Son of a bitch.I quickly jumped to my feet. He was on me again, snarling and snapping his jaws at me, trying to lunge forward and attack my soft spots—my neck, stomach, and hamstrings. For a moment, I imagined the wolf was Anders, and I allowed my inner wolf to have full rein over the anger in my heart.
Once that switch was flipped, the other wolf had no chance. I bit and tore at him, ripping and breaking, thrashing and slamming, until he was nothing but a lump of unmoving fur. I shifted back to my human form, standing over the dead body, and heaving breath, hands clenched into fists. Glaring down at him, I had to force myself not to kick the corpse for good measure. I may have been violent and angry, but I wasn’t a beast. It was done. The threat was neutralized, and I could head home. For a while, anyway.
Once I’d managed to get myself under control, I shifted back and started the trip home. I took my time, walking rather than running. Only a small part of my concentration went toward making sure I wasn’t being followed or stalked;the rest continued to spin through all that had happened with June, trying to find out where I’d messed up. This was rapidly becoming my favorite miserable pastime. TheWhat Did I Do Wronggame. It was exhausting, but I had a hard time not playing it.
Ripping me free of those spiraling thoughts was the memory of the wolf I’d just killed. The blood on his muzzle. It worried me, but there was still the chance that he’d simply been hunting. Many shifters allowed their wolf to do all the wolfish things they wanted to do, which included hunting. I told myself that was all it was. He’d come across a deer, a badger, a raccoon. I hoped that was all it had been.
When I finally emerged from the forest, I shifted to my human form again. I’d been in my wolf form so much the last couple weeks, I was sure people were getting worried about me. So far, no one had asked me how I was doing.Everyonein town had obviously noticed June had left. People gave me surreptitious glances whenever I walked around town, looks they thought I didn’t notice, but I did. I’m sure they wanted answers too, wanted to know why their alpha’s new mate had decided to vanish in the middle of the day to never return. I knowI’dhave wanted to know why that happened.
“Levi!”
I flinched in surprise at the bellow of fear and worry. Turning, I found Rainier running toward me. His face was ghostly white against his dark bushy beard, his eyes wide and panicked. A sudden twist of fear stabbed into my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I met him halfway.
Rainier pulled up, breathing heavy. “Levi…we…oh,fuck.Come on, you’ve gotta see it.”
“It’s bad,” I said, a statement rather than a question.
“Goddamnit, yes,” Rainier growled, then glanced around.
“Bad enough we don’t want everyone to know?”
“You could say that,” he muttered.
He led me to the opposite side of town, back into the forest. A few hundred yards in, I spotted one of our sentries, a younger shifter named Duncan. The guy was maybe twenty-three years old. I’d brought him into the pack a couple years before. He looked shaken, pale like Rainier was. Once we pushed through a shrub to find what he was standing over, I realized why.
“Fuck. Who is it?”
A bloody, twisted body lay face down, arms and back shredded. My stomach lurched, imagining which member of my community this might be.
“Stephen Mullin,” Rainier said as he knelt and rolled the body over.
I winced. “Jesus,” I hissed.
His face had been mauled, his throat torn out. Truly the only way anyone could have made a definitive identification was the port-wine stain that covered half his face.
“I think he was circling back in to do some trading with us,” Rainier said. “Last time he was in town was a few weeks ago. I got those…uh…ingredients from him.” He eyed me. “For thatthingwe had to do?”
The ritual we’d done with June that had informed us she wasn’t Naphele’s reincarnation. Stephen had provided some of the magical ingredients.
“When did this happen?” I growled through gritted teeth.
“Body was still warm when I found him,” Duncan said. The young man averted his eyes, unwilling to look at the mangled body.
“I think I got the guy who did this,” I said.
“Are you serious?” Rainier said.
Nodding, I scanned the forest around us. “Yeah. Caught an intruder’s scent and tracked him a few miles. We fought. I took him down.” I pointed at Stephen’s body. “The guy hadsome dried blood on his muzzle. Seems like too much of a coincidence.”
“What the hell are they doing, Levi?” Rainer sounded more anxious than I’d ever heard him. “They’ve never hurt anyone, much less killed someone.”
“Not just anyone,” I snarled. “An honorary pack member. This man was under my protection, whether he was an official member or not.”
“Is this the Red Maw?” Duncan asked, and he sounded more like a boy than a man right then.
Rainier and I shared a look. We both knew for sure what was happening. That didn’t make it any easier. If the Red Maw and Desdemona were escalating to this level, then we’d have to prepare.