Page 53 of Alpha Exile

Delilah's distress is palpable through the mate bond.What if sleeping means we get there too late and we lose him?

I feel the same sense of urgency.

We'll find him when we find him,Lance insists.It won't do us any good to be on death's door when we catch up to his trail. We'll need to be ready to face off with Delphine, and we can't do that without rest.

Eventually Delilah agrees, and I can't decide whether I'm with her or with Lance. On the one hand, I practically have to drag myself back to the campsite, where we gather our supplies and agree to take them towards the north side of the mountains before we eat again and rest. On the other hand, every moment that we spend separated from Roarke is like an ice pick through my heart.

He's been there for me through everything, good times and bad. I don't know if I would even be alive if not for him. God knows there were plenty of times when I chased my high towards the edge of the boundary between life and death. Roarke was the one who dragged me by the collar to the land of the living, nursed me back to health, and refused to give up on me long after I'd given up on myself.

Which means that as soon as I've eaten enough and slept enough to have my strength back, I'm headed back into those tunnels.

As Delilah's eyes meet mine over the campfire, and we dig into a meal of tough roasted stew Finn boastfully threw together, I know she's feeling the same way.

Wewillget him back.

We have to.

Nothing else matters on this earth.

* * *

I don't know what rouses me from sleep.

One minute I'm restlessly tossing and turning, vague dreams and memories haunting the edges of my mind. Delphine's voice is in my head, spinning me around, and even though I know it isn't real, my heart believes that it is.

The next minute I'm sitting upright, and it's not my dream that haunts my mind.

It's the very real presence that drags me awake, warning me of danger nearby.

I take a moment to collect myself, inventorying my surroundings. The campfire is stoked nearby, giving off a faint glowing light. I survey the sleeping rolls and find all of them in their place, no one missing or even awake.

I don't see any intruder by the light of the fire, but it's not the only thing I have to rely on. Delilah set up a perimeter web of magical protection; I can't see the resulting threads of magic, but I can see the mundane objects she tied it to at six points. The mug, ladle, flashlight, tennis shoe, paperback book, and soup bowl are all intact and in place.

That means no one has disturbed our campsite, and Delphine is nowhere to be found.

I reach along the mate bond and find it strongly intact. Delphine took advantage of Delilah's magically-induced sleep to bury it and subvert our will before, but she can't this time. Especially now that the vials of blood have been stolen from her and thoroughly destroyed.

No, the sense of danger I feel has nothing to do with anything inside our little campsite. Sitting upright and stretching, I catalog my body's various needs and discover that I do, at least, need to piss. So I might as well do that before I get to sleep.

Walking quietly to the edge of the campsite, I step carefully over the mug at the edge of the perimeter. Delilah made it clear that as long as one of us passed directly over the objects she used to mark certain spots, the alarm wouldn't sound—and if an intruderdoeswalk past, all the objects are supposed to come to life and fly at each other, making enough noise to wake the dead.

Once I'm past the perimeter, my hackles go up, and I instinctively tap into my wolf's eyesight. As my pupils slip over to their reflective, wolf-like state, the color drains out of my surroundings, but I can see something moving in the night.

A distant figure, tall and broad, lurking somewhere out in the woods.

My senses on high alert, I decide to act like everything is normal. There's a good chance that it's just a hunter or a lone wolf—we're on the north side of the territory, which is arguably federal land, not Glass Pack territory. If I go on the offensive immediately I could get us into some kind of legal dispute, which is the last thing we have time for right now. Better to be cautious and on alert.

I do still need to pee, so I find a tree a bit away from the campsite and take a leak there. As I do so, I make sure to stay facing towards the distant figure, who prowls restlessly back and forth.

It's the movement of his legs that makes my pulse race and my heart skip a beat.

Roarke.

I thought I saw him before, though, only to discover that it was just Finn. I need to be sure this time—especially if I'm going to wake Delilah and the others. The last thing I want is to get their hopes up.

But I swear that I know my best friend's walk, how he shifts his weight and leans forward just slightly on the balls of his feet.

I know the long, lean lines of his body, the broad cut of his shoulders and narrowness of his hips.

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