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I always run faster with Emin at my side. A decades-old competition between us, one that I just barely win each time. This is no different; each of us shifted into our wolf forms, racing over the barren terrain toward the northern border.

This is too much like the last time this happened for me not to think about it. To not think about the alert, the insistence from Kira that an attack was coming on the northern border, despite the intel we had that said it might be coming from the west.

“It was a premonition,” I remember her insisting, saying in front of the council, her hands clasped as she looked up at my grandfather, willing him to believe her. We’d graduated only days before. The heat in the valley was just starting to come in, and I was sitting on the council, advancing in my training to take over as alpha.

Kellen was younger then, and apologizing profusely for Kira, going so far as to stand, grab her arm, try to pull her from the room. Around us, fighters were getting ready, waiting to hear what we said. Would we go to the north or the west?

Dividing the group might mean a defeat on whichever border wasn’t protected.

“Sorry about this, sir,” Kellen said, his head bowed. “We’ll make sure to deal with her.”

Kira broke free of his grasp, breathing hard, her eyes meeting mine, her curls rampant around her face and falling over her shoulders.

Then, she turned and walked out the door.

Prickles rose along the back of my neck and over my arms. I leaned over, tapping my grandfather on the wrist, eyes locked on the door as it finally shut, latching in place behind her. It was like there was a timer running in my head, a counter of how long it had been since I last saw her.

She was my mate. And she had just walked out the door. And we knew that an attack was coming.

“Dorian,” my grandfather snapped, turning his head, glaring at me. He coughed slightly at the end of the sentence, an homage to the secret that only he and I knew—he was sick. That’s why he’d been so much harder on me lately, pushing me to learn more, faster.

His warning was not to interrupt him as he spoke with Kellen, the two of them going back and forth over what the right move was. I loved my grandfather to death, but the man was a bureaucrat sometimes, talking and talking when my mate was getting further away.

It was like my body reacted without my permission.

I was standing, I was pushing through the door, shifting, following her scent—that sweet, alluring, fucking irresistible scent—out the door and through to the street. It pooled at the bike rack, which was not a good sign. On foot, Kira never would have outrun me. She was a non-shifter.

But being on her bike meant that she could cover a lot more ground. And her scent was leading off down the street, in the direction of our northern border. If she was right, and if the attack was coming there, she would be killed instantly.

Kira was not a fighter.

So I moved without thinking. Without considering what it might mean for me, the rising alpha leader—to move toward the northern border. I didn’t think about the fact that surely some of the shifters had followed me out of the building.

I didn’t think about the fact that splitting the group would weaken both sides. Or that my grandfather, who was becoming far too weak to fight, would still take his warriors to the western border, and would shift, engaging in the fighting himself when it was clear they weren’t going to hold up.

Later, in the center of town, outside the fountain, leaning over my grandfather, back in his human form but limp, covered in blood, long dead from his fight before he could say anything else to me, I hadn’t thought about it when Kira touched me and I whirled on her, telling her to keep her hands off me.

“I’m sorry, Dorian,” she had sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “I thought—you have to know how much this pains me, too!”

“You know nothing of the pain you’ve caused me.”

We had an audience—nearly every member of the pack come out to the town square to watch. Finding my grandfather dead, and Kira staring up at me with fear as I shouted at her.

“I do,” she insisted, that familiar spark glinting in her eyes as she stepped back toward me. The dangerous thing about her was that, as meek as she seemed, as resigned as it always seemed she was, there was a fighting spirit in her, too. Squaring her shoulders, widening her stance, she stared me down and said, for everyone to hear, “Because I’m your mate.”

Emin sucked in a breath. The whole group did, all the onlookers.

My grandfather had just died. The man who told me Kira wasn’t a good fit for Luna. That being matched to her would be a massive mistake, not just for me, but for the pack as a whole. And, in that moment, it appeared that he was right.

And that’s when I said the thing that I regret to this very day, the shame and remorse of the moment hanging over my head like a black cloud from the moment I uttered it.

My voice full of hatred, I’d taken a step toward her, towering over her form, and said, “You are not my mate, Kira. And if you ever say something so blatantly false again, I’ll kill you myself.”

Some of the people around us gasped. Some turned their heads away.

Nobody went after her as she ran away sobbing, her cries echoing down the street in the dim twilight. I went along with the process of preparing Gramps’s body, completed our ritual of saying goodbye. Sent him into the afterlife with my love.

And when I emerged from that grief-ridden haze, when I realized that I’d turned my mate away, when I sought out the pack psychic and started to get answers, it was already too late.

Because Kira was gone.

Now, Emin and I round the corner of the canyon and find the northern territory completely different from what it was years ago. Before, when we ran out here, there was nothing—not a soul. Nothing but drifts of dirt and sand, the quiet chirping of insects.

But now, the sounds of growling and bodies hitting the rough canyon floor fill the air, echoing off the walls loudly.

To the left , I send to Emin, launching into the fray, finding a Grayhide and burying my teeth in his neck. He’s surprised by it, and I’m able to roll over him, taking him to the ground, snapping his neck, and moving on to the next.

As we fight, I keep my head up, looking for the alpha leader. Trying to pinpoint where he’s standing, where in the fight he is. It’s my job to find him, take him out, and keep him from targeting my shifters.

Only after twenty minutes of battling, growling, and launching my body at other wolves, watching Emin’s back, circling and clawing, do I come to a startling realization.

The Grayhide alpha leader isn’t here. He’s not fighting alongside his shifters.

Which means one of two things—either he’s excellent at hiding his position among this group, or he’s not here at all. He’s somewhere else.

A shiver runs up the length of my spine as I throw another wolf to the ground and swivel around to look at Emin. The Grayhides aren’t engaging fully, instead running at us then bouncing back, forcing us to either chase them or wait for the next attack.

Other than that first wolf I killed by ambushing him, the others have been careful not to let me get too close. In fact, as I survey the area, I realize that’s the case across the board—we aren’t killing each other. Just continuing a pointless, endless fight.

Emin , I send, thoughts whirring as I take it all in. If this isn’t a real fight, that means —

It’s a diversion , Emin sends back, a growl of his slipping through the bond.

In a startling moment of clarity, I remember Kira’s last premonition, the strange tone of her voice when she’d spoken. It had sounded like her, but also slightly different at the same time. Older. Like Kira in twenty years.

Don’t worry. I’ve got you, baby girl.

Another chill runs down my back at the realization. Someone Kira might trust, despite everything that’s happened to her. She told me herself.

Stay here , I send to Emin. Keep up the charade. Make sure they don’t actually cross the border .

It’s risky, considering the fact that we’re so low on Amanzite, but there’s no other option. I turn and race back in the direction of my house, heart hammering at what I might find when I get there.

I pray that Kira is in the safe room, pissed at me but unharmed.

But something deep in my chest tells me I’m just not that lucky.