Chapter 43
title: "Chapter 3" wordCount: 2493
I grabbed Declan under the arms and dragged him toward the door, his boots scraping twin lines through the dust. Blood soaked through his shirt, warm and slick against my hands, and the silver smell made my wolf recoil like I'd touched a live wire.
"Marcus, get the door."
The kid didn't move. He stared at Thomas like he'd seen a ghost, which I guess he had—the father-shaped kind that was supposed to be dead or gone or whatever story he'd been fed his whole life.
"Marcus." I put steel in my voice. "Door. Now."
He blinked. Moved. The hinges screamed.
Thomas was already outside, scanning the tree line with the kind of efficiency that said military training, not weekend warrior bullshit. "My vehicle is a quarter mile north. Can you carry him that far?"
"Yeah, no, I was planning to leave him here." I adjusted my grip, took Declan's weight across my shoulders in a fireman's carry. Two hundred pounds of dying werewolf. My knees protested. I ignored them. "Move."
The forest swallowed us whole.
Every step sent pain lancing through my shoulders, but I kept moving because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant processing that photograph, that impossible shadow, that woman with my face who was supposed to be three years dead. The watch on my wrist pressed cold against Declan's neck where his pulse beat too fast, too thin.
"How far?" My breath came short.
"Two hundred yards." Thomas moved like smoke through the trees, barely disturbing the undergrowth. "There is a logging road. I have a truck."
"Convenient."
"Prepared." He glanced back. "Your mother taught me that."
My foot caught on a root. I stumbled, caught myself, kept moving. "Do not talk about her like you know her."
"I have known her for three years. Since she found her way out of the Council's compound. Since she started looking for you." He ducked under a low branch. "She never stopped believing you were alive."
The words hit like silver. I shoved them away, focused on the rhythm of my steps, the weight on my shoulders, the sound of Marcus crashing through the brush behind us like a baby elephant.
"Kid, you want to make more noise? I do not think they heard you in Seattle."
"Sorry." Marcus tried to move quieter. Failed. "I just—my dad—"
"Later." Thomas's voice went hard. "Survival first. Questions after."
We broke through the tree line onto a dirt road that looked like it hadn't seen traffic since the Clinton administration. A black pickup truck sat in the shadows, mud-splattered and anonymous. Thomas had the tailgate down before I reached it.
I laid Declan in the truck bed as gently as I could, which wasn't very. His head lolled. The silver burns on his chest had spread, black veins crawling up his neck like poison ivy.
"How long does he have?" I asked.
Thomas pulled a tarp over Declan, tucked it around him with surprising care. "Hours. Maybe less. Silver poisoning moves fast in our kind, and he took three rounds center mass. The fact that he is still breathing is remarkable."
"He is stubborn."
"He is dying." Thomas met my eyes. "My healer can save him. But we have to move now, and you have to trust me."
Trust. The word tasted like copper. "I do not know you."
"No. But you know your mother would not have sent me if I could not be trusted." He pulled out the photograph again, thrust it at me. "Look at it. Really look."
I didn't want to. Looking meant believing, and believing meant hope, and hope was the thing that got you killed when you were a lone wolf with a target on your back. But my hands took the photograph anyway, and my eyes found her face.
My mother. Older than I remembered, harder, with new scars and new lines around her eyes. But alive. Undeniably, impossibly alive.
And behind her, in the shadows—
"That is not possible," I said again.
"The Council has been lying about many things." Thomas started the engine. "Get in. We can discuss impossibilities when your mate is not bleeding out in my truck bed."
"He is not my mate."
Thomas just looked at me. The knowing in his eyes made my wolf snarl.
I climbed into the cab. Marcus scrambled in after me, smelling like fear and confusion and teenage hormones. The truck lurched forward, tires spitting gravel.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"North. Into the mountains. There is a compound—"
"Not my circus." The words came automatic. "I do not do compounds. I do not do packs. I do not do—"
"Your mother is there."
The sentence hit like a physical blow. I turned to stare at him, at this stranger who claimed to know my dead mother, who'd appeared out of nowhere with photographs and promises and a dying man in his truck bed.
