Page 4 of Snarl First, Kiss Later (Alpha’s Prophecy #2)

FOUR

SILAS

S ilas slipped from the camp before sunrise, boots silent on damp moss.

The last embers of their fire glowed faint orange behind him, just enough light to glimpse Ava’s sleeping form curled beneath her father’s battered jacket.

Her braid lay across her cheek like a dark question mark, one hand resting near a knife she kept within reach even in dreams. Trust wasn’t their language, not yet.

He’d decided during the restless hours before dawn that it might never be.

Better this way, he told himself. Wolves fought alone.

A mile downhill he shifted into a loping jog, lungs pulling thin mountain air while every healed rib protested. His wolf sensed trouble beyond the ridge—metal scent, old blood, the tell-tale musk of the Silent Sons. Roman’s private hounds. He’d hoped they weren’t this far west yet. Hoped wrong.

Silas mapped a path toward the limestone forks where captives might be hidden.

Ava’s intel matched rumors he’d collected months back: overlapping caves, narrow vents perfect for stashing prisoners.

He aimed to scout, maybe pull one or two humans out before the Sons moved them again.

Then slip away before PEACE or Shadowfall pinned crimes on a lone drifter.

Quit pretending you’re a hero. You’re just tying up old knots.

He kept that bitterness close; it dulled the sting of solitude.

At a granite outcrop he paused, scanning the treeline. A crow cawed in warning, wings slicing air. Silas crouched, sniffed. Pine… loam… and smoke—not campfire, but black powder. His heart kicked.

“Bastards tracked me,” he muttered.

Movement flashed left. A shadow crossing sunlight, fast and low. He leapt aside as a quarrel thudded into bark where his thigh had been. Snipers. Two? Maybe three. He drew his knife, the one Ava had teased him about, and sprinted for cover.

The first Son lunged from behind a boulder, fangs bared half-shifted, wearing Roman’s obsolete crest on a leather vest. Silas dropped into a slide, slashing tendon. The attacker howled, collapsed. No time to finish him.

A second wolf barreled through brush. Silas ducked a swipe, drove his shoulder into the beast’s gut, heard ribs pop. They tumbled onto needles. He tasted copper, smelled rage.

“Traitor,” the wolf spat, claws carving a shallow line across Silas’s cheek.

“Living with it,” Silas growled, head-butting the man. Skull met snout with a crack. He rolled free, and spun, blade sinking to the hilt beneath the wolf’s collarbone. Silence followed. Two down.

Leaves rustled behind. A feminine hiss: “Thought you could sneak off, tough guy?”

Ava.

Shit.

She burst from brush, pistol raised, storm-green eyes blazing. “You said scout at dawn, not vanish!”

“Get back!” he barked, grabbing her arm, spinning her behind an oak as another quarrel whistled by. It nicked her sleeve, drawing a line of blood. She cursed.

“More of them?” she demanded.

“Three I smell, maybe four. They want me, not you.”

“Too late.” She rammed a new magazine home. “We move together, or not at all.”

He bit down on a retort—no time. Another shadow sprinted across a clearing northeast. Silas tugged her toward a hollow log. They dropped, backs pressed, breathing hard.

She shot him a withering glance. “Thought you’d ditch me, huh?”

“I wanted the Sons off your trail.”

“And leave me to explain your corpse to their hostages?”

He grunted. She had a point, infuriatingly. A crack split distant sky. More gunfire. Ava peeked over the log, tracking angles.

“Two o’clock,” she whispered, “crossbowman on that ridge. Blind side if we circle the creek-bed.”

Silas assessed. Good plan, she thought faster than several wolf scouts he’d served with. “I’ll draw fire, you flank left.”

“I’m human, genius.”

“You can still shoot.”

“Yeah, and die.” She scowled. “Better: I lay suppression, you close distance. Your hide heals faster.”

He hated risking her. Yet numbers argued she was right again. He nodded once.

Ava sprang up, firing three quick rounds.

Crack crack crack. Splinters flew from a stump near the ridge.

Silas dashed in the opposite direction, zig-zagging.

A quarrel snapped past his ear. He vaulted a fallen trunk, landing behind a shrub, then launched himself up the slope, claws teasing skin beneath nails, half-shift lending speed.

The crossbowman reloaded too slow. Silas tackled him, jaws elongating just enough to intimidate. He slammed the wolf’s head into a rock, leaving him unconscious. One remained—he spun, scanning.

Gunfire ceased. Silence thicker than fog. His wolf ears twitched, catching soft steps behind Ava’s position.

Damn it.

He hurtled downhill, branches whipping his arms. The final Son, a brute with shaved head, had closed on Ava while she reset her pistol. Silas roared, voice part wolf, part man.

