We burst out into the snow a few moments later.

I fell in line behind Cora, pushing her ahead of me, so at least I knew for sure that she would be safe and they couldn’t get too close to her. We hustled Cora towards the woods and I glanced over my shoulder – they had caught sight of us and were making chase in the direction of the trees, and I winced. There were so many. Enough to take us all down if they caught up with us.

I shot into the darkness offered by the forest and we all exploded into wolf form, our clothes shredding around us. Cora was less awkward on all fours, and we picked up speed. I wished there was some way that I could give her my energy and imbue her with my power, but I knew that she wouldn’t be able to heal herself until she got some rest and food in her. Until then, it was no good dreaming about what might have been.

We finally caught up to where the others had been on the perimeter and they closed ranks around Cora, noting how weak she seemed, and helped carry her forward, their movement enough to keep the legs going underneath her. I knew she must have been exhausted already but we just needed to get her out of MacLaren territory and back to the cabin, where we had enough supplies to survive for now.

Anton, Marcus and I pushed ahead with Cora as the others brought up the rear. For another mile or more, we ran, leaping over downed limbs, skirting around boulders and snow banks.

It wasn’t until I looked over my shoulder again that I realized we’d broken away from the others. Slowing my pace, I searched the trees frantically for the rest of our team.

Anton’s nip to my shoulder jarred me back to the present. Slowing now was not an option. I couldn’t see the enemy, but I could damn sure hear them, the sound of their seemingly countless paws crunching in the fresh snow all around us. The trees were barren thanks to the time of year, no cover offered by the leaves and branches. It was just us and them out here, and the question was whether or not we could manage to keep our lead long enough to make them wary of crossing onto Kellum lands with so few numbers.

We sped through the blackness, Anton falling into step with me; I glanced in his direction but he didn’t look at me, focused forward, onward, away from the house of horrors behind us. Suddenly, a flurry of wolves shot out from the trees next to us – my heart spun in my chest and I skidded to a halt, ready to fight, but saw our missing teammates facing us instead of the MacLaren guards. One of them was hurt, badly – bleeding heavily from a grisly wound above his throat and I winced.

Joseph.

We slowed to a stop as a unit and Luke circled him, pacing restlessly. They must have dropped back to fight off the first wave of our pursuers to buy us some space and, judging by Joseph’s dire condition, it hadn’t been an easy victory.

Marcus’s low growl was so mournful, it made my fur stand on end.

This was bad. Between him and Cora, there was almost no chance of us getting back to the cabin in one piece. But more pressing was the fact that his wound was almost certainly fatal unless we stopped the bleeding immediately.

The barking and pattering footsteps in the distance grew louder and I dropped my head low, already grieving. This was it. If we stayed a minute longer, we were all doomed.

Joseph seemed to come to the same realization as I did, because he let out a low chuffing sound and looked at his comrades as if committing their faces to memory.

Then, he laid down in the snow.

Marcus lunged towards him, as though he couldn’t accept what was happening, but Killian put himself between the two of them. It was a wordless moment of aching sadness and my heart was hammering so fast that I thought it might burst out of my chest. In the moment, I didn’t truly realize the enormity of the sacrifice he was making, but as Marcus and Joseph touched their muzzles together one last time, it hit me.

He was going to die for us, for his brothers in arms, for us, the people he had sworn his loyalty to. I had never thought any of us would have to make that choice, but here he was, looking down the barrel of his own demise and taking it with his head held high. My gut clenched as I realized I had barely known him before this moment, but that I owed him my life.

My vision swam for a moment but I knew this was far from over.

Joseph let out a low growl and finally, Marcus turned and stepped back, eyes glazed. The forest seemed to let out a sigh and he nodded, and broke into a sprint, back into the forest.

I fought through the ache in my chest and sent Joseph a nod of thanks, wishing I could tell him how much his sacrifice meant. How brave I thought he was. He tilted his head down and, somehow, I could tell he already knew.

He pushed himself to his feet unsteadily and crouched into fighting stance as the noise of the incoming wolves grew louder. I realized with a start that Joseph wasn’t going down without taking some more of these bastards with him.

With once last glance at the bravest of the brave, we were off and running again.

A few minutes later the sound of a violent scuffle rent the air from behind us, snarls and growls, followed by yelps of pain. Grim satisfaction mixed with grief as I realized that Joseph’s cries weren’t the only ones.

Get them, my friend!

I wasn’t sure how long we ran after that but it had begun to snow and already a thick, fresh blanket of the stuff covered the ground and the sun had begun to rise over the trees.

When we finally arrived back at the cabin, it had been hours since we’d heard our pursuers and all I could hope was that they’d lost track of us in the storm. Before we even stepped inside, Marcus shifted back into his human form.

“Fuck!” he bellowed into the growing light. “Fuck!”

Heart in my throat, I shifted, wanting to comfort him, but before I could even get close, Killian had appeared next to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Just let him be,” Killian ordered me gently. I knew that he knew what was best for his friend, and nodded.

I headed inside the cabin, leaving the mercenaries outside to mourn their loss together. I didn’t want to intrude on their grief. Especially since I’d been the indirect cause of it. I was probably the last person they wanted to see right now.

Anton, Ethan, and Luke were dressing, and I guided Cora through to the bedroom for some clothes. She seemed a little shell-shocked, as though she had never truly expected to be out of that awful place ever again. I knew how she felt. It was exactly as I had when I had first been broken out of that prison cell.

I handed her some clothes and she pulled them on, trembling from head to toe.

“Where are the others? Are they all right?”

