I hadn’t cried on the pier, or talking with Diana or Atarah or my sister, even while she had sobbed and reeled. Everything had been too urgent, too intense, too fast. All afternoon in the Jeep was replaying—the horror, fear, grief, still riding disfiguring waves of shock.
Now we had to keep up the momentum, find this little village west of here where we could camp out and start tracking, locate the territory, then approach in daylight. Check things off the list—get things done. Keep moving to stay alive. Keep moving or be unable to move and fail.
Then Zar, perhaps triggered by Jason, would not let go, literally stopping me from moving as he assured me this was all right, everything was going to be okay, while I saw dripping blood and eyeless sockets.
I struggled, then turned into his chest, shaking with silent tears as my breaths came in shuddering, panicked gasps through my wide open mouth, eyes and nose buried in his shirt.
Zar held on tight, pulling me in. Jason gripped my hand. Jed leaned into my back.
It wasn’t just Henry I saw, but my sister in his place, plus each of them, one after another: Zar, Jed, Jason, Kage, Isaac, or Andrew covered in blood, while I was so scared for this thing that loomed ever closer I felt the bile rise again to my throat and had to clench my teeth.
This wasn’t being silver. It wasn’t solving problems. Yet I cried anyway and could not stop. Instead of pulling myself together, I only got worse. Because Isaac caressed my hair and kissed my head, Kage pressed his hand over mine in Jason’s, and Andrew pushed tissues into my other hand, bunched up between Zar’s and my own chests, and held on. Unable to see, I knew each by touch—didn’t have to think about it. And I knew, while they made me sob and silently said they were my safety, that this was what wolves did when someone was hurt: crowd around, touch, nuzzle, share themselves. Also that, to do so, with me sitting in the doorway with Zar, they had to be pressed together, overlapping in one giant embrace.
Which made me cry even more—although I would not have been able to put the reason into words if asked.
Chapter 34
I had changed my mind about staying in the camper trailer only after we’d already been on the road that day. It wasn’t safe. I couldn’t see these killers breaking into a bed and breakfast to stab us all in the chests, but if we were isolated in an illegally parked caravan with wolves roaming by night?
It turned out, no one else agreed. They were happy to stay out with the caravan, not happy with the idea of being trapped in a bed and breakfast again. There wasn’t a free room in the tiny village anyway.
I only mentioned my concerns once we were back on the road. I didn’t argue, didn’t want to be making decisions, and Isaac and Kage took charge of everything. I wasn’t surprised. Both males had excellent leadership qualities—even if Kage’s were not at their best around this particular group of peers. What surprised me was how everyone else fell in line. Jed not being able to talk might have helped, yet I was pretty certain it didn’t matter today. He could have showed Kage his teeth when Kage ordered him off the bench at the table in the trailer so no one could see him through the window. Instead, Jed hopped to the walkway and lay down.
They found a camp spot, leaving the Jeep hooked up, and we walked back into Rywnish after dark with Jed on a leash in my hands and Jason on his prong collar and a leash that Kage held.
In the dark, we circled Rywnish—which was nothing more than a pub, an inn, a couple touristy shops to support the hikers and mountain bikers coming through, a seasonal tea room, and a scattering of stone houses.
I didn’t try to scry for them, too emotionally weak and spent even to think of it. Anyway, I was in no hurry to try direct scries after who might be the killers again. We had to be more roundabout.
No London. No Rocky Mountains. It took a mere half hour to walk all through the village and Jed and Jason to lead us back out of town. It was an hour before they turned off on the pitch dark country road—smooth and paved—and alerted us to a private, one-lane road heading up into the hills. It looked like a road for a farm: where at least some of this Traeth Pack had left scent trails.
My skin crawled at the idea of going on up that track in the dark. There was no dry stone wall, and the road remained paved, if dilapidated. Still…
“This is where they go?” Kage checked with Jason. “Wolves up there?”
Jason, gazing up at him while clouds scudded across the moon, wagged his tail. He was little more than a pool of black with two gently gleaming eyes.
Kage looked around to the rest. “We’ll wait for the next Sun to start howling at their doors, and hope they’ll face us and talk and not do anything daft like try to kill us. Come in with heads low, like we’ve no idea, and sniff them out.”
They nodded, agreeing without a word of criticism.
“Let’s go,” Isaac said. “We’ll drive over in the morning with a few wolves in fur waiting in the Jeep. Our opening is just that we’re looking for Peter. We know they spoke to him. If they have nothing to hide, they’ll speak to us as well.”
I didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to make any decisions, and I was so grateful I could have cried again. I did not. I stroked Jed’s face and unclipped the leash, then held onto Isaac’s arm as we started back. Jed remained at my side anyway, with only occasional sniffing jaunts into the fields to each side of the road.
I didn’t have to express an opinion until everyone was getting ready for bed at the Jeep and caravan. They brushed their teeth and started to undress in the now cold night by the lights from inside the Jeep, some coming in for the pathetic but functional trailer bathroom.
“I don’t like you being out here. Any of you.” I hugged myself, jacket back on over my tank top, standing outside the trailer door with a flashlight. A battery operated lantern on the table gave the interior a weak glow.
“We can stay right here,” Isaac said. “We know that. We’ll be in fur.”
“Being in fur only gives you a better chance. It doesn’t make you invincible.”
“No one knows we’re here.”
“We don’t know that for sure.” I’d also warded the trailer before we’d set out. We were as protected from magical viewing as I knew how to make us. Yet I only knew so much, and was only so powerful. The casters working against us had already pulled off more than I knew how to do, like planting looping images.
