Mag-log inTobias's POVI keep hold of Zahra's presence for another few seconds anyway, letting the steady awareness that she's there settle some of the pressure in my chest before I force myself to concentrate on the warrior waving us towards an empty space. I triple-check my fuel gauge. It's still reading as full. I should be able to make it most of the way to Daemon's borders without needing to stop, especially at the easy speed we've been travelling at.I pull in and switch off the engine. For the first time since leaving Shadow, the vibration beneath my feet disappears, and the sudden silence inside the car feels wrong. Engines continue rumbling outside as the rest of our section pulls in around us, doors opening and closing, voices carrying across the forecourt, but inside the car there's suddenly nothing to distract me from the fact that my mate is miles behind us.Lincoln reaches for his door.“Wait.”He pauses and looks at me as I pull my phone from the holder.Nothing.No message from
Tobias's POVMy earpiece crackles as we approach the rest stop, Commander Henry's voice cutting through the quiet inside the car as he runs through the instructions again. We're divided into sections, each led by one of Linc's unit, so we're not trying to cram eight hundred people into the same fucking place at once. The warriors have already moved ahead and locked down a truck stop with a food court, toilets and enough pumps to refuel several vehicles at a time. Each section is to pull in, refuel whatever vehicles need it, grab food to go, take a bathroom break, swap drivers where needed and then get the fuck out again so the next group can move through. Once we're done, we're to rendezvous at the natural park farther up the road and wait there for the rest of the convoy to regroup before we continue.Commander Henry hopes we can be back on the road in no more than an hour. I suspect it'll be more like two. Moving eight hundred people anywhere quickly is apparently fucking impossible
Tobias's POVDriving out of Shadow at the head of the convoy while Zahra remains somewhere behind me goes against every fucking instinct I have. Every mile we put between us feels wrong. Thor has been demanding I turn the car around since the moment we left her, and if there weren't hundreds of people following my fucking taillights right now, I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't.But I can feel Lincoln's emotions, and he's even more of a mess than I am. He has the added distress of leaving his home and the guilt of uprooting his entire pack.“It's going to be okay,” I murmur as I notice him squeeze his eyes closed in the passenger seat beside me.He blinks them open, and a tear leaks from the corner of one. He clears his throat but doesn't say anything.“You've made an impossible decision, one that lesser Alphas wouldn't have been able to make.”He wipes at his face and angles his head away from me, turning to look out of the window as we wind down through the packlands towards the gate,
Zahra's POVAnd that's exactly why I can't ask him to.“They followed us from Shadow,” I say, looking out through the broken window as another distant shape moves between the trees. “They've pushed through Edwardo's people and kept coming even after the Task Force dropped their trucks back to stop them. They don't know who's in these cars, but they know we're important enough that an entire military escort stayed behind to let us escape.”“I know,” Brant says, frustration roughening his voice.“Then you know they'll follow us onto your land.”“Let them.” He says with a growl“I can’t.” I almost growl back, and silence falls on the other end.“Brant, we just evacuated Shadow to get hundreds of civilians out of the path of this army. Lincoln gave up his home to keep his people alive. I can't lead the fucking things straight into yours because I need your hospital.”“My pack is my responsibility, Zahra. Not yours. And we’re a lot better protected than shadow.”“And you're our friend.”Hi
Zahra's POVMy gaze drops to the phone still resting in my lap, Brant waiting silently on the other end while I decide whether to accept the sanctuary he's offering. Beyond him is the hospital Max desperately needs, but there is an entire pack around it too. Homes. Families asleep or sheltering together because they know something is happening beyond their borders. Children who have probably been pulled out of bed. Elderly wolves who couldn't outrun an invading army if it reached them.Shadow flashes through my mind so vividly that for a moment I can almost smell the exhaust fumes outside the pack house again. Cars packed until there was barely room to move. Parents checking for the third or fourth time that their children were inside. Elderly wolves clutching bags containing whatever pieces of their lives they'd managed to grab. Lincoln standing there watching generations of his pack drive away from the only home they'd ever known because staying would have put them directly in the p
Zahra's POVAnother howl rises from the forest, closer this time, and Zanthe answers with a low growl inside my head.‘Still following.’I know.Brant hears that one too. “Zahra.”“We're fine.”“You don't sound fucking fine.”“That's because I'm covered in glass, there's blood running down my face, my mate is unconscious in the back of the car and an unknown number of rogues are chasing us through a forest.”The silence on the phone lasts barely a heartbeat.“Goddess above, please just fucking get here.” The humour has completely disappeared from Brant's voice.“I'm doing my best, man,” Xander says, gritting his teeth as he swerves again.“I mean it,” Brant replies, his voice tightening. “Don't stop for anything. Don't wait for my warriors if you reach the boundary first. You cross it and you keep driving. We'll handle whatever follows you.”My mouth opens, but Xander's hand suddenly closes around mine.I look at him.His eyes stay on the road as he shakes his head once, barely a move