“They’re outside.” I waved my hand in the direction of the woods. “And no. I think they’ve been working together a long time. This is a…it’s a hard pill to swallow for all of them.”

“Fuck,” she sat down on the edge of the bed, “I never wanted anyone to die for me, Ari.”

“I know,” I replied, sitting down next to her. “But you didn’t make it happen. Those fucking MacLarens did.”

“I saw what they did in that place.” She lifted her gaze up to mine. “The only reason they didn’t do it to me is because I got sick. But I saw-” she broke off and covered her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I know,” I soothed her. If she was anything like me, the last thing she wanted was to go over all those details again in her head. I held a hand out to her. “Come on, let’s get some food in you and introduce you to everyone formally.”

When I returned to the main room of the cabin, the mercenaries had returned. The atmosphere was muted after what had gone down. I wanted to again tell them how sorry I was, but I knew that my words would fall on ears that didn’t need to hear them right now.

“Cora,” I announced as she entered the room. All of them looked up. They were dressed now, and Marcus was pacing up and down the room as though he had energy to burn. I wondered if he’d heard that sounds of Joseph’s last cry as well, if it was ringing in his ears the way it still was in mine.

“Let me introduce you,” I began, and went around the room, letting everyone know who she was – Ethan was pulling some food from our supplies and laying it out on the table in the middle of the room, and it already smelled so good to me. I could feel my mouth watering hungrily at the thought of it.

“I’m not hungry,” Marcus muttered, and headed for the door once more, stepping outside. “I’m going to go do some recon. Make sure they didn’t come this far out.”

Killian and Joel got up to follow him, and Cora watched as they made their way out the door once more, leaving us alone. As soon as they were gone, she shook her head and covered her mouth, as though trying her hardest not to cry.

“I can’t believe all of this happened because of me,” she murmured, and there was still some of that shell-shock in her voice. She turned to me, eyes a little wild, to continue, “And I’m so sorry I let your father exile you. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She shook her head. “He was afraid you’d opened us up to a major threat but I should’ve at least tried to convince him…”

I held my hand up. Hearing how everything could have been different just sent my brain spinning out in a hundred different directions and it did me no good to consider what could have been, what should have been, if things had only turned out a little differently.

“It wouldn’t have mattered. And honestly, me getting captured was the only way we’d have found out about their diabolical plan to make these ultra-strong new shifter hybrids. For all we know, they could be on a path to success and we’d all be dead. Besides, there’s no point in crying over spilt milk. We need to focus on the future.”

“The mercenaries, did your father send them with you to get me?” she asked before stuffing a hunk of dried meat into her mouth.

I felt my stomach drop. It was clear that, despite it all, she really did look up to my father. She wanted him to be the perfect leader that he had always painted himself as to people like her, but he wasn’t, not anymore. He would have left her to die in that place if we hadn’t had the nerve to go in and try to break her out. Was that too much for her right now?

I stared into her eyes and clenched my fists by my sides. It was my father who had started all of this. She deserved to know what kind of man he was. But before I could speak, Luke stepped in, as though he knew that I would have trouble getting the words out of my mouth.

“We went to her father, a few days ago,” he explained, his voice taut and tense. “And he wouldn’t offer us any help.”

“What do you mean?” Cora blinked a couple of times, like the world had come unstuck around the edges.

Maybe it was too soon…

“Luke, come on, not now,” I tried to stop him, but Cora held her hand up, silencing me. Ethan and Anton stood by, not saying a word, but not stopping Luke, either.

“We went to him for help,” Luke explained. “All of us. There’s someone else in there, too…”

His jaw tightened at the thought of Rafe and I knew how he felt. He was still stuck in that place, after all – we had failed to perform the daring rescue attempt that we had all hoped we’d pull off and we’d had to leave a man behind again.

“Our brother is in there and Arianna hoped that her father would offer the Kellum clan to help, since you were there too,” Luke went on, voice low and careful, as though he was trying to restrain his anger. “But he didn’t.”

“Are you shitting me?” Cora glanced over in my direction, and then at Anton and Ethan – none of us replied. Her eyes narrowed and I could see a flare of fury in her face, even through the exhaustion and terror of everything that had just happened. “He was going to leave me out there to die?” she muttered to herself, as though trying to come to terms with what we had just told her. “He was going to leave me out there, to die.”

“Cora, you can’t get hung up on it,” I tried futilely to intervene. “You don’t want-”

“No, I’ve been loyal to him for years,” she snarled, “And he would have left me in that place to be chopped up like some sort of science project? How many others have died that way, huh? Because he was too scared to help? You know, every time a new battalion goes out, many don’t return. We all assumed they were dead, but what’s to say they aren’t in there too? Suffering, right now, at the hands of that monster, Rickland MacLaren?”

“There’s no point getting-” I protested again, but she held her hand up.

“If the rest of the clan knew what was going on with this, they’d help in a moment,” she spat. It was only then that she paused, her eyes widening as if it was beginning to make sense to her now. “That’s the answer, Ari. We can’t go to Kellum for help. He’s clearly a coward who only wants to help himself. But our people? Trust me, I can get them on our side. I know I can. They deserve to know what’s happening.”

There was a silence after her words, as though we were letting them all sink in. The anger was still crackling through the air off of her in waves, so strong you could almost touch it. I raised my eyebrows at her, as though to ask if she was done speaking, but before she could answer, Ethan slammed his plate on the table, snapping all of us out of our reverie.

“We eat and regain our strength. And then we talk about exactly how we’re going to nail this fucker and avenge Joseph’s death. Who’s with me?”

There was a stirring around the table and then a resounding, “Aye,” in stereo.