Page 27

It’s still dark outside when I arrive at the northern border, breathless and with the headlights off. I know these roads like the back of my hand, and in case there’s anyone else out here, we don’t need them seeing the lights and gathering more information on us.

Emin, Kellen, and two of the patrol guys are in a little bunker when I walk up. I remember these from when I used to join patrols as a teenager—they’re small mounds that you hardly notice until you get close to them. Nearly impossible to see, but a place for shifters to hide out and keep an eye on things. Some shifters stay in these, others actually walk just inside the territory lines, shifted and keeping a nose up for enemy scents.

When I stop just outside the mound and wait, a small section of it shifts to the side, and Emin pokes his head out, looking up at me with bright, excited eyes.

“Dorian,” he says, and for a second it’s almost like we’re kids again, and he’s discovered a cool path through the woods we can take next time we hunt. Instead, he shifts to the side, allowing me to shimmy my body into the space, and I realize this is nothing like when we were kids.

Against the back wall of the small bunker is a cheap fold-up lawn chair, and sitting in it is a man I’ve never seen before, his wrists tied together behind his back, his ankles looped carefully to the legs of the chair.

A shifter from our pack sits on either side of the chair, still in their wolf forms, dripping saliva from their mouths, their sharp eyes darting, growls low in their throats.

“Caught him this morning,” Emin says, breathless, raking a hand through his hair, and I recognize the scent of this stranger, even though I’ve never seen him before.

A Grayhide.

On the phone, Kellen said they’d captured someone trying to make it over our territory lines, but he didn’t specify exactly which pack it was. Now, a low growl forms in my throat, too, but I push it down, trying to focus on the moment, on this man, shifter, in front of me.

He’s gagged, and he doesn’t look afraid. If anything, he looks exhausted. Resigned to his fate. His hair is short, looking like it’s been recently buzzed. His eyes are gray and flat, a scar stretching over his left cheek faint, but still shining a silvery line in the low light of the bunker.

Well-defined and sharp-eyed. Likely some sort of reconnaissance for the Grayhides.

And surely just barely over eighteen years old.

But why? Why send someone over here to get information from our pack when Jarred likely already has several plants in here already? Trying to get a wolf over enemy lines is practically a death wish, and he had to have known that when sending this shifter in our direction.

Unless our defenses were completely down, we never would have let something like this slip through. No matter how stealthy, how well-trained, he never would have made it through our lines.

I stand still in front of the man, watching as he raises his gaze to mine. His jaw is strong, his stare somehow unwavering, even in his position. Even bound and gagged, he gives off the air of someone who wouldn’t back down to anyone.

“Alright,” I sigh, grabbing my own chair, spinning it around, and dropping into a seated position in front of the guy. I look him up and down once more, still trying to get a read on the situation, and jerk my head at Emin.

He gets the order, steps forward, and removes the Grayhide’s gag. To my surprise, the man doesn’t launch an attack, doesn’t try to bite him—nothing.

“Well,” I say, hating how my curiosity continues to rise. “This is fascinating.”

The man just stares back at me. I cross my arms and lean forward on the back of the chair.

“A Grayhide trying to cross over the border,” I speak slowly, watching him carefully, getting the feeling that he’ll reveal nothing willingly. He tilts his head as I continue, “That doesn’t make any sense. You knew you weren’t going to get through, so your goal was to get caught. But what good does that do you?”

He surprises me by speaking, his voice clear when he says, “Are you the alpha leader of this pack?”

No point in lying. He likely already knows the truth if he can smell my scent.

“I am.”

He looks to the left and right, eyes never going to the other shifters, but just taking in the area. Finally, when he meets my eyes again, he says, “Thought you would have something … bigger.”

I laugh, “Is that it? Some sort of tracker on you, thought we’d take you right into the middle of town? You don’t think we’re that stupid, do you?”

“I don’t,” he says, slight emphasis on the “I.”

A moment passes, quiet stretching out, and I can’t shake the growing sense that if this man weren’t from a rival pack, I might like him. Communicating a lot while saying little.

“What’s your name?” I ask, and to my surprise, he answers straight away.

