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068 | CAST IN SHADOW
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Alpha Ares 069 | HAILE SEREN BLUE
I stilled for less than a second, though it felt like an eternity as my gaze met theirs. Two wolves, both smaller than me, but bigger than Annia, both with shaggy coats of speckled grey fur, stared back.Annia trembled. I ran my tongue over the back of my teeth as I thought. There had to be another way out of this. They hadn’t yet pounced – so maybe they wouldn’t.Forcing my limbs to relax, I nodded to the grey wolves and continued strolling across the open expanse of snow. Fortunately, Annia caught on quickly and, though she kept her body mostly hidden behind my much larger one, she kept pace and kept her head up. Good. I knew every wolf in Blue Moon on sight; I could pick out an Omega or Warrior Wolf from their peers from half a league away. As Young Luna, knowing my pack inside and out had been part of my job. As we walked, I kept my fingers crossed – my paws crossed? – that Greyhide Canyon’s lower-ranking wolves wouldn’t know everyone on their roster, or at least not in their wolf
Alpha Ares 070 | WILDFLOWER MEADOWS
I clutched the knife – the knife that had been imbedded in my gut – and leapt at them. There was a sort of poetic justice to it, I thought.It was easy – too easy – to kill the Greyhide Canyon wolves. They hadn’t expected me to attack them in my human form. I moved without thought, my body falling into years of training and pure animal instinct. Now that Annia was safe, there was nothing to hold me back. No person for them to hold hostage, or for me to keep an eye on. I sliced the blade over their necks, my elbow jarring as I shoved through the thick fur and skin of the grey wolf; my mind was not with my body as I moved, though. It was a flashing red haze of panic. I thought only of Ares, alone and injured with Cendres.They fell to the ground. Blood seeped across the white snow, filling the divots where our paws and boots had churned it up. ‘Describe it to me,’ I mindlinked to Ares. ‘I’ll find you.’Although I was exhausted, my muscles drooping, held up limply by posts of bone and
Alpha Ares 071 | GAMMA WOLF
‘He left?’ I nudged Annia again, pushing her into a sprint. My muscles protested, but my urgency pushed me onward. ‘Why?’Ares didn’t reply.‘Ares?’ I tried again. And again. And again.Nothing.I ran hard, ignoring every ache and creak of my joints, ignoring the pulsing of blood pounding against my ears, my temples, and thundering against my still-seeping knife wound. We met the path without difficulty, and I turned blindly around the first corner – And ran straight into Cendres.I smashed into the rocky side of the path. My head knocked back; lights danced across my vision, but I clutched at consciousness desperately and managed to hold on. As my vision centred, two brown wolves became one, and I stared hard at Cendres as I pulled myself shakily to my paws.His eyes narrowed – and then he flung his head back and grinned. He made a wolfish laugh, a rumbling sound deep in his chest, and then shifted into his human form. Like Annia and I, his eyebrows, eyelashes, and the baby hairs a
Alpha Ares 072 | DAYLIGHT
I leapt to my feet. “Try,” I snarled, “and I will kill you, Cendres.” My hand reached uselessly for a knife that wasn’t there, but I shoved my fingers under my cloak and clenched my hand into a fist, making a lump beneath the fabric to create the illusion of a weapon there.He held both of his hands up, palms facing forward. “I have no intention of doing as he says. You can trust me. Why would I come all this way to patch up Ares’s wounds if I was just going to kill him anyway?”I huffed. “I guess.” Lowering myself back to the ground, I kept my narrowed eyes on the Gamma the whole way down. I still half expected him to shift and rip Ares’s head clean from his shoulders, but I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now, at least.“I know he wants me dead,” I said flatly. “Me. But not Ares.”“Like I said – I look at Naz, and I don’t even see my mate looking back at me anymore. He’s gone. Losing his parents last year changed him, but not… Not like this.”The memory of the matching
Alpha Ares 073 | VALERIA
