83

Every single wolf who showed up here an hour ago was tended to, marked, and she recited incantations over all present to protect us from the fog. She called them double measures, just to be sure.

We don’t know if it will work as we are exposed for a longer length of time, but given she’s the one who made the rune spell I don’t predict it going wrong. As we leach out into the mist and run forward, I don’t see anything that says it’s not working among those who have raced ahead. Still moving fast, with their eyes on the prize, and I can feel the pulsing link of my pack staying connected to me while moving as one powerful body.

This is how a pack is meant to be. The body, the heart, and the fist, working in unison…. Even if we are only half of that.

The forest is dark and eerie and unearthly silent due to the early hour and the still rising dawn. All the wildlife is hiding, and the quiet swarm of fast wolves moving through like whispers on the wind are all I can hear in the air. A whizzing, fleeting flurry as I too, on foot, have to keep up in human form.

It’s the calm before the storm and it’s too late to turn back and rethink this. We’re making distance, heading for the mountain in the far view and nothing is going to sway us from our path. We’re easily two hundred, combined, more than I ever dreamed would come out here.

My pack never deserted me in the final hour, and I could have wept when they showed up strong in number and ready to die for this. Jasper is wrong about the Santos… if he could see them as I do now, he would know his enemy resides at the mountain and his numbers are few. These Santos they would never turn on their own, kill off a bloodline and imprison their Luna… they’re nothing like him and were oppressed by his rule for far too long. Colton didn’t just stand up against all the wrong, he freed a people and gave them back their will to be what they once were. A proud pack, one worthy of so much more.

We make it miles in a flash, covering the distance as we race against the sun and know that this close to the rise, the vampires would already have retreated to the darkness. It’s only a matter of time before the wolves come out to meet us as and we need to get as far as we can until that moment.

I run until I feel like my chest is going to explode with the effort, my limbs aching, burning too, as fatigue is quick to follow me and I internally curse that the effects on my body are more severe than even I thought they would be. Only a month back, I ran farther than this with Colton, around the perimeter and without even a twinge of tiredness or pain. Now my body fails me, and this is more effort than even the first time I ever trained with the sub back at the valley, so long ago.

My breath becomes labored and my run slows enough that I spot the two wolves flanking me drop back and glance at one another, worry evident in their demeanor. I know they realize I’m slowing, and I can feel their hesitation. I have to be faster; I have to get ahead of the pack and lead. I need to show them I’m here.

Get on me.

Carmen commands in that tone that’s uniquely her, breaking into my chaotic thoughts, running into my side so I’m flipped over her without a choice and have to grab her fur to pull myself on properly. Straddling her the way Meadow’s being rode by Leyanne ahead of us and yet Carmen barely breaks her momentum.

I shouldn’t be doing it like this

I mind link her back privately, ashamed of my own lack of worth at something this basic, but silence is all I get as she ignores my protest. Stubborn to the core, for once though, I’m glad she’s the way she is.

We speed up, and within seconds she overtakes everyone who was before us and catches up to Meadow, sliding up, side by side, to carry their riders up front and proud. She knows the pack need to see us there to focus and not lose faith when we hit the first wave of our own. A sense of urgency cloaking us, and the tension somehow increases the farther we get. The sun breaks over the distant horizon and the fog starts thinning as we move from the border, so seeing becomes easier, right until the moment we spot them.

Like a black wave of ants coming out of pores of broken wood. In the distance a sea of fast-moving terror comes our way at speed, like inky black spill on the sea. Our own wolves realize they are being met almost halfway to the mountain and are on the aggressive defensive and coming like bats out of hell, snarls and howls echoing around us in a blood curling way.

Faster… close the gap, don’t let them get far

I link and push the pack onwards, knowing I’m asking them to run harder, to ignore their own fear, when they’re probably already at full pelt. I need to make sure we get closer than this, but they’re coming at us sooner than I thought they would.

Like seas thrashing, storm fronts meeting; it only takes seconds before the wall of them, and the wall of us, crashes into one another in a dramatic collision. Meadow leaps over the coming forms with impressive skill and height, flying overhead at the unsuspecting wolves who are too busy looking forward. She carries on, as we planned, trying to pull her section of the pack onward as the ones staying with me round on the concentration of the wolves meeting us dead on. The aim is to keep them here, distract them, so none follow Meadow’s small group but that’s not as easy as it seemed.

Claws clash, teeth rip, and bodies collide all around, as wolf meets wolf, and a full-on vicious battle erupts all around me. Noises drowning out everything else. The gnashing of teeth, ripping of skin, howling, growling, cries, and chaos.

We’re not running any further because this wall of fierce and fury has stopped us dead and we have met the ground where some of us may forever lay. I leap off Carmen and wade into the fold, mind blank when instinct takes over and adrenalin drowns the last ounce of doubt away. Throwing wolves back, left, right, and center, as I’m surrounded by violence.

It’s a frenzy, a mix of friend and foe and hard to pick out who’s with us and who’s not. Every time a wolf comes at me, teeth bared flying in a leap to take me down I use my power to throw them back, swipe them aside and try not to hurt them. It’s too fast to figure out who they are and I’m sure radar is one who comes at me twice, only to be hurled thirty feet back as I lash out throwing them away. His is the upper hand that I have and why I was so sure I could handle this. My powers mean I can keep everyone around me far enough away without having to physically battle. My babies will be protected in the bubble of my vampire gifts.