He closed his jaws on bone and shook as hard as he could. Beneath him, the bear tried first to get to its feet—and then just to roll over. But it had fallen awkwardly, and Charles was able to keep it from finding the leverage to do much more than wiggle. It gave a hard lurch … and the spine separated with a pop and a grisly crunch.
The bear’s rear quarters fell limp, and Charles bounded away from the still-dangerous front end. The bear’s blue human eyes regarded him balefully as it roared and snapped its teeth together.
Charles growled, showing the skinwalker his own fangs. He stayed back as his opponent thrashed and struggled—apparently paying no attention to anything other than reaching Charles. Charles gradually became aware of aching muscles, stiffness in his left shoulder, and the persistent ache of his ribs.
Eventually, the blood loss, made worse by the bear’s refusal to be still, won out. The giant beast gave one last heave and collapsed on the torn-up ground. It breathed four times, then the air whooshed out with a sigh, and the blue eyes glazed over.
Charles waited. He did not remember a time that his grandfather had been wrong about something. Charles was not a holy man, and so he should not have killed the skinwalker. But unarguably, the skinwalker in the bear’s form lay dead. Charles’s ears could not pick up the sound of his enemy’s heart beating. He waited until his nose told him that death had begun its work, the body had started to decompose, before he decided that his grandfather had been mistaken. Werewolves were not native to this continent, perhaps that was why his grandfather had not mentioned werewolves as a way to kill skinwalkers.
Charles looked for Devon. He’d have thought that the wildling would have joined in the fight—on Jericho’s side. Jericho was Devon’s friend, and Charles and Devon were only acquaintances. But Devon was nowhere to be seen, his scent just a hint on the wind.
Whatever Anna had told Devon when she wasted time that she should have used to get away had been effective.
Now that he had scared her to death, he supposed, he’d better let her know that—
Fifteen hundred pounds of Kodiak hit him like a bulldozer. His shoulder crunched against a tree, and screaming agony flared throughout his body. Somehow, the skinwalker’s magic had concealed the sound of movement, the rebirth of the bear, and the feel of blood magic at work, so the bear had taken Charles completely by surprise.
In his head, a quavering old man’s voice said, My grandson, why do you always have to learn the hard way?
• • •
LEAH RAN, FOCUSED on her goal. She was taller than Asil and Juste both, and she outpaced them.
She was a skilled hunter, and she learned from others’ mistakes. She did not allow herself to get close enough to Sage to fall victim to one of her witchy tricks as Charles had. But she kept Sage in sight.
She had the advantage on this ground, she thought. With her mate, she had traveled every foot of their territory, stayed up late at night discussing the topography, its strengths and weaknesses. She knew, for instance, that Sage was trying to take them on a roundabout route to the cars. Sage was hoping that they would let her get far enough ahead that she could take one of them and escape.
Never had Leah so resented the protocol that forbade cell phones. It would be nice to alert the pack, so that they could set up roadblocks on all of the ways that Sage could take her wussy SUV out of these mountains. Maybe even get someone up here in time to disable Sage’s car. But the nearest phone was at Jericho’s cabin, and that was too far to do them any good.
Leah was pretty sure that Sage didn’t have the knowledge to start one of the cars without a key—thank heavens that Charles had left his old truck at home. Even Leah could hotwire a truck from that era in about ten seconds flat.
She had a gun, concealed in a shoulder holster, but didn’t bother to take it out. She was a decent shot, but at this pace she would be unlikely to hit Sage. Besides, killing Sage with a gun would be so much less satisfying than killing her with her knife.
She jumped a tree, tucking her feet up so as not to catch a toe. Sage was keeping to rough ground where she could because Leah was faster, even on two feet, than Sage was on four.
Some of that was because Leah ran in her human form every day. Some of it was that Leah was built like a runner. But most of it was that, as the Marrok’s mate, second in the pack, she could draw on the strength of the pack to aid her muscles.
She kept Sage’s wolf in sight, though the light and dark golden brown coat was better even than Leah’s own tawnier fur at blending in the light and shadow of the forest they ran through. After a couple of miles, Juste and Asil were some distance behind them, and she was just settling into stride. But that was all right.
She could take Sage.
Her mate told her that her attitudes were stuck in the nineteenth century. She knew that Bran worried that her lack of confidence when facing down a male opponent would get her hurt someday. But she had him for that—and there wasn’t a female werewolf on the planet she was afraid of.
They were nearly back where they had started—a trick of the trail Sage had been taking. That meant they were about two miles from the cars.
Sage tossed a look over her shoulder, and Leah could see the consternation wash over her when she saw Leah. She’d really thought she could outrun Leah. She wasn’t the first person to underestimate Leah. Most of them were dead.
Her mate was the only person who truly saw her. He might not like her—Leah knew that, and it didn’t bother her. Much. But Bran Cornick appreciated her skills and her strengths, and he respected her. He didn’t truly respect many people. She would make do with that.
She increased her speed, narrowing the distance between them. Even Bran would be surprised that it was she, and not his son, who killed their traitor.
She was barely a hundred feet short of Sage when she felt a shivery light in the pack bonds that told her one of their pack had been gravely injured. Who? She slowed her approach, letting Sage’s lead grow again, as she searched through the ties that bound her to her pack.
Charles.
How did Charles get hurt? It doesn’t feel like magic, so it isn’t an effect of whatever Sage threw in his face. She had been a werewolf a long time, and she knew how to read the bonds. This was a physical hurt, grave enough to mean death.
A bear roared its triumph—from the direction of Jericho’s cave. What in the world made Charles take on a bear when we have a traitor to catch?
She set one foot down and pivoted on it. Sage would have to wait.
No, it would not hurt her if Charles died. She didn’t like him, and she’d never made any bones about it. He was sullen and silent, and she was more scared of him than she was of anyone, not excluding Asil.
But if a death of another wildling would hurt her mate, the death of his son would do far worse. And though she knew Bran did not love her, knew that love had no part in their long-ago bargain, it didn’t matter. She loved her coldhearted, flawed bastard of a husband and mate with all of her selfish heart. If she could save Charles, she would.
And wouldn’t Charles just hate that. She smiled widely as she ran, sweeping up Asil and Juste in her wake with a gesture of her hand.
• • •
CRUMPLED AGAINST A tree, Anna looked up at Wellesley with tears in her eyes. “He’s hurt,” she said, too frantic to wonder if Wellesley would even know who she was talking about. “He’s hurt. Nothing can kill it. Only a holy man or fire—and Charles has neither.”
Instead of answering her, Wellesley gathered the five-gallon can and found the lighter where it had landed when she fell. Anna scrambled belatedly to her feet, feeling dizzy and light-headed, though the pain had dimmed a little. She couldn’t tell if it was because Charles had tightened down their bond or because he was losing consciousness.
But pain meant he was still alive, and if he was still alive, there was no time to stand around. Save mourning for when it was too late to do anything.
“Get me there,” said Wellesley. “I can help.”
And that’s when she actually looked at him and paid attention to what she saw.
Sometime between when they’d left him at his home, tired but whole, and now, he had resettled his person. This man was no harmless artist. Here was the man who had survived slavery of the worst sort, who survived a curse for nearly a century and emerged sane. Such a man could command armies—or a slightly battered Anna who had a skinwalker to kill.