Chapter 5

Sable's POV

I ran.

Branches tore at my arms, my dress catching on something and ripping loose without me stopping to check what. Ivy was ahead of me, weaving through the trees like she'd memorized every root and rock out here, throwing glances back to make sure I hadn't fallen behind.

"Don't look back," she said. "Looking back slows you down."

I looked back anyway.

Two shapes broke through the tree line behind us, low and fast, eyes catching the moonlight the same way the first rogue's had. Then a third joined them, further off but closing the gap fast.

"Ivy…"

"I see them." She didn't slow down. "There's a ridge up ahead. We get past it, we're close enough to the Hollow that they'll send more than just me."

"And if we don't get past it?"

"Then you better hope you can fight."

I didn't have an answer for that. I never fought anything in my life. I spent ten years learning how to duck, how to go quiet, how to disappear into a room so nobody had a reason to hit me. None of that was going to help me against three rogues built to kill.

The ground sloped up hard, and my legs burned climbing it, lungs screaming for air I couldn't catch fast enough. Ivy reached the top first and spun around, bow already drawn, an arrow knocked before I'd even cleared the last few feet.

"Get behind me," she said.

I didn't argue.

The lead rogue hit the ridge a second later, and Ivy's arrow caught it clean through the shoulder. It didn't slow down. Rogue wolves this far gone on bloodlust didn't feel pain the way normal wolves did, not until it was too late to matter.

She dropped the bow and pulled her knife instead, ducking under the wolf's first snap and driving the blade into its side. It howled, twisted, caught her arm with its teeth before she could pull back. She cried out but didn't let go of the knife, wrenching it upward until the wolf finally went limp and dropped.

The second one was already on her before she fully shaken the first one off.

"Ivy!"

I grabbed the closest thing I could find, a fallen branch thick enough to actually do something, and swung it as hard as I could into the second rogue's ribs. It barely reacted, just turned its head toward me instead, a low growl building in its throat.

That was worse. Now it wanted me instead.

It lunged, and I threw myself backward, hit the ground, felt the air leave my lungs as I scrambled to get my arms up before its jaws closed on something they shouldn't.

Then it just stopped,mid-lunge, like something had grabbed it out of the air. A second later I understood why. A wolf twice its size had slammed into its flank, teeth locking around its throat, and the rogue didn't get up again.

More shapes came over the ridge behind the new wolf, four, maybe five, moving with the kind of coordination that told me they'd fought together before. One of them shifted mid-stride, fur pulling back into skin, until a man stood where the wolf had been a second earlier, broad-shouldered, moving toward Ivy like he already knew exactly what he would find.

"You're bleeding," he said to her, crouching down to check the bite on her arm.

"I noticed." Ivy nodded toward me, still on the ground, still trying to remember how to breathe normally. "She's the one I found. Rogues came in packs for her, Rook. That's not normal, not this close to Ironclaw's border."

Rook looked over at me for the first time. Steady, calm, the kind of face that gave away nothing even in the middle of a fight that had just ended. His eyes moved from my face down to my collarbone, to the mark still sitting raw and red above the neckline of my torn dress, and something shifted behind his expression, quick enough that I almost missed it.

"Where'd she get that?" he asked, voice even, though he hadn't looked away from the mark since he spotted it.

"Ceremony," Ivy said. "Tonight. She says the Alpha used the Words on her."

Rook was quiet for a second too long.

"That's not something Alaric Thorne does for just anyone," he said finally.

"You know him?" I asked, my voice coming out rougher than I meant it to.

"Everyone in the Hollow knows Ironclaw's Alpha." Rook stood, crossing the space between us in a few steady steps, and crouched down in front of me instead of looming over me the way I half expected. "Can you walk?"

"I think so."

"Good. We're not staying out here longer than we have to. Wherever those rogues came from, there could be more." He held out a hand, and I hesitated for half a second before taking it, letting him pull me up. His grip was steady, careful in a way I hadn't expected from someone who just tore a wolf's throat out with his bare teeth. "You're safe for now. That's all I can promise you tonight."

"Safe from what, exactly?"

"That's the question we're all going to want an answer to." He glanced at Ivy, then back at me, and something in his voice sharpened. "Rogues don't hunt in packs unless somebody's paying them to. And somebody doesn't pay three rogues to chase down one omega unless she's worth something."

I didn't have an answer for that. I didn't feel worth anything, not standing in the middle of a forest in a torn dress with a brand burning into my skin and blood that wasn't mine drying on my hands.

"I'm nobody," I said. "I was just an omega in Ironclaw. Nothing special."

Rook looked at the mark on my collarbone one more time, and this time he didn't hide the way his jaw tightened.

"That mark says otherwise," he said. "Come on. We'll figure out the rest back at the Hollow."

He turned to lead the way, and that was when I heard it, faint under the mark's steady ache, a low hum against my skin, warm instead of burning, like something inside me had just woken up and didn't plan on going back to sleep.