Kane Holtwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kane came off the ridge at a run. Raze's words sat behind his teeth like a stone. Something already had Eden's scent. He had left her behind a moss line and a locked door with only a ghost for company, and now the woods between him and her cottage were too long. He could shift and cross faster on four legs, but a white wolf in daylight would draw every eye in Everwood to exactly the place he did not want watched. He needed help. He did not have time to earn it. He cut east instead of south. The closer recruit's den sat in that direction, a lean-to under a run-down cottage's collapsed porch. Theo had told him the man still flinched at his own name. Kane would take that. He would take anything that ran on two legs and remembered how. The cottage rose out of the brush like a broken tooth. Green paint peeling, roof half caved, every window punched through. Kane stopped at the porch step. He did not call out. He waited. A blonde head lifted from behind the railing. Scars raked one cheek. The younger wolf, Blake, stood slow, hands open, jacket loose. He looked at Kane the way an omega looks at any alpha he does not yet belong to. "You're Holtwood," Blake said. "I am." "Theo said you'd come." Blake's nose worked once. His eyes sharpened. "You've been running. Something on you smells wrong." "Not on me. On the girl I left at a cottage an hour south. Something's tracking her. I can't reach her before it does. Not alone." Blake did not blink. "Why me." "Because you can still smell what I can't. And because Theo said you remember being spoken to." Blake's jaw worked. He looked past Kane at the trees. Kane watched him decide. He did not push. Pushing an omega was how you got a wolf who obeyed and hated you for it. He had learned that from the other side. "What do I get," Blake said. Quieter now. "A pack. If I'm wrong about you, you walk. If I'm right, you stand with us." Blake stepped off the porch. His boots hit dirt without sound. "Then we run. I'll cut the track from the wind. You keep up." Kane felt his shoulders drop half an inch. He had not known they were up. They shifted at the treeline. Kane's white wolf hit the ground first, broad and pale, jaws already open for air. Blake went low and lean beside him, nose down, and took the lead without asking. Kane let him. That was the deal. They crossed three miles before the wind shifted. Blake stopped hard. His hackles rose. He looked back at Kane once, ears flat. The scent he had caught was not ahead of them. It was already at the cottage.