Page 41 of Pack Ruin
“Is it Luke?”
I nodded. “Not just him. It’s… I think Grigor is dying, too.”
“Good riddance,” Glen muttered, opening his door, then racing around to open mine. “One less magic-wielding serial killer in the world.” When I flinched, I felt Glen’s remorse in the bond, but it was mixed with a good dose of stubborn caution.
I got out and placed a hand on his chest. If he hated magic that much, I had some bad news for him. “Glen, I need to tell you what I read.”
“We’re still thirty miles from the border of the hunting grounds.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then handed me my pack. “We can talk while we walk.”
“While we run,” I corrected. “Or we won’t be there in time.”
For the first few miles,I panted out the story, glad Glen’s shifter hearing was keen enough that I didn’t need to shout. I could feel him taking it all in, the bond between us hummingwith wonder and a little fear, when he realized who I was. Who I was related to, and what that meant.
“Your mother,” Glen whispered, the words as soft as the leaves underfoot. “That has to be why your father hid her from the Council.”
That, plus he was a rat bastard. I nodded as I ran. “He’d have been thrown out of his own pack. He’d have lost his Alpha spot, right?”
“He might have, even if he set her aside.” He thought for a while. “That must be why he hired the Florida witch.”I stumbled at the last two words, and he slowed up to wait for me.
“I know these trees. We’re getting close. We need to run quiet from now on.” We weren’t all that close, but my mind was buzzing, and I needed time to think.
If anyone found out I was the child of a Western shifter, I’d be cast out as a rogue, and all my mates would be as well. I let that bother me for a moment, then shook it off like rain. Del had always reminded me to focus on the fight I was in, not on one that might never happen. I needed to get Luke out of Southern—possibly Grigor, too, if he was as weak as his voice in my dreams had sounded—and then worry about witchy mate bonds.
Anyway, Glen was already a rogue, and I supposed I was technically already in the stink for being mated to more than one Heir. So even if I hadn’t been from shifterkind’s eradicated pack, I was already a good two-thirds of the way up shit creek with no paddles in sight.
Magic.I was magic, at least partly.
I rubbed at my chest, at the scar hidden under my shirt. The journal had all sorts of confusing explanations about mystical markings, and the kinds of scars that magic made. I remembered Sergeant’s scars, all the whorls and patterns that covered him from neck to toe. I’d thought they were tattoos, possibly made with silver, but maybe they weren’t, or at least notjust that. Some of the designs had been doodled in the margins of the journal. From the notes, it seemed like he’d been focusing on marks for hiding something, or finding something. If I ever saw him again, and he didn’t turn out to be some asshole traitor or dishonorable possumdick, I’d ask what his were.
I wanted him to be a good guy, more than I should. He was the only blood relative I had in the world, other than Callaway. Well, if he was even still alive.
I reached behind me and touched the sword that was strapped tightly to my back. Sergeant had given me that sword, the one that had belonged to his mother—my great-grandmother—before my first fight. It was perfectly sized for me, and as beautiful as it was sharp.
He’d known who I was, or suspected. There was no other explanation.
I ran without a sound, letting myself focus on the bonds. Glen’s was a bright, solid cord right now. Brand felt muted, but every bit as strong, and there was something that hummed like tiny sparkles along our connection. I had a feeling it was the Mountain pack bonds that were connecting tighter to him as the shifters there took their oaths, making him more powerful.
Glen ran noiselessly behind me for over an hour, and I was impressed at his skills. We heard others in the woods twice, and avoided them successfully—hiding behind a boulder as a group of four unfamiliar males in wolf form loped past a few hundred feet away, and climbing two tall pines as fast as we could when a couple of boys wandered straight toward us not twenty minutes later.
I recognized these two, and for a moment, I was thrown back to the night a few months before, when I’d hidden from the Hunt by the shifter dorms. They were named Bo and Leroy, and were greasy-haired, low-ranked members of Southern. But what were they doing out here on their own?
When they stopped to catch their breath at the base of the tree Glen was in, I listened to find out, the breeze carrying their pungent scents and raspy words clearly.
“Bo, I can’t run no more,” Leroy complained, his voice cracking. “Can’t keep on. We gotta… go back.”
“There’s no back to go to,” Bo hissed, pushing his hair away from his pimpled forehead. His eyes flicked to the branches above him, and I wondered if he’d spotted Glen. But he looked back at his friend without reacting. “We can’t stay at the compound, Leroy, you know that. Even if that fucker Torran don’t give a shit about us, the Flower Arranger’s still in there somewhere. There’s only us left from the Hunt. We’re the only ones still ali—” He stuffed a grimy fist in his mouth and bit down to stave off tears.
I mouthed the words,Flower Arranger, wondering what he was talking about.
“Maybe he ain’t comin’ for us,” Leroy whimpered. “We only hunted her that one time, and we didn’t evenwannacatch her. Maybe he knows that, somehow. Maybe he’s gone back down to Hell, done with his killin’.”
“Might’a beens won’t help us now. We oughta just let him catch us; we’re all starvin’ to death.”
I squinted down through the pine needles. Bo wasn’t exaggerating. He didn’t have a shirt on, and his sharp bones stuck out at hard angles. His wrists and ankles were bruised for some reason, and he had belt or whip marks littering the exposed parts of his body.
“Don’t be a pussy, Bo. Anyhow, we’re just as likely to be caught by the Ghost Lady, if we don’t find a place to hole up.” Leroy slumped down to sit on the dry pine needles and dirt at the base of the trunk. “She wanders the hunting grounds every night, lookin’ for her lost mate. If you hear her howlin’, you’re dead before sunup. Two of the Council’s assholes died just likethat. They heard that odd howl, then turned up dead the next mornin’.”
Bo leaned over, close to hyperventilating, and put his hands on his skinned knees. “I can’t… I don’t wanna die. I don’t want my guts to be flower petals.”
