it the next night or full moon or whatever. You have to force them completely out.”
“So, you gamble it all. Is it ever fatal?”
“No, not very often. It can be if the challenger wants it to be or if the defender refuses to concede, but most werecats will back off from a lost fight, and dying over territory is frowned on. Killing for it is normally investigated. We don’t have the numbers, and there’s a lot of space in the world. There’s no reason to kill or die for something unless it’s that important.”
“Is there anything that important?”
“I would die before I let another werecat take my territory, but it’s not because of the land,” I whispered. I glanced over my shoulder at him, seeing the thoughtful and sad expression on his face.
“You’ve died enough in the name of my family,” he said gently. “There’s no reason—”
“Don’t make the decision for me. Don’t ever make that decision for me.”
With that, I turned back and kept trudging. On the path, I tried to scent another werecat or anything else, but aside from Jabari’s old scent, I found nothing. Heath must not have either because he kept walking in silence behind me.
I checked my phone, even though it had no service. I wanted the time. Unless we took naps at Gaia’s house, we should have plenty of daylight to get out of the woods, get cell phone service, and call the people we needed to call.
“I still haven’t smelled any wolves,” Heath said softly. “It’s worrying. I can smell werecats and humans on this trail, but neither of those is out of the ordinary from what we’ve been told.”
“Same. Jabari, Gaia, and those three. Not even a hint of Titan.” I paused on the path, looking around. “Do you think the wolf disappearances are actually connected to this?”
“My gut says so. While I would love to hunt them down first, just to find out their fate, that’s a harder chase than finding out what killed your werecats and could lead to the same answers. If those who know the land couldn’t find the wolf campsite, there’s not much hope for us. It’s been a month, so the scents have probably died.”
“Sorry. I know Geoffrey is hoping you can figure this out for him. Those werewolves deserve as much justice as the werecats.”
“Thank you for thinking so.” He smiled at me and continued down the path, leaving me behind him now. “Would your family think so?”
“I don’t think they care past how it helps or hurts them,” I admitted. “It’s not that they’re callous or anything with life, but they have a much-earned distrust for wolves.”
“They’re all from pre-War, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” So far as I knew. From what little I knew about much of their lives, they all had experience during the War and had fought in it. “It’s more than that. You know Hasan lost a daughter to werewolves. He told me what happened. It, uh, didn’t look good on the part of the werewolves.”
“Of course,” Heath sighed. “There’s good and bad in all the species, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, I would assume so. With great power and all that shit.”
He chuckled sadly. “And all that shit.”
We made it to a small clearing with a cabin in only two hours. I kept walking, refusing to pause at the black section of the earth where they had cremated Gaia. Once I was at the house, I pushed in, sniffing quickly. Heath caught up and stayed near me. It was one bedroom with a tiny living room and kitchen, even smaller than the romantic little house the two werecats met at to be together. Everything was skins and hand done.
“She lived off the land all year,” I commented softly. “What do you smell?”
“You, me, Jabari, Gaia, and human. Still no wolves or anything else.”
“Yet she was found right in the middle of the room with a broken neck and back in her human form,” I growled. “Heath, it doesn’t make any damn sense. She was a werecat. Anything in her territory should have been easy to—”
“What if the humans lied about her injuries?” he asked, cutting me off. I let it sink in, trying to approach it from that angle.
“Why? Why would they kill and cover up two dead werecats, then call it in?”
“Haley is nervous,” he reminded me.
“Haley is a know-it-all, and this is her world. We’re outsiders. Her behavior makes sense.”
“I’m not disagreeing, I’m just saying maybe we’re disregarding the humans a little too