“I don’t know, Josie, okay? I don’t know. We dug ourselves a fucking huge ass hole, and I don’t know. I don’t know how to get us out of this, not without losing everything,” I admitted.
“Wait, I think they are going,” Josie said, looking out at Ace and Jacob. My heart pinched at the sight of him leaving when he stopped sniffing the air, and I realized the wind’s direction had changed. Could he pick up our scents from way back here?
Chapter sixty-two
Melana
Josie glanced at her watch. “I think the shift change is about to happen,” she said before she suddenly started climbing down. I reluctantly followed, grabbing the bag on my way down that was hanging from a branch. When we got to the ground, we hid in shrubs, looking at the bridge. The patrols have been tighter than ever, and we needed to get across to set the plans in motion, but we also needed to be smart. If anyone was alerted to us stepping across, we would find ourselves in deep shit.
“Okay, once the new shift patrol takes over, you take out one, I will take out the other,” Josie said, pulling the dart guns out.
“That will give us six hours before the next shift comes on, and we can drag them out of sight,” Josie told me, and I nodded. We watched the patrols talk. Ace was speaking with them along with Jacob when he turned to look in our direction. We managed to duck down out of sight before he spotted us.
After about twenty minutes of them messing around, we retrieved the darts, pulling them out when my fingers suddenly started burning, making me drop the dart. I looked at my fingers before sniffing them as Josie went to grab one out, and I stopped her.
“What?” she asked.
“These aren’t tranquilizers,” I told her, wondering how we hadn’t noticed before. Pulling my phone out, I held the dart under the screen light, instantly recognizing the contents to be wolfsbane. Josie gasped.
“But he said we only had to knock them out,” Josie said, horrified. I looked out to see Ace had left, and two new warriors had taken over the patrol. I recognized both of them; one of them was Floyde, and he was one of their Betas. The other was Floyde’s son, Daniel; we were the same age, and I went to school with him for a bit.
Nausea welled inside me at what we were expected to do, knowing shooting them with these darts could kill them. I had had a fair amount of run-ins with Floyde over the years, but that didn’t mean I wanted him dead.
Josie took aim, and my heart hammered in my chest. Would she really do it? Would she really kill someone? Yet I knew she would as I watched her finger move to the trigger. I would do anything for her; she was family. But to destroy another’s family? The thought sickened me.
I put my hand on the barrel, ripping it toward the ground.
“What are you doing?” she hissed at me.
“You really want that on your conscience? Another thing to taint you?” I asked her.
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, we do. We will find another way,” I told her.
“What other way? We need to get across. What about your mate?” Josie asked, and tears burned my eyes at the thought of what I had already put him through, what Alpha Jamie would do to him.
“No, it’s not right.”
“Nothing about this, right” Josie snapped.
“You’re right, but I’m not a murderer.”
“Then I will do it,” Josie said, and I looked at her.
“What, no, no. We will scope out somewhere else, follow the river. No one needs to die, Josie,’ I told her.
“You don’t know they will die. They have hybrids for Alphas. You know that gives the pack members extra abilities.”
“So what? Just because it might, doesn’t mean it won’t kill them,” I told her, yanking the gun from her hands as she went to raise it.
“Get it together, Melana. We have to do this,” she snapped. I shook my head, wondering what the fuck had become of her. She used to be the one telling me not to do stupid shit, but now she was willing to kill someone?
“We go back without Lucy, you are signing both our death warrants.”
“Hours ago, you were the one begging me not to agree to Jamie’s terms and to walk away. You wanted to help Lucy and warn her,” I told her.
“We are so close, so fucking close, Melana. We get this done and bring her back here, and you get your mate, then we are free,” she said.