hear us.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
• COLE •
It was five fifteen A.M.
I was so tired that I couldn’t imagine sleeping. I was that tired that made your hands shake and your eyes see lights at the corners of your vision, movement where there was none.
Sam was not here.
What a strange world this was, that I could come here to lose everything about myself, and instead lose everything but me. It was possible that I’d thrown one too many Molotov cocktails over God’s fence. It would be, after all, a divinely ironic punishment to watch me learn to care and then destroy the things I cared about.
I didn’t know what I would do if this didn’t work. I realized, then, that somewhere along the way, I’d started to think that Sam could really do it. There hadn’t been a part of me, even a small part, that had believed otherwise, and so now this feeling I felt rumbling in my chest was disappointment and betrayal.
I couldn’t go back to that empty house. It was nothing without the people in it. And I couldn’t go back home to New York. It hadn’t been home for a long time. I was a man without a country. Somewhere along the way, I’d become the pack.
I blinked, rubbed my eyes. There was movement at the edge of my vision again, miscellaneous floaters, consolation prizes for actual sight in this dim light. I rubbed again, rested my head against the steering wheel.
But the movement was real.
It was Sam, his yellow eyes regarding the car warily.
And behind him were the wolves.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
• SAM •
Everything about this was wrong. We were in the open, we were bunched together, we were too near the vehicle. Instincts made my hackles rise. The light of the moon glowed inside the mist, making the world artificially bright. A few of the wolves started to retreat back into the darkness of the trees, but I broke into a run, herding them back snugly by the lake. Images flashed briefly into my mind: us, by the lake, all together. Me and her.
Grace. Grace. finding the wolves. the lake.
I’d done those things. What now? There was no what now.
Grace could smell my anxiety. She nosed my muzzle, leaned into me, but I wasn’t comforted.
The pack was restless. I had to break off again to drive a few stragglers back to the lake. The white she-wolf — Shelby — snarled at me but didn’t attack. The wolves kept looking up to the vehicle; there was a person in it.
What now, what now?
I was torn by the unknown.
Sam.
I jerked. Recognition rang through me.
Sam, are you listening?
Then, clearly, an image. The wolves running down the road, freedom ahead, and something — something menacing behind.
I swiveled my ears, trying to find the direction of the information. I turned back to the vehicle; my gaze was met by the young man’s steady one. Again, I got the image, even more clearly this time. Danger coming. The pack pelting down the road. I took the image, honed it, threw it to the other wolves.
Grace’s head instantly snapped up from where she was doing my job: keeping a wolf from wandering back into the trees. Across two dozen moving bodies, I met her gaze and held it for the briefest of moments.
In my paws, I could feel the vibration of something unfamiliar. Something approaching.
Grace tossed another image to me. A suggestion. The pack, me at the head, leading them away from whatever threat promised to arrive from behind us. Her alongside, driving them after me.
I couldn’t mistrust that image being sent to me from the car, because it came with this, again and again: Sam. And that made it all right, even if I couldn’t quite hold the entire concept of it in my head.
I sent an image to the pack. Not a request. An order: us moving. Them following me.
By all rights, the orders should have been given by Paul, the black wolf, and any others punished for their subordination.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, we broke into a run, nearly simultaneously. It was like we were on a hunt, only whatever we chased was too far away to see.
Every wolf listened to me.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
• COLE •
It was working.
The moment I started to follow in the Volkswagen, though, they scattered and it took them a long moment to regroup. It was almost dawn; we didn’t have the time for them to get used to the car. So I got out, tossing images as best I