Jed sat at my feet. Zar was coming from the trailer behind me, swishing coconut oil in his teeth. The other three were at the Jeep, Kage undressing to change, Andrew digging through his messenger bag after something.
“I wish you could stay in,” I said. “I know there’s not room. There’s nothing we can do about that. I’m just…” Slow, shuddering breath while Isaac waited for me. “I’m scared,” I finished. “I’m scared for all of you. This is about as low-security as we can get.” Looking around to the edge of woods and intense darkness with the moon hidden by cloud.
Zar had passed us, spit out the mouthful of oil, and turned back. “We can stay in, Cass. We all want to stay with you, if that’s all right?” He sounded confused. Like I’d said, “I’d give you all a steak but I know you don’t want one.”
“Happy to stay, but how?” I said. “The ‘bed’ is hardly big enough for two people. That leaves what?”
“The walkway, by the door, below the table,” Isaac said calmly. “We can stay in if you’re all right with that, Cassia.”
“Of course I’m all right with that. It’s you guys who would suffer from it.”
While Zar still looked confused, Isaac gave me a gentle smile. “You’ve underestimated yourself from the day we met you, arä.”
“I … don’t understand.”
“We’ll be proud to stay in with you, Cass,” Zar said.
“But you’ll be wedged in together.”
“The better to be closer to you.” Zar lifted my free hand to kiss my knuckles.
So they joined me in the little camper trailer, smelling musty and wolfy, but with the w
indows open on each side and fresh linens, including a large stack of blankets on the platform bed.
Isaac put away his clothes in his rucksack at the Jeep and changed. Kage—who must have known I’d been freezing the last time I’d stayed in the caravan and brought all those blankets for me—did the same.
“I’ll stay with you, Cass,” Zar said, back in the caravan with me and scoping out the habitable space.
“You’ll want some proper company, Belle.” Andrew had brought his whole bag in and was folding down the table to make more room. “Someone to share all that wool with? Maybe a little magic hot water bottle—”
“I get the hint, Andrew. Why don’t you change and I’ll cover you up?”
“Just have to go back again in the morning, darling.”
“Zar asked first and it’s not even a real bed. I’m sorry. I’ll cover you.”
“It’s right enough.” Zar had removed his boots and black jeans to climb onto the platform, testing it out. “Can’t sit up all the way in, but plenty wide. We’ll sleep on our sides.”
Again, offering solutions, safety, offering the sun and the moon. He smiled back at me from the bed, showing his dimples, pleased of this simple solution to accommodate others.
“See, darling?” Andrew kissed my ear and slipped past me to test the hard foam mattress with a hand. “You worry too much. We’re all friends here.”
They’d rallied together in the face of supporting and looking after me before. That didn’t mean it would last. But I didn’t care. Even a moment of this was so beautiful it made my eyes burn once more.
I gave Jason and Kage a blanket to curl up on at the awkward T space just in from the door, also finding the rope from the blue bag for Jason to chew. Next, I spread a second blanket below the table space and beside the bed where Jed and Isaac curled up. I held the face of each and kissed their muzzles as I moved among them. They thumped their tails on the floor in return. Kage licked the side of my face with the exuberance of one trying to lap up dinner. The rest were more polite.
Zar, showing no sign of claustrophobia, lay with his back against the wall, waiting for me, while Andrew leaned out of my way, talking to Zar about Welsh wolves and what little we knew from Peter’s reports.
Had the Traeths followed and killed Peter? Or had he arrived in the Lake District and been killed by members of the Mountain Pack?
Tomorrow, we could be finding out which of these packs was in on this. For “in on it” was all they were. We knew better than to think this was a single angry group anymore. It was a conspiracy spanning at least one wolf pack and some casters. With deaths still happening in France, the vanishing of the Greys, and the attacks continuing in the south, the scale was becoming almost as scary as the uncertainty. What if it wasn’t the Traeths or the Mountain Pack in this? What if it was both? And more?
Tomorrow, we would have a new chance for answers. With six wolves and a witch we could defend ourselves. Or we could run. Or have a cup of tea and go on our way to Cumbria.
Tomorrow, we would find out which. But I didn’t care about tomorrow. I didn’t join in the conversation.
I climbed into bed against Zar, who breathed through my hair, stroking down my arm while I turned my back to him.
Andrew pulled the covers up around us, spreading the last extra blanket over me. I wouldn’t need more than that between the two of them and doubted even Andrew would be cold like this. He had his socks on, which made me smile and wish I’d kept mine on. I pressed my cold feet into his instead.
Between them, warm and forgetting all about the feeble foam mattress, I whispered, “Thank you. Neä amaus Vinua. Thank you…”
“Moon bless, Cass. Neä amaus Vinu.”
“She has,” I said.
Andrew kissed my nose and I snuggled down against his chest. “Go to sleep, darling. You’re safe here. But you know that, right?”
“I know.”
Tomorrow, we would face Snowdonia and the Traeth Pack. After, maybe the Lake District. We were hunting trouble, yet we would keep going until we found it. We would keep chasing until our feet wouldn’t carry us any farther. Like all hunters in pursuit of survival, we would catch our prey—or we would die.
Tomorrow, perhaps, we would find out which it was going to be.
I didn’t have to think about tomorrow, though. I only held on, thinking of family, love, safety—and what those words really meant—until I fell asleep, achingly grateful for Moon’s six perfect blessings holding me in return.
Dear Moonlight Pack
Lord Byron said, "Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey." Thank you for running with Cassia and her wolves along this path.
The pressure is building, the clock is ticking, and the hunt is on as predator closes in on prey—but which is which? Continue reading with Book Eight: Moonlight Whispers.
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Until our next hunt,
Moonlight Lovers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 7) Page 22