"Prove it," I said.
Thomas reached into his jacket. Pulled out a phone. Unlocked it with one hand while steering with the other, which seemed wildly irresponsible given the road was mostly potholes held together by optimism. He handed it to me.
The screen showed a video, paused on a woman's face.
My mother's face.
My thumb hovered over the play button. If I pressed it, if I heard her voice, if she was really alive—everything I'd built in the last three years, every wall, every defense, every reason I had for staying alone—
I pressed play.
"Sloane." Her voice cracked on my name, and something in my chest cracked with it. "If you are watching this, Thomas found you. Thank God. Baby, I know you think I am dead. I know what they told you. But I am alive, and I have been looking for you since the night of the attack, and I need you to trust Thomas. He will bring you home. He will keep you safe. And Sloane—" She leaned closer to the camera, and I could see the tears on her face, the desperation. "They lied about everything. Your father, the pack, the attack. All of it. The Council—"
The video cut off.
I stared at the blank screen. My hands shook. I made them stop.
"When was this recorded?" My voice came out steady. Good. Control was good.
"Two days ago. When we got word the Council had found you." Thomas took a corner too fast. The truck fishtailed. "She wanted to come herself. I told her it was too dangerous. The Council wants her dead almost as much as they want you dead."
"Why?"
"Because she knows the truth about what happened three years ago. Because she can prove the Council orchestrated the attack on your pack. Because she has been building an army to take them down, and you are the key to everything."
The words should have sounded insane. Conspiracy theory bullshit. But they landed with the weight of truth, heavy and inevitable, like I'd always known something was wrong with the official story, the neat narrative of a rogue pack attack, the convenient way every witness had died except me.
"What truth?" I asked.
Thomas's hands tightened on the wheel. "That is not my story to tell. Your mother—"
"Is not here. You are." I leaned forward. "What truth?"
He was quiet for a long moment, and I thought he wouldn't answer. Then: "The Council did not just fail to stop the attack on your pack. They ordered it. They wanted your father dead, and they were willing to kill everyone else to make it happen."
The truck swerved. I realized dimly that my hand had grabbed the wheel, that my wolf was surging up, that my vision had gone red at the edges.
"Sloane." Thomas's voice cut through the rage. "I need you to breathe. I need you to stay human. Because if you shift now, in this truck, we will crash, and Declan will die, and you will never get the answers you need."
I forced my hand to release the wheel. Forced air into my lungs. Forced the wolf back down, even though she wanted blood, wanted to rip and tear and make someone pay for what they'd taken from us.
"Why?" The word came out broken. "Why would they kill their own people?"
"Your father was not Council. He was something else. Something older. And he was teaching you to be the same." Thomas glanced at me. "You do not remember, do you? What you were before the attack?"
"I remember everything about that night."
"No. You remember the attack. The blood. The death. But before that—what do you remember about your childhood? Your training? What your father taught you?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried to reach back into my memories, past the night that had carved my life into before and after, into the years when my pack was alive and my parents were whole and I was—
Nothing. Static. A wall of white noise where my childhood should have been.
"What did you do to me?" I whispered.
"Not me. The Council. They took your memories. Locked them away. Made you forget what you were, what you could become." Thomas's voice went soft. "Your mother has been trying to break the seal for three years. She thinks seeing you, being with you, might trigger something. Might bring it all back."
The truck hit a pothole. In the back, Declan groaned, a sound like tearing metal.
"How much longer?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes. Maybe less if I—"
Headlights bloomed in the rearview mirror.
Thomas swore, which was the first time I'd heard him break composure. "They found us."
"How?"
"Does it matter?" He floored the accelerator. The truck leaped forward, engine screaming. "Marcus, there is a rifle behind the seat. Get it."
The kid scrambled, came up with a hunting rifle that looked older than he was. "I do not know how to—"
"Point and shoot." I took it from him, checked the chamber. Silver rounds. Of course. "How many are there?"
