rising but sitting uncomfortably with a deep sense of guilt.

I could have that—a pack, love, lust, need.

What of the guys in the cages or the people who served the Volken?

“Stop overthinking, love,” Jack said, placing a kiss on my forehead before collapsing down into our rapidly forming puppy pile.

“What we have is a gift from the Great Wolf herself,” Hawk said, doing the same.

“How do you know what I was thinking?” I asked.

“Because I was doing the same,” Hawk replied.