The female, who’d told me about the totem, was there, bleeding and weary, but alive. She moved toward me, and I didn’t even have it in me to be scared. Not even when I looked into her eyes, when all I saw was her until I didn’t even see her.

Not anymore.

I blinked, taken aback at her sudden disappearance, expecting to find the other wolves there, to see Sabina running toward me trying to help.

But I saw nothing.

It was full night, but wherever I was now, it was twilight.

I peered around, intent on understanding where the hell I was, when it hit me.

Lidai’s soul.

Where her heart bore fruit, the past was stored, and the future was written.

Todd was panting, but his wheezing breaths told me he was near the end. He wasn’t even looking at me, his eyelids were closed, but I knew what to do.

I needed a heart fruit—a loenai.

Spinning around, I disregarded the dozens of beautiful trees, all of them coming in colors that were otherworldly, literally from another plane, until I found the one I needed.

It was big, and I wasn’t. I’d never climbed a tree before, but I didn’t have time to worry about any of that. I just had to do.

So I did.

I took a running jump as I leaped into the air and managed, barely, to catch a hold of the lowest branch. It was so thick around the middle that it didn’t even quiver at the momentum of my jump or at my weight, and I hung there, wasting precious seconds as I figured out how to get from my dangling position and onto the branch itself.

As I peered up, I saw a heart fruit was actually on this level.

It hadn’t been there before.

“Thank you, Lidai,” I whispered, and like I’d done as a kid on the monkey bars, I managed to move forward, jerkily shifting down the length of the branch as the jaenerai, a strange fly that I knew accelerated healing, buzzed around the fruit.

When I made it there, my arms aching, my body electrified with adrenaline, I snapped out a hand, knowing I had only one shot—I had to grab it, because the second I let go, I’d fall to the ground.

Lidai must have been on my side, because the fruit was in my hand, and I was back on the ground, heading back to Todd.

As I ran, I tore open the fruit, revealing the flesh of the Mother’s heart. I grimaced at the sight, my human sensibilities making me want to puke as I skidded to a halt at my mate’s side, shoving the loenai at him.

He was too far gone though.

He didn’t even scent the blood.

I shoved it in his mouth, uncaring if I hurt him or if my hands were nicked on his teeth, and I forced him to eat. I went so far as to push it down his throat. Weakly, he swallowed, and I felt like weeping some more with relief.

I knew this would work. I knew it.

When the hum of the jaenerai made itself known to me, I carried on shoving the loenai down his throat, making him eat all of it, not content until he’d swallowed every fucking bite.

And then, and only then, when the jaenerai came, did I take my eyes off him. I didn’t move away, even though I knew the jaenerai, as they healed, caused a massive explosion of energy, I stayed for the fallout. My hand on his paw, sticking with him like I’d stick with him through everything, as I let the Mother heal my mate.

When the heat and light came, I was thrown back because of my proximity. But as the jaenerai died, as they gave their life for Todd’s, I started sobbing, even as my eyes ached from the light, my skin was tenderized from the burst of heat, and my ears were deafened by the blast.

I couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him or scent him, but blindly, and on my hands and knees, I crawled toward him, unerringly finding his warmth. When I knew he was well, if unconscious, I curled up at his side, needing nothing more than to be with him.

Forever.

Sixteen

Austin

I jerked when a hand slapped my cheek, and groggily, I peered up at my brothers, well aware they were filthy, doused in blood and gore that had my nose crinkling at the sight of them.

“Why are you so gross?”

Eli muttered under his breath, “Why are you so gross?”

Groaning, I reached up and rubbed my forehead. The last thing I remembered was being leapt upon by a hyena, but I was pretty sure that was a dream. It had to have been a wolf, but shitty luck and bad timing had me falling back, and colliding with the ground.

No wonder my head ached like a son of a bitch.

Moaning some more, and feeling like I was a thousand years old, I sat up, and as I rubbed the back of my head, where my fingers came back sticky from blood, I peered around and muttered, “Huh. Guess that wasn’t a dream.”

Their features were grimy after the battle, and they scowled at me as they both sank onto their knees, and then toppled back onto their asses, as we all looked around the outer rim of the totem circle.

I was lucky I hadn’t died. Fuck, it was more than luck.

“They must have thought you were dead,” Eli told me, reading my thoughts with an ease that I still wasn’t used to. Especially when I hadn’t been projecting a stream of conscious thought onto him.

“Get over it,” Ethan groused. “We all know way more about each other than any of us would like. At least you’re alive.”

“Yeah. Thank fuck hyenas are dumbasses,” Eli agreed, reaching up and rubbing his face with the back of his hand. It smeared more crap over him, but I wasn’t about to point that out.

“I’m sorry,” I told them both. “I should have been fighting with you.”

“You should have, yeah,” Ethan grumbled, elbowing me in the side. I couldn’t hiss at him, though, even if that simple jolt to my system made my head bang like I was at a Metallica concert. “What the hell happened?”

“Is Daniel okay?” I asked, taking my priorities as they came to me.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Eli rasped. “Sent him home with one of the others. Still unconscious, but he appears to be well.”

“Good.” I sucked in a breath. “We were just walking toward the clearing when—” I winced. “The scents were all over the place. Nothing centered, so I just thought they were trying to piss us off by messing with our markers. I never expected there to be so many of them. When we approached, I was listening to something Daniel was saying, and they just leaped at us.” Shame hit me as I admitted, “I didn’t even have a chance to shift before I was down.”

“Some fucking enforcer you are,” Ethan snapped at me.

Because I deserved it, I took it. But I wouldn’t take any more. I’d made a mistake, and he made plenty of them, but he’d just fought in a bloody battle and I had to cut him some slack.

Hell, maybe Sabina had done the impossible—she’d made me grow up. Either that or I was just getting sentimental in my old age.

We were all alive.

All in one piece.

We got to live to see another day, unlike the dead around us, who I saw when I peered at the clearing, and found myself unable to deny that he spoke the truth.

There were natural wolves that lay forever frozen in time, and then there were our fallen pack members. Brothers and sisters who I’d been raised with, who’d shunned me at every turn, who’d made our lives miserable from the offset. But I hadn’t wanted them to die. I hadn’t wanted their worlds to forever be torn in two.