Thomas checked the mirror. "Three vehicles. Maybe twelve hunters. Maybe more."
"Great. Fantastic. This is exactly how I wanted to spend my evening." I rolled down the window, cold air slapping my face. "Get us to your healer. I will slow them down."
"Sloane—"
"Not a debate." I leaned out the window, rifle braced against my shoulder. The headlights behind us were getting closer, close enough to see the Council insignia on the lead vehicle's hood. "Drive."
The first shot went wide. I adjusted, breathed out, squeezed the trigger. The lead vehicle's windshield spiderwebbed. It swerved but didn't stop.
"They are armored," Thomas said. "You will not stop them with that rifle."
"Then what do you suggest?"
He smiled, and it was not a nice smile. "Hold on."
The truck left the road.
We plunged into the forest, trees whipping past close enough to scrape paint, branches screaming against metal. I grabbed the oh-shit handle and held on while Thomas drove like a man possessed, weaving between trunks that should have been impossible to navigate at this speed.
Behind us, the Council vehicles tried to follow. One made it ten yards before wrapping around a pine tree. The other two kept coming.
"There is a ravine ahead," Thomas said. "When I say jump, you jump. Understand?"
"What about Declan?"
"I will get him. You get Marcus. Jump on my mark."
The ravine appeared like a wound in the earth, twenty feet across and God knew how deep. Thomas aimed straight for it.
"You are insane," I said.
"Your mother said the same thing when I met her." He grinned. "Ready?"
"No."
"Jump!"
I grabbed Marcus and threw us both out of the truck. We hit the ground rolling, pine needles and rocks tearing at my skin. The truck sailed over the ravine, Thomas and Declan still inside, and for one horrible moment I thought they wouldn't make it, thought I'd just watched another person I cared about die—
The truck landed hard on the far side. Kept moving.
Behind us, the Council vehicles screeched to a halt at the ravine's edge. Doors opened. Hunters poured out.
I dragged Marcus to his feet. "Run."
We ran.
The forest was a blur of shadows and moonlight, my wolf lending me speed even in human form. Marcus kept up better than I expected, his own wolf probably screaming at him to shift, to fight, to do anything but run. But we were outnumbered and outgunned, and survival meant reaching Thomas's compound before the Council reached us.
Gunfire cracked behind us. A bullet whined past my ear.
"They are not trying to capture us anymore," Marcus panted.
"No." I grabbed his arm, yanked him left as another shot tore through the space where his head had been. "They are trying to kill us."
We burst through a thicket and nearly ran straight into Thomas. He had Declan over his shoulder, moving fast despite the weight. "This way. We are close."
"How close?"
"Close enough." He pointed. Through the trees, I could see lights. Buildings. A wall.
The compound.
We ran for it, the three of us and our dying cargo, while behind us the Council hunters closed in like wolves on wounded prey. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. The watch on my wrist seemed to pulse with every heartbeat, counting down to something I couldn't name.
We hit the wall at a dead sprint. A gate opened. Hands reached out, pulled us through. The gate slammed shut behind us, and I heard the heavy thunk of locks engaging.
I collapsed against the wall, gasping. Marcus bent double, retching. Thomas was already moving, carrying Declan toward a building that looked like a medical facility.
"Sloane."
The voice froze me in place. I knew that voice. Had heard it in my dreams for three years, in my nightmares, in the moments when I was alone and the walls came down and I let myself remember what I'd lost.
I turned.
My mother stood ten feet away, older and harder and alive, so impossibly alive. Tears streamed down her face. She took a step toward me.
"Baby," she whispered. "You are home."
And behind her, stepping out of the shadows, was the figure from the photograph. The impossible thing. The person who should not, could not exist.
My father.
Dead three years.
Standing right in front of me.
He smiled, and it was his smile, the one I remembered from before, from the time I couldn't remember. "Hello, little wolf," he said. "We have so much to tell you."
The world tilted. My knees hit the ground. And the last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Declan being carried through a door, his hand trailing blood, and my mother running toward me with her arms outstretched and my dead father's eyes on my face, watching, waiting—