The thug swung a machete. Ava ducked late; blade grazed her shoulder. She yelped but pivoted, slamming the gun’s butt into the attacker’s jaw. He stumbled.

Silas crashed into them, ripping the machete away, sending it spinning. The brute wheeled on him, fists shifting into clawed paws. They grappled, muscles straining. Silas suppressed the urge to fully change; he needed control, not bloodlust.

“You should’ve died with Roman,” the brute snarled.

“Roman’s chains are rusting,” Silas shot back, driving a knee into the man’s gut. He followed with an elbow to the temple. Bones cracked. The wolf sagged. Silas finished him with a precise twist of the neck. Mercy swift.

He straightened, chest heaving, adrenaline buzzing. Ava leaned against a maple, hand clamped to her bleeding shoulder. Anger and relief warred on her face.

“You good?” he asked, voice rough.

“Bullet wound smug.” She hissed a breath. “Could’ve picked a quieter exit strategy.”

Guilt pricked. “I thought leaving made you safer.”

She scoffed. “Newsflash, Wren: safe is a fairy tale. And you just painted a giant target on my back, so congrats.”

He moved to her, tearing cloth from a fallen Son’s sleeve, pressing it to her cut. “Hold this.”

Ava obeyed, grimacing. Up close he smelled her stress sweat, sharp with fear yet laced with stubborn will. She didn’t tremble. Her jaw set like carved stone.

“You saved my hide,” she muttered. “Again.”

“I owed you.”

Her eyes flicked to the dead wolves. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t taken off.”

“Debatable.” He bandaged quickly ignoring how right she might be. The gash was shallow; still, pain brightened her cheeks. “You’ll live.”

“Lucky me.” She lowered her hand. “So, what now? Sons know we travel together once they get a whiff of this area.”

Silas knelt beside the fallen wolves, pulse tuned to the hush that followed bloodshed. No birdsong returned. The woods held its breath, too quiet to trust.

“We torch them, scatter the ashes, and put distance between us and this clearing,” he said at last.

A flicker of concern crossed her face, gone as fast as it came. “Fine. Quick burn, then we move.”

They stacked bodies in the ravine, slathered pine pitch, and set the heap alight. Smoke coiled up the gorge, black against afternoon sky. Ava shifted from foot to foot, jacket collar raised against the stench.

“Carry’s too far,” she muttered. “Someone will smell this.”

“They already have.” Silas’s tone left no room for doubt.

They slogged west, tension riding their shoulders. Ava’s limp worsened on the steep grade, but she never asked to slow. Silas sensed new scents ghosting their trail that marked loyal Sons. Three, maybe five, pacing them beyond sight.

At a shallow creek he called a halt. “Drink up,” he said, crouching as though to fill his canteen. In truth he watched the slopes, noting flickers of movement behind ferns.

Ava knelt too, cupping water to her lips. “Feel like we’re being herded,” she whispered without looking at him.

“You are.” He nodded toward the ridge. “Archers, both sides.”

Her jaw ticked. “Trap?”

“Looks that way.”

They rose together. The path ahead narrowed into a rocky throat, perfect kill-box. If they pushed on, arrows would rain. If they retreated, same problem.

Ava loosed a humorless laugh. “Guess your solo approach really worked out.”

Sarcasm hid fear, but her eyes stayed clear. Brave woman. He admired that more than he should.

Silas scanned tree line, catching the glint of a drawn bow. “On my signal, drop.” He snatched a small smoke bomb from his belt. It was his last one. “We sprint downhill, backtrack to the river flats, disappear.”

“Thought the captives were priority?”

“They still are, but we won’t help anyone as corpses. And if we die we also can’t figure out exactly what they want with those captives.”

An arrow thunked into bark a handspan from Ava’s ear. She flinched, then glared uphill. “Do it.”

Silas cracked the capsule; gray clouds billowed between trunks.

“Down!” He shoved her to earth just as arrows sliced hissing overhead.

Seconds later he yanked her up and they tore through brush, smoke masking their flight.

Branches whipped their faces, ground slick under boots.

Behind, guttural commands rose with a pursuit gathering.

They burst onto a ledge above a ravine. Moonlight would soon spill over the rim, and the drop below looked brutal. Footsteps pounded closer, shadows materializing at smoke’s edge.

Ava raised her pistol. “We could make a stand.”

“Too many,” Silas growled, eyes flashing gold. “Run with me or die here. Those are the only options.” If it had just been him, he’d take a stand, but with her here now, everything changed.

She hesitated, fingers tightening on the grip, but resolve won. “Lead the way, wolf.”

Silas seized her hand, muscles tensing for a desperate leap into dark unknown. Behind them, the Sons howled and charged.