We alreadyknowhe’s disloyal! This is the most foolish plan anyone’s ever had.
“He was going to turn you over to them, Emlyn,” I say. “This is too much all at once. You and I should just run for it.”
“You heard what Nate said,” Emlyn says. “They’re already almost on us. If we try to run, they’re just going to keep tracking us until they catch us, and we’ll have exhausted ourselves trying to get away. It makes more sense for us to turn and make a stand now.”
“What Nate said!” I exclaim. “You’re trusting him again!”
“Well, if he’s lying aboutthat, we don’t have a problem!” she says. “We’ll just stand here for a half an hour, they won’t show up, Nate will look stupid, and we’ll leave.”
I have to admit, she’s got a point there. It would be a stupid lie. Which means that Nate is probably telling the truth.
That doesn’t change the fact that he’s overall untrustworthy, though. The creep.
“I’m not comfortable with him watching my back in battle,” I say. “You and I are going to need to stay human throughout this, you know. Wolves can’t do magic.”
“We don’t need to stay human,” she objects. “We might get to a point where it makes more sense to shift, and we need to be prepared for that.”
“Okay, yes, fine,” I allow. “But we’re going to want to be humansomeof the time. Are you really saying you’re comfortable standing around in human form while Nate’s in play?”
“I’m not afraid of Nate,” she says.
“He was going to—”
“I know what he was going to do, Milo,” she interrupts. “I’m not saying he’s off the hook for that. But what is he going to donow? Think about it. He’s been exposed. He knows we don’t trust him.”
“If we’re in battle, he could turn on us again. He could fight on the side of your old packmates.”
“Okay, but think about it.Whywould he do that? He was going to sell me out to get a reward, but there isn’t any reward in it for him if my packmates have already tracked me down on their own. Nate’s a dick, but he isn’t stupid. And he’s shady, but the one thing we can rely on him for is to look out for his own interests. He’s not going to fight alongside a wolf pack if he doesn’t stand to gain something from it. He hates wolf packs, remember?”
“Or he lied to you about that.”
“There’s no way he lied to me abouteverything,” she says. “That’s just impractical. It’s irrational. Nobody would do that. He had no reason to make up a story about mistrusting alphas and the pack structure.”
She’s right, but I still feel uneasy. This fight would have made me nervous under the best of circumstances—if we were having it at night under a full moon, I still would have hesitated. But it seems like every possible detail is going wrong. We’re going to be fighting during the day, it’s a waning moon, we haven’t had time for Emlyn to perfect even basic combat magic, and now Nate is here.
It’ll be a miracle if we get ourselves through this fight in one piece.
And having a random element like Nate in the mix just makes the whole thing seem more unlikely.
Nate has shifted back to human form, but he’s pacing, rolling his shoulders, and I can tell that he’s itching to let the wolf come forward again.
“You two should wrap up that chat,” he calls over. “They’ll be here any minute.”
Emlyn nods. She stands on her toes and kisses me quickly, and when she pulls back, I take a small bit of satisfaction in the disgruntled look on Nate’s face.
You could have had her too. But you chose yourself.
Almost as if he can hear my thoughts, he rolls his eyes at me and shifts back. He begins to pace back and forth in front of the two of us.
I wonder if he can smell the threat now. They’ve got to be close.
“Stand over there,” I tell Emlyn, pointing to a spot several yards away from me. “We’ll have the best chance at defending ourselves if they have to pick one of us to attack.”
“It’ll be me,” she says.
“Probably. But if they do that, I can help defend you. Or they’ll have to split up and each try to take on one of us—and if it’s like that, Nate can help defend.”
If he’s planning to help at all.