Chapter 50

Cass sat on the hard bench with his bound wrists resting in his lap, watching Lucian across the dim compartment. The vehicle’s engine hummed steady beneath them. Outside there was only the sealed metal and the knowledge that they were climbing toward the mountain pass.

“Why are you doing this?” Cass asked. His voice stayed low. “You’re his lover. Everyone knows that.”

Lucian’s green eyes stayed on the floor for a long moment. When he finally looked up, something tired and old sat behind them.

“I still am,” he said. “That’s the problem. I love him and have for years, as much as your pack loves eachother, probably more. But the temple trials ... they fed the darkness in him and grew it out of control, that’s what it does, and it’s already started doing it to your big white wolf didn’t it? What’s left now is mostly that darkness. The Nox I knew would hate the thing he’s becoming, but with soo many runs through the temple ... Nox isn’t even aware how it changed him. I don’t want him to go the rest of the way down this path.” Lucian’s throat worked. His eyes shone a little too bright in the low light. “Maybe in another life he’ll understand I was trying to help. Even if he never forgives me for it.”

He drew a short blade, leaned forward, and cut the cords around Cass’s wrists in two clean motions. The rope fell away. Cass rubbed the fur where it had bitten in. Lucian reached into a side panel and pulled out a heavy handgun, the entire frame cast in dull, cursed silver, leaving a blue after image when in motion. He held it out.

“Bullets are regular. But the gun itself is cursed silver. It’ll still do ugly damage. When the chaos starts, shoot me in the shoulder and the leg. Make it look like you overpowered me.”

Cass took the weapon. The metal felt wrong in his paw, cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. He looked at Lucian flatly.

“Wouldn’t it be more believable if I shot you in the balls?”

Lucian actually laughed, short and surprised. “Do what you think best.”

Cass checked the chamber, then lowered the barrel. “Leg it is. You’re lucky.”

The vehicle began to slow. Lucian’s rounded ears flicked. He closed his eyes for a second, and the heavy shadow cloak that had hidden the entire convoy simply fell away. Moonlight and open mountain air replaced the unnatural dark.

The radio on Lucian’s belt exploded with overlapping voices, panthers and wolves shouting the same question in different levels of rage. Lucian reached down and switched it off without answering.

“I’m putting myself at real risk here,” he said quietly. “Your pack better not fail.”

They didn’t.

Roan’s presence hit the link first, then Zariel’s, then the rest. Heavy firepower opened up from the ridges and the trees in a sudden, overlapping storm of automatic weapons, rifles, and something that sounded like a mounted gun. Screams cut through the night. Return fire cracked back from the convoy. Metal sparked. Someone shouted orders that no one seemed to follow.