“I can cast my wolf a hundred miles or so.”
“And you’d be able to hear it that far away.”
“I don’t hear the wolf. I hear what it hears.”
“That’s incredible. I mean, a whale can hear thousands of miles, but they’re in water, and since the particles are closer together—”
Nox opened the bedroom door and flowed past Reese and Seung with liquid grace while exhaling a nasty snarl.
“Guess he hears them now.” Seung headed to the porch.
“What’s going on?” Luca tugged his shirt down as he walked up.
“Seung’s wolf heard, hears—” Reese tossed his chin in the direction the others had gone. “There’s someone coming up the road.”
Low vibration beat the air from multiple directions as if Reese’s hearing had transformed into surround sound.
“Dr. Dante?”
Reese jerked his attention back to Luca. “Huh?”
“I said, am I the only one who doesn’t hear it?”
Now there was only Luca, the wind, the rumble of growls from the betas, and the frantic snatch and grab of a few supplies. “No, I don’t hear it yet.”
By the time Reese made it to the porch, all the Varu and Mah were holstering weapons. Except for Nash, he was a monolith of impending violence standing in the yard out front.
“Craige.” Johnathan tossed a set of keys at the beta. “Get the truck.”
Seung gave her keys to James. “Hurry.”
The hum of an engine joined the hush of swaying tree limbs. Luca still watched the empty dirt road with a confused expression.
“I hear it now,” Reese said.
“I don’t.”
A cloud of dust kicked up in the distance. A puff of dirt appeared led by pinpoint specks of headlights.
Two vehicle engines came to life from the other side of the farmhouse. Craige and Dalton pulled the truck and station wagon to the front driveway.
“Are we leaving?” Luca looked at Reese when he said it.
“I don’t know.”
Twilight broke in streaks of color over the windshield of a tan sedan. It slowed to a stop almost a quarter-mile from the house. Glare from the sunrise hid the driver.
“Why did they stop?” Reese said.
Seung’s wolf appeared between the shadows of a tree and the gap where twilight vanished at the shadow of the car.
The door opened, and a tall woman dressed in black got out. She wore no visible weapons, but the air around her sharpened with a sense of danger.
“Fuck.” Seung unholstered her gun. “It’s Phillips.”
There was no way. Absolutely no way. Phillips was scary, sure, but she was business suits and high heels, not cargo pants, turtlenecks, and shit kickers.
Seung was wrong. She had to be.