I stilled, my body locking in place as I stared down at her. And then she groaned.I crouched down beside her. “Valeria?” I whispered, twisting at my waist and searching the pathway for her attacker. They had to still be close – too close. But there was nobody, not along the path or on the rocky outcrops above. I was hyper-aware of sound and movement as I brushed my fingertips over Valeria’s bloody muzzle. Her eyelids fluttered.She squeezed her eyes shut, her face contorting in pain, and then she shifted into her human form. “Ares – needs to – initiate you – into the – pack.” Her breaths sounded wet. I kept my gaze fixed on her face, purposefully ignoring the steadily growing pool of red spilling out from beneath her. “Not being able – to mindlink – is a real – pain.”My lips twitched. Valeria had been one of very few wolves that I’d been able to train with back in Winterpaw Warrior. Everyone else had wanted to kill me, and our fights have ended up bloody and brutal every time. But
Alpha Ares 074 | FOLLOWING A TREMBLING STAR
We raced across Greyhide’s snow-slick terrain. As we’d agreed, I sprinted with Ares on my back, never once looking behind me, letting Cendres and Annia fight off any attackers we faced on the way. I wanted to help them, but keeping Ares safe was my priority.I’d never been so damned excited to see a canyon before. Hoping to the stars and sun and moon and everything in the world that Cen and Annia would catch up with me, that they would both meet me when we were in safer territory, I surged along the side of the canyon. The sun rose and fell, and still I ran.‘You need to rest, beautiful,’ came Ares’s voice through the mate bond.‘Not until you’re safe,’ I replied, every time.‘You were hurt, too.’‘Not badly. Even the knife wound is healed now.’‘Yeah.’ His mental voice was thick with disbelief. ‘So you say.’It was true. Mostly. ‘I’ll stop when we can. But we’re still well within Greyhide’s borders.’‘Even Winterpaw Warrior territory won’t be safe. You were attacked in Blue Moon bef
Alpha Ares 075 | WARPATH
For the first time in my life, I knocked on the door of my own family’s Pack House. It felt wrong, but as the silence swelled, deafening in its potency, I felt like I had to. Rather than entering my family home as I always had, suddenly the idea of pushing open the door and just walking in felt like I was intruding. Like I was an outsider.Part of me expected to find nobody. Another, darker part of me expected to find bodies. I blinked away images of Valeria, of the wolves that had been piled on top of her, and shuddered. I could hear the ever-present lapping of waves in my right ear and Ares’s laboured breathing. I strained my hearing; had I imagined that groan of wood just inside the door?And then the door creaked open.“Mum?” I breathed, squinting into the hallway. She peered around the thin crack she’d opened it to, her eyes widening as she saw me – and then narrowing as they fixed on Ares.She yanked the door open so fast I didn’t react. I couldn’t. “You bastard,” she snarled,
Alpha Ares 076 | FOREVER CHANGED
I drifted through the familiar rooms, traipsing away from my parents as we reached the long dining hall that the wake was being held in. None of the places or people looked real to me. It didn’t even look like my Pack House anymore. People greeted me, but not as their favoured Young Luna anymore. Not as the bright and bold child, or the sharp and smart young woman, that I had been to them before I’d gone to the Winterpaw Warrior Pack to be with Ares.Five wolves were dead. On top of the ten already killed. Aliana had told me about six; another four had been taken in that time. I traced their names in my mind, picturing their faces, mourning each and every one of them. My eyes glazed as I stared at different parts of the room, seeing plates of finger food and steaming mugs of tea and coffee and half-drunk glasses of berry wine, glancing over them without taking any of it in. Families clutched each other and cried. People spoke loudly of their memories of the wolves that had died. Four
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Alpha Ares 141 | EPILOGUE
Alpha Ares 140 | COME TOGETHER
Alpha Ares 139 | KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
Alpha Ares 138 | SURRENDER AND SACRIFICE
Alpha Ares 137 | BATTLE OF THE MOUNTAIN
Alpha Ares 136 | THE END OF US
Alpha Ares 135 | BE AMONGST THE STARS
Alpha Ares 134 | HAUNTED
Alpha Ares 133 | ON THE WINGS OF FATE
