I swallowed down the words that wanted to come and instead gave Sora a small, flippant nod.
“Thanks for the heads-up.” My words came out sounding tired, not sarcastic.
Damn it. I didn’t have time to be tired. I didn’t have time to celebrate Wilson’s permanent death, to sob with the memory of holding a gun to Sora’s head, to rail against Callum for playing with us like we were dolls.
I stuffed my feelings back in their little steel box, and I turned to the others: to Lake, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Griffin, to Chase, still in wolf form. I turned to Jed and Caroline, both ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
“Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY. IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY. I didn’t bother blocking my thoughts off from the others—to the point where I wasn’t sure whether my silent mantra, as we climbed the mountain, was for my benefit or theirs.
We would get to Maddy in time, and even if we didn’t, I had to trust that she could hold her own. Shay wouldn’t physically harm her—she was too valuable, the baby was too valuable.
Shay would try to claim her. He’d dig his fingernails into her skin and try to force his mind into hers, instating a bond that would tie her to the Snake Bend Pack.
To him.
But Maddy was Resilient. She could fight him. She could resist.
I just had to hope that she would be able to hold on until I got there, that giving birth wouldn’t have taken too much out of her. I had to trust that, push come to shove, her survival instinct—and her instincts as a mother—would be enough.
It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.
We were getting close. I nodded to Chase and Lake, let them go. Faster than my human eyes could track them, they ran.
We were going to get there.
Maddy was going to be okay.
And then I was going to kill Callum.
“Wolves.” Caroline said the word out loud, and I was reminded for the second time that day that she wasn’t a part of our pack. She wasn’t a part of this.
Yet, here she was.
“How many?” I asked, unwilling to distract Lake and Chase from their task with that question.
“I don’t know,” Caroline replied, her baby blues narrowed in concentration. “They’ve got a perimeter set. The wind’s coming out of the north. I can go around back, scope it out.”
I glanced at Jed, and he nodded. Caroline was impossible to track—even with werewolf senses, they wouldn’t hear her coming.
Like a thief in the proverbial night, she was gone, blending perfectly into her surroundings, stalking through the rough mountain terrain, a girl on a mission.
I turned to Jed. Darkness fell over his eyes, and that was the only signal I needed. I reached for my own Resilience, called up the power, and ran.
One second I was at the base of the mountain, and the next thing I knew, I was at the mouth of the cave. I saw Chase first, then Lake, both in wolf form. Their clothes littered the cave floor. Their hackles were raised.
Opposite them, Shay Macalister was smiling. He was bent at the waist, too large to fit fully inside Maddy’s den.
“Leave. Me. Alone.”
Maddy’s voice was wispy weak, but full of emotion. I stalked into the cave, past Chase and Lake, right up to Shay, and that was when I saw her.
Maddy was lying on her side, her face ghostly pale, blood smeared on her dress. And there, in her lap, was a baby.
A pup.
The newborn must have Shifted during labor, or soon thereafter, because there wasn’t a hint of baby-pink skin to be seen—only short, spiky fur, sticky and standing straight up.
Her baby eyes were closed.
“You’re mine,” Shay said, leaning over Maddy, kneeling next to her, his voice vibrating with power and want and need.
“No. I’m. Not.”
Maddy spat at him, on him, but she was too weak to move. She couldn’t move.
“Maddy,” I said, wary of coming to stand within Shay’s grasp, but knowing I had no other choice.
If he kills me, I thought, Callum will kill him. Right now that was cold comfort.
“Maddy?” I reached out to touch her cheek. Shay growled, but there was nothing he could do about it—first come, first serve, and he hadn’t managed to break his way through Maddy’s defenses yet.
She was fighting him—but she might not fight me.
“Mads?” There was a question in my voice. She hadn’t wanted this—not last winter, not when she’d left us in the motel room.
She nodded.
“Yes,” she said, reaching out and taking my hand, pressing my nails into the flesh of her neck. I felt my fingers curling, felt myself digging in deeper, drawing blood. Then I took all that I was—all that my pack was—and I threw it at her.
Chase and Lake and me.
Devon, at home with the kids.
Lily, Katie, Alex, Ali, Mitch.
Phoebe, Sage, and all the rest.
This was what we were. We were a pack made by choice. We were family.
Power exploded out of me. The air hummed with it. I stopped breathing. Maddy stopped breathing. When we started up again, we breathed as one.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
She was mine.
I turned to Shay, expecting to see rage marring his features—so like Devon’s I wanted to hurl—but the only thing on Shay’s face was a smile.
I didn’t realize I’d let go of my Resilience until it flared back up. This cave was too small, Shay was too big, too strong, and he was smiling.
We have to get out of here, I told Maddy, the words flowing freely from my mind to hers, as if she’d never left, as if it had always been this way between us, this easy.
Eyes on Shay’s, I hooked my arms beneath Maddy’s armpits. I pulled her backward. She scraped her heels against the floor, pushing, propelling herself out toward the mouth of the cave, toward morning’s first light, toward freedom.
Shay followed, but stopped when Chase and Lake came to stand in front of us, their lips curled upward, mouths open, canines gleaming.
Maddy was ours. If he attacked one of us, if he made a move against us, my wolves could attack him—and if his pack didn’t want to face the wrath of the Senate when it was said and done, they’d leave him to fight us alone.
Us, I thought, and reflexively, I scanned the woods for Caroline and found her, poised behind a rock, twenty yards away, gun in one hand and crossbow in the other.
“It’s over, Shay.” I shut my fear away—didn’t give him the chance to smell it. He couldn’t fight me, not unless he wanted to start something that Callum would end.
“It is over,” Shay agreed amicably. “And you, my dear, have something that belongs to me.”
At first, I thought he was talking about Maddy, but then a garbled cry escaped her throat, and I realized that he wasn’t talking about the girl.
He was talking about the pup.
No. A child was born into his or her mother’s pack. There was no Marking, no claiming. It was automatic—but Maddy’s child was born in No-Man’s-Land. She was born to a lone wolf.
I’d claimed Maddy after the child’s birth, not before.
With horror, I realized the implications. Maddy had fought Shay. She’d resisted. She’d been able to. But the baby—
“No,” Maddy said, the word halfway between a howl and a growl, not human in the least. “You can’t have her. You can’t.”
Shay walked between Chase and Lake, like they were nothing. To him, they probably were. He knelt, and as bile rose in my throat and my dry eyes burned with tears that wouldn’t come, he ran one hand gently over the sleeping pup’s head.
Maddy trembled, on the verge of a Shift. Shay gestured to someone behind us, and another Were came to stand beside him.
“Careful,” Shay told Maddy. “You might hurt her if you Shift.”
The Snake Bend alpha stood and faced me, my body dwarfed by his massive dimensions. “The little one is mine,” he said, “and there’s nothing you or your reinforcements”—he jerked his head toward Caroline, leaving me to wonder how he’d known she was there—“can do about it.”
Shay paused. “Of course, the pup might not live long without her mother. She might just waste away….”