“You okay?”
At the whispered words, he tightened his hold on Rio’s hand. “I don’t know. I think so?” He glanced over. “I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t even think I’d get a chance to show you this place.”
Rio looked out into the trees, the firelight playing over her face. “It’s so peaceful.”
“And it’s safe.”
Because the irony of ironies was that this tranquility would be protected by bloodshed, if necessary. Back after the run-in with the carloads of guards, when Lucan had accepted his cousin’s submission in front of those dead bodies and free-for-the-taking SUVs, he had known that this was where they should go to recover and figure out all the what-next. And Callum didn’t have to suggest it or offer an invite. What was the clan’s… was all of the clan’s—and it looked like he was back in the family.
Wiping his eyes, he cleared his throat and looked across at Callum. The male was sitting down, it was true, but his powerful body was no more at rest than any predator’s. Though his eyes were mostly on the fire, he was constantly monitoring the perimeter, as were the other wolven.
Lucan had to hand it to the hardheaded sonofabitch. The guy had thought things through when it came to defensible positions and evasivemaneuvers. After gathering all the guards’ weapons and what little was left of the ammo, they had taken the vehicles about four miles away and run them off a cliff into a ravine one by one. Then the wolven had taken his dead cousin’s body and dematerialized to a location at the base of the clan’s mountain, while Lucan had driven as fast as he dared in the Monte Carlo to meet them there.
Talk about shitty garages. The structure had looked like it was only a sneeze away from collapse, but that was only on the outside. The interior of the place was a miracle, fully stocked with everything you’d need for an evac, an attack. A meal. A nap. A holdout for several weeks.
It even had an underground bunker and an escape route.
Stashing the sedan, they’d removed and destroyed the two restraining collars, put Mayhem and Kane on stretchers, and then they’d collectively muscled the two males into the acreage. The trail was not one Lucan knew, which made him suspect it had been carved out especially for the bolt-hole, but the environs were instantly home, from the pine scent and the soft earth, to the trees looming as if in protection of the innocent, the injured, the lost, and the needy.
The journey into the heart of the clan’s territory had been forty minutes on foot, and those who hadn’t had their hand on a stretcher grip were armed to the teeth and guarding the trail from ahead, from behind, from the sides. And some of the wolven had assumed their four-footed forms, because they could be faster over the—
Abruptly, Callum rose to his full height. As everyone turned in his direction, he just shook his head and walked off to the west like it was a call-of-nature thing.
In deference to Rio, the wolven had clothed themselves while in their two-footed forms, and there hadn’t been any issue raised that she was a female among them. He appreciated the deference and the decorum, and supposed it was a sign of how much he had moved on that he found the sequestering of the clan’s females and young so strange and uncomfortable. In fact, he wasn’t even sure any of them were on the mountain at all.
Well, what do you know.
Off to the left, Apex’s eyes followed Callum even as his head didn’t move and his body didn’t shift. It was hard to know if he didn’t trust the wolven or if he just wanted to kill the male on principle. Apex was weird like that. He had his own moral standards, and if you tripped one of them? Like betraying a family member, even if amends had been made?
Big problems.
But as with where the clan’s females were and whether or not Apex was going to do something stupid, Lucan didn’t have the energy to get involved.
“What is she doing to Kane?” Rio asked softly. “The old woman.”
The fact that the Gray Wolf was neither a woman nor old in the conventional sense didn’t seem like things worth correcting, and he wasn’t sure what to say about the rest. If he replied with an “I don’t know,” it was a half-truth that sat badly. But he didn’t want to freak her out—and he reminded himself that he wasn’t exactly sure what was going on inside there—
The scream coming out of the hut was what he had been waiting for, what he had feared… and also been hoping to hear.
He glanced at Apex and prayed that the male stayed put. If there was a wild card in all this, it was that vampire, but things had been explained to him—as much as they could to an outsider, that was—and he’d eventually allowed Kane to be sequestered alone with the Gray Wolf. It was the aristocrat’s only chance, although it was one thing understanding that on an intellectual level, another thing to hear the sounds of it all.
Except it looked like Apex was staying where he was, his hands locking together and his elbows getting planted on his knees, like he was keeping his body in place by force.
Closing his eyes, Lucan remembered when he’d been growing up on the fringes of the clan, the whispers about the rejuvenation and the speculation about what exactly transpired in the hut the kind of thing that was spoken about in hushed tones. It had been generations since it had been done, and as he glanced around at the assembled wolven, theother vampire, and his human woman, he realized that the group of them were witnessing a piece of history, a wondrous event that would be passed down to their progeny, becoming that which was spoken about in quiet, reverent voices around late-night campfires, always in private, like not everybody knew—
From out of the darkness, Callum reentered the circle of firelight, and he threw his head back and let out a howl, the sound not made by the throat of what appeared to be a man, but that of the wolf that lived in every molecule of his body.
One by one, the other male wolven rose to their feet, drew in deep breaths, and released calls that rose in volume until the screaming of the vampire in the hut could not be heard at all.
The chorus of howls was the most beautiful sound in the world to Lucan, the kind of thing that turned his body into a tuning fork and made his vision go blurry from emotion—
As he felt the hold on his palm tighten, he looked over at Rio, and when she nodded, he knew what she was telling him, but wasn’t sure whether he should—
His body made the decision for him, releasing his hold on his mate’s hand and rising up on its own volition. As he lifted his eyes to the sky, he pulled in a great breath, smelling anew the pine and the fresh smoke and the scents of the lake down below.
Lucan joined his wolf call with the others of his kind.
As tears rolled down his cheeks, he felt a release in the center of his chest, a sweet, wonderful wholeness permeating him.