“Aidan Grayhide,” he says, and the way his voice inflects tells me that this matters. Of course it matters—the current alpha leader of that pack is not a Grayhide. In fact, the last I knew, the Grayhide line was killed off decades ago.

“Is that so?”

“Let’s cut the crap. Does that sound good?”

My guys growl, each swiveling their snouts toward Aidan, but I hold up a hand, and they stop, slowly turning to face forward again, though I can tell that, with their pent-up energy, they are more than ready to tear him limb from limb right now.

“Sounds perfect. What the fuck are you doing in my territory, Aidan Grayhide?”

He clears his throat, sits up taller, and looks me right in the eye.

Normally, a death wish. But there’s something about this shifter that’s giving me pause.

“Jarred Blacklock is not the rightful alpha leader of the Grayhides,” Aidan says, voice a low growl. “I am.”

I sit back, raising my eyebrows. “Last I heard, Jarred defeated the previous alpha in a battle fair and square. What do you have to do with it?”

In fact, I’d heard the battle was so bloody that shifters were vomiting on the sidelines—shifters who had seen battle and gruesome death already. That was before I ever took over as the alpha leader.

“ Jarred ,” Aidan says, sounding like he’d curse the man with his own name if he could, “Is a slimy, dishonorable trash-fucker.”

Emin lets out a little sound behind me, and I bite my lip to keep a straight face. Aidan doesn’t seem to notice my right-hand man’s amusement, however, and continues on.

“The Grayhide line did not die out,” Aidan says, leaning in as much as he can, until he runs up against the restraints holding him back. “They were murdered in cold blood. Women, children, and the elderly. Jerrod’s father killed my mother in front of us .” His voice shakes, but he recovers. “Thought he killed me, too—but someone got me out. I was brought up in the pack, completely oblivious to my true roots. And after Jarred killed his own father to take over, and there was a chance I might figure out who I was, he had me taken away, too. Cast out.”

I hear Emin suck in a breath behind me, and wish I could turn around to tell him to be quiet. But I don’t want to take my eyes off Aidan. As a non-pack-member, I can’t tune into his being, can’t listen to his heartbeat and see if he’s lying to me, but my intuition is telling me that what he says is true.

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my territory,” I snarl. “What the Grayhides do is none of my business.”

“Actually,” Aidan says, letting one side of his mouth curl up. “I come to you with information. Figured you’d never answer a message from a nobody asking for a meeting, but you would definitely come to the border if you heard someone was trying to infiltrate. Especially now that you have your mate—”

His words cut off as my hand wraps around his throat, squeezing. I see red, fury hurtling through me at an alarming pace. The only thing that keeps me from snapping his neck is my training, my Gramps’s voice in my ear telling me not to act in haste.

That panicked leaders are bad leaders. Men who let their anger control them are the very emotional beings they scorn.

Taking a breath, I slowly ease my hand from his throat, satisfied when he coughs roughly, heaving for air. Behind me, I can feel Emin’s gaze on me, his pulse rate increasing.

He has never seen me act like that before. I don’t care—the idea that this man is here and Kira is at home alone makes me sick. I turn around and glance at Emin, giving him a look, and he seems to understand it, nodding and climbing out of the bunker.

Right now, he’s making a few calls, sending some shifters to my place to watch over Kira.

“Let’s be very careful about what we say next,” I growl, watching as he finally gets his breath back. When he raises his gaze to mine, there’s something less than respect, more than acknowledgment.

“Fine,” he rasps. “I have information that you want. But I need a place to stay for the next month. I’ve been through hell and back—been sick. I plan to challenge Jarred and take my pack back, but I need time to train. To regain my strength.”

I let out a bark of a laugh, “You can’t be serious. You think I’m going to let a shifter from a rival pack into my territory?”

“Throw me in your jail,” he shrugs. “Just as long as I have a place to train, food to eat. I don’t have much, but I’ll pay you what I can. The Grayhide name has been poisoned by that greasy asshole. And I intend to take it back. Agree to my terms, and I’ll give you the information I have.”

“Your terms,” I raise an eyebrow. “A place to train, food? That’s it?”

He chews his lip, raises his head once more. “And one more.”

“What is that?”

“I want you to kill me.”