Page 109 of Mortal Blood
“I’m fine.” She didn’t sound it. She sounded shaken, but she’d earned her privacy and if she didn’t want me poking around in her feelings, then that was her call.
“Thank you,” I told her.
“Not to break up the potential for some girl on girl action,” Jax said, earning himself a solid slap round the back of the head from Cole, “but we should get moving. If anything’s still out there, it probably heard that little display.”
Nowthatwas the best idea I’d heard in a while.
Chapter Thirty-Three
We kept moving through the woods, hoping to find a point where the fog thinned so we could get our bearings, but all we found was a thick wall of gray in every direction. I supposed it had been too much to hope that Astor might resist the temptation to dump us into the middle of a real-life horror movie, complete with cliché giant bugs. I shuddered and pushed the thought aside. At least I’d be able to shift now if I needed.
“Here,” Alina said, yanking down a vine from one of the trees. “We should gather more of these.”
“For what?” I asked, brow furrowing as I watched her pull down a second. She started weaving them together and my mouth popped open.
“For carrying our clothes next time we shift,” she explained with a shrug. “So we don’t have to try to fight and carry them at the same time.”
She took in Cole and Jax’s equally shocked faces and frowned. “Your pack never taught you this?”
Jax shook his head mutely, and Cole pressed his lips together. “I guess my father was too busy trying to beat everyone into the ground to worry about teaching us anything.”
“Show me how,” I said, reaching up into the trees and pulling down a couple of vines.
“We’re in the middle of our final assessment and you want to play arts and crafts?” Jax said.
“Yes,” I said. “Unless you want to carry your pants in your mouth next time we’re fighting for our lives?”
Jax considered for a moment, and then yanked a vine down from a tree. “Fine. Show me.”
The three of us watched closely as Alina demonstrated how to weave the vines into a more helpful shape, and we took turns working our own vines and keeping watch in the heavy mist. It was trickier than it looked, but luckily Alina was a patient teacher. Eventually, all four of us had a sack of sorts with one large vine looping from the top that would allow them to slip around our necks in shifted form.
“We shouldn’t stay in one spot for too long,” Cole said, his eyes scanning the fog restlessly.
Jax grunted his agreement. “No sense in giving anything the chance to get the drop on us.”
“Which way?” I asked, turning in a circle and trying to see anything that would give me some kind of idea where we were. I’d spent two years in this academy, and I couldn’t have said which spot I was standing in to save my life. Which was bad news, because knowing where we were was the one thing that might give us an edge right now. And we needed one.
“I vote away from that,” Alina said, backing up a half step as she stared out into the trees. I followed her gaze as Cole cursed.
“Is that…?
“Fire,” Cole said grimly. “Time to go. All of you. Come on, move. That way. Into the wind.”
Move away from the fire in the middle of the woods? Yeah, he didn’t need to tell me twice. I pivoted on my heel, made it two steps, and realized Alina was frozen where we’d left her.
“Alina!”
“I…”
“We’ve got to go,” I said, grabbing her arm and tugging her. She snapped out of her daze and tore her eyes from the distant inferno.
“Four legs or two?” I asked Cole over my shoulder.
“Can you shift?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Then four. We’ll be faster wolf. But shift quickly, and everyone stay in formation. We can’t risk getting separated. Alina, are you okay?”
