started to shuffle back from the edge, but Matthias’s hand shot out, clutching his forearm. They both froze. The woman halted at the edge of the clearing and cocked her head to the side. She turned to slowly scan the area. Matthias didn’t move. His muscles clenched tight, and his breath caught in his chest. The reason they’d picked this vantage point was because they couldn’t be seen from below, yet the woman’s gaze remained glued to the ridge for a moment, before finally drifting on. The boy must have asked her something, for she turned to him, a reassuring smile on her face as she held her arms out. He ran up to her, and she grasped his wrists, swinging him up and over her shoulders until he could wrap his arms around her neck. She carried him, piggyback-style, into the woods, furtively glancing over her shoulder as she went.
Matthias relaxed once she was out of sight.
“Did she see us?” Zane asked as he retreated from the ridge.
Matthias shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Should we go after her? She could prove valuable.”
He shook his head. “No.” He kept scanning the trees, but it was as though the brown-haired woman had melted into the forest, disappearing like a wisp of mist. He smiled. They wouldn’t go after her, not now.
Maybe later.
* * *
Trinity Caldwell slung her backpack over her shoulder as she stepped into the great hall. Fires burned from the wall sconces bolted into the stone, casting flickering shadows down the walls and across the dirt floor as members of her pack went about their daily business. Not many spoke, though, and most walked with their eyes downcast as they went about their tasks. The hall had almost returned to normal, although there were still some repair areas cordoned off. Just over a month ago an explosion had ripped through the hall and some of the main corridors, and there were still some ongoing issues as a result. At least Rafe had acceded to her request for routine structural inspections.
She sighed as she stepped brusquely along. They still weren’t quite sure how the explosion had occurred. One moment Rafe was interrogating a half-blood vampire lawyer and her client, Ryder Galen, a dentist accused of murdering the alpha prime from a neighboring pack, and in the next, Galen had somehow managed to trigger an explosion that knocked all those in the hall unconscious. Thankfully, nobody died. Not from the explosion, anyway. One lycan had lost his teeth, courtesy of the dentist, and two guardians had died in the forest on their way to returning the vampire lawyer to the nearby vampire colony. Well, at least that was what she and her pack had thought at the time. It turned out Rafe, her pack’s alpha prime, had subtly instructed the guardians to permanently remove the vampire lawyer. She’d killed those guardians in self-defense. All deaths that could have been avoided, damn it. She thought of Jax. His father had been one of the guardians slain in the forest—a guardian prime, no less. Her pack was still reeling from the death of a highly respected, highly valued warrior. His partner, dealing with a young son and the death of her mate, was struggling to cope.
Trinity sighed. She knew how it felt, losing one parent and having another swept away in a tide of mourning. Well, she’d keep an eye on the kid. At least Jax would know he wasn’t invisible. Not around Trinity, anyway. She’d taken him out on one of the juvenile training sessions, and the kid had done well. He needed a short leash, though, she’d noticed. He had a tendency to wander off and get into mischief. She smiled. He was a good kid.
She made her way toward a little-used corridor that would lead her deeper into the mountain and then out the other side. She skirted along the rim of the great hall, nodding occasionally to friends and family as she passed them. Some acknowledged her. Others acted as though they didn’t see her—but that was a reasonable reaction, she kept telling herself. She wasn’t going to let it hurt her, not like it had when she was a teen. The great hall was a large, long cave, and along the rim the stone wall had natural pockets of space used for storage or as alcoves used for sundry tasks and private conversations.
A roar echoed down the main corridor, and instinctively she ducked behind a stone column as her alpha prime, Rafe Woodland, stalked into the long stone cavern. She’d learned that disappearing was always the best option in her dealings with the lycan.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” he shouted, arms out.
Dion, the recently appointed Woodland Guardian Prime, strode alongside him. “The supplies have been stopped beyond Summercliffe—Alpine have made a blockade.”
Rafe took a deep breath as he clenched and unclenched his fingers, and Trinity drew deeper into the shadows. Some of the others in the hall paused. Everyone knew the warning signs.
“We need those supplies,” he grated, his teeth visible.
“We can’t get them.”
Rafe picked up a cup and hurled it at the wall, and Trinity flinched as the ceramic shattered into small pieces.
Those close enough in the hall to witness the display rose to their feet, and Trinity watched as some of the men exchanged wary looks. A child huddling under one of the tables closest to Rafe caught Trinity’s eye, and she sighed. Jax. The pup looked scared, and Trinity glanced around for his mom. The woman was nowhere to be seen; she was probably back in her den staring at a dirt wall as she pined for her dead mate.
Meanwhile, their alpha was having a temper tantrum, and the pack was keeping its distance. Like she should. Jax’s anxious gaze met hers, and her breath escaped in a frustrated gust. She knew what it was like to be the lost kid hiding under the table. Damn it. She should mind her own business. Pretend she didn’t hear or see anything. One more look at the kid cowering beneath the table and she pursed her lips. Ah, hell.
She stepped out from behind the pillar, trying to do it slowly, without calling attention to herself.
“You had one job—get the supplies and come back.” Rafe backhanded his guardian, sending him crashing against the table under which Jax cowered, and Trinity frowned. Dion reared up, his fists clenched, but forced himself to lower his gaze beneath the angry glare of his alpha prime. Dion’s predecessor had died at the hands of the vampire lawyer in the woods, and Dion was still trying to prove himself to the pack leader. It wasn’t Dion’s fault the border was closed. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. He was a guardian prime now, too, and should be treated with the respect due his station, especially in front of the rest of the pack.
“What did you expect, Rafe?” Trinity asked coolly as she stepped farther into the hall, wending her way through the small cluster of people, all attempts at blending into the background set aside. She tried to hide the tension in her fists by clutching onto the straps of her backpack. He was being unfair to her pack mate—and she hated unfair. “We’ve antagonized them.” She was still trying to understand the strategic benefit of killing the Alpine Alpha Prime, and she knew other pack members struggled with Rafe’s rationale. If she’d known Rafe’s intention of killing another pack’s alpha prime, she would have tried to stop him. Which was probably why she hadn’t known until Rafe had sent guardians into Nightwing, the neighboring vampire territory, to abduct a half-blood vampire and the human accused of the Alpine pack leader’s murder in an effort to bury the truth with them. No wonder Alpine were blocking them. They’d killed an alpha prime.
Rafe turned to face her, and his eyes narrowed when he recognized her.
“Trinity. This doesn’t concern you.”
Despite the knot in her stomach, she raised her eyebrows. “Well, if we can’t get anything into Woodland, it concerns me. It concerns the whole pack.” Nightwing
