Page 37 of Pack Ruin
She carefully tucked the blade back into the cylindrical holder, then the leather sleeve. I waited until she’d slid it into my bag to give her an enormous hug. “This is the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever been given. One of the only ones, to be honest. Though Margarette did give me clothes, and Sergeant gave me a sword.”
Verona perked up at the title. “Sergeant? What was his name?”
I swallowed hard. “I never caught his last name. Or his first. Is Sergeant a first name? Or a title?” I described him to her, and she pursed her lips.
“He must be the same shifter who came through our packlands. The one whose journal I gave you.”
My heart raced. I’d felt like Sergeant was related to me, the first time I’d met him. He’d given me his mother’s sword as well. What if… I tamped down the hope that he was related to me. I wasn’t even sure he was one of the good guys; he’d been in on the oppression of the unranked at Northern, and he’d defected to go who-knows-where after the Russians had bombed the Lodge.
Verona walked me to the door of the library, unlocking it, her expression concerned. “You said you hadn’t received many gifts. What about Brand’s courting gifts?”
I opened the door to find Brand there, holding a forest-green velvet bag. “He hasn’t given me any courting gifts yet,” I said as he leaned down to kiss me.
“A failing I am about to rectify, my wildflower.”
He had outdone himself. Now, as Glen drove us away from the Alpha’s Den, I held one of the carvings Brand had given to me. There had been seven in the small bag, miniature representations of his parents and grandparents. They were treasures, and had to have taken weeks to carve each one. “The next time I see you, I’ll have one of you, Glen, Luke, and Finn. Our pack.”
I’d left the bag with him, afraid the carvings might get damaged or lost. The only one I was taking with me was the one he’d done of himself. It was no larger than my thumb, but it was a perfect likeness in dark walnut of my Bearman, down to the hairs of his beard, his broad shoulders and chest, and the way his second toe was longer than the first.
Silent, I stared out the window for the first hour, until we reached the town. Glen stayed quiet as well, lost in his own thoughts. Worry and fear thrummed in our bond, but there was nothing either of us could do to stop that. We left the truck in a parking lot, took our backpacks and roamed through a bustling farmer’s market, then followed Dean’s directions to the next truck.
“This piece of shit?” Glen groaned. It was a Ford F-150, at least forty years old, with what looked to be three colors of paint and significant hail damage. I laughed as we got in and the engine roared and sputtered, a cloud of dark smoke pouring out of the tailpipe. “The whole damned pack will hear us coming.”
“Nah. This is perfect camouflage for Southern,” I told him as we pulled out onto the main highway, heading east. “Remember, Southern is the piss tank of all the packs. The burst septic line of shifterdom. The festering abscess on the hemorrhoid of—” He gunned the engine with a laugh to drown me out, turning on the radio to a country singer wailing about an ex-girlfriend, a broken-down truck, and a questionable number of beers thatmade all of the pain fade. I laughed and sang along, even though I was going home to hell.
Because I wasn’t going home alone, or unranked, or unarmed.
The tripto the ass-end of Alabama should have taken twenty hours, more or less, but the gas-guzzler Samuel had found for us made that impossible. We had to stop for fuel for the first time in New Mexico, and about five hours after that, at a wide place in the road outside Abilene, Texas. I was glad for the stop; my bladder was bursting, and my head spinning from all the pages I’d read so far.
Glen followed me to the ladies’ room in the back of the gas station, where I took care of business and washed my face with water that smelled like gasoline fumes and lead pipes. We didn’t bother going inside for food. We had provisions from Ida, and the fewer people who could identify us in case someone came looking, the better.
Another hour down the road, I shut my book with a sigh, closing my eyes. “What have you found out, Dream Girl?” Glen asked softly. “You feel…” He pressed a hand against his heart, and finished, “Conflicted.”
I slipped the book that I’d just finished into my pack and pulled out the one I’d been itching to begin—the journal.“Conflict is right. I’ve been readin’ that history about the war. I guess I knew it was bad—Del told me some stories—but I hadn’t ever seen it written down. So many shifters died. Like, half of all the remaining packs, and the whole Western one.”
“That pack wasn’t really whole by then,” he said softly, his eyes on the road. “The war ended a little over twenty years ago, but it began before that. Forty years back, at the disastrous Conclave at Southern.”
I nodded. I’d read about that, but I still had questions. “It said there was a fight, and an Alpha died. The Southern Alpha before Callaway’s uncle took over?”
Glen nodded. “Yes, Morton Callaway’s father. I think his name was Hollis.”
“Hollis got into an argument with the Western pack Alpha. The book didn’t name him.”
“I don’t remember his name, or maybe I never knew it,” Glen said. “We don’t speak of… them.”
“Yeah, I guess if I’d been at a Conclave, I wouldn’t be able to either. Do you think it’ll wear off? The command, I mean?” Glen raised an eyebrow. “Well, now that you’re, um, in between packs. If you aren’t under the Council’s command, and you don’t agree to it again…”
“I guess I’ll find out. I guess I’ll find out a lot of things,” he said, his tone grim.
I knew what he meant. Rogues had a reputation of going feral. Without an Alpha to lead them, they lost themselves to their wolf natures, or at least that’s what I’d been taught. That was why so many of them sort of hung around their old packlands, or the borders of other pack’s territories, trying to slip back in.
Their wolves wanted to belong, to have a family to protect them, and to protect.
It made me feel sort of bad for the rogues, though the ones in Canada hadn’t seemed feral at all. Murderous and violent, sure. But they’d had a leader, that Russian guy.He had been enough of an Alpha substitute that he’d kept them sane, more or less.
When I asked Glen, he seemed disturbed, but then nodded. “Maybe so. Or maybe they had an Alpha somewhere else. They didn’t act like rogues.”
“More like mercenaries or terrorists,” I mused, opening the latch on the journal. It almost flew open, like it wanted me to read it. Like it was as impatient as I was.
