Chapter 4

Caleb POV

The howl tore through the trees and landed somewhere in my chest like a hook.

I knew it wasn't one of mine. The pitch was wrong, the pattern unfamiliar not Moon Edge. But a wolf calling out like that wasn't asking for anything complicated. She was surrounded and lost. We were close enough to answer, and we would.

I threw back my head and responded, then pushed my legs harder than I had all afternoon. Beside me I could feel the team tighten up, reading the urgency without needing instruction.

We broke through the pines into a small clearing at the river's edge and I took in the situation in under a second: three mountain lions tearing into a light-brown wolf on the ground, two more circling the outside to cut off any escape route. She was still fighting, biting when she could reach anything, rolling to keep her belly protected but five against one wasn't a fight. It was an execution.

Jules and the others spread wide without signal, moving on the flanking pair. I went straight for the ones on top of her.

I've protected this pack for years. I've driven off intruders, broken up fights, taken injuries without flinching. None of it felt like this. Whatever pushed me forward in that moment wasn't strategy or duty it was something rawer and louder than both, a need to get between her and whatever was hurting her.

I locked onto the nearest lion and dragged him backward by the leg, pulling him clear. He spun faster than I expected and raked his claws across my face. The left side of my vision went red and I was swimming. I didn't let go. I torqued my neck hard until something in his leg gave way with a crack that ended in a roar. Then I threw him. He landed hard and didn't get back up cleanly.

My team had already put down the two flanking lions by the time I turned around. Clean work, no wasted effort. Jules moved in beside me on the third, and that one folded quickly enough that it almost wasn't worth describing. The fourth understood the math by then and released the girl on its own, backing toward the river with its eyes on me.

I counted heads. One still standing.

I had a choice. Kill him and eliminate any future problem. Let him go and send a message instead that he'd walked into Moon Edge territory, lost four of his people, and escaped with his life as a deliberate act of restraint on our part. Sometimes that was more effective than a body.

I was still weighing it when the girl's legs gave out.

The decision was made itself. I let the lion go. He hit the water and the current took him. If he had any sense, that river was the last thing he'd remember about Kisatchie.

I turned back to her.

She was down in her wolf form, sides heaving, eyes tracking every one of us in fast, wary arcs. I walked toward her slowly deliberately slowly and she lifted her lip in a low warning. Scared, not broken. Good.

I shifted back and crouched down to her level, wiping the blood out of my eye with the back of my wrist. The cut stung. I ignored it.

"You're safe," I said, keeping my voice even. "We're not a threat to you."

She didn't relax, but her eyes stopped moving quite so fast.

I looked back at the team. "Give her room. Back up."

They shifted down and retreated without comment. I stayed low, not crowding her, letting her make whatever calculation she needed to make. She stared at me for a long moment. Those eyes were an extraordinary gray, dark and clear at the same time, like deep water and then she let go of her wolf form.

She surfaced into her human shape slowly, brown hair falling forward, curling her knees in and crossing her arms over her chest. Bite marks tracked across her arms and ribs. A deep gash along her side was still seeping.

I noticed she was self-conscious about the nakedness in a way pack-raised wolves never were. Humans, probably. Or close enough to it.

Her scent reached me fully now that she'd shifted something warm and earthy beneath the blood, pine sap, and fear. My wolf had an immediate and inconvenient opinion about it that I pushed aside firmly.

"I'm Caleb," I said. "Moon Edge pack. This is our territory." I paused. "What's your name?"

Her eyes had drifted south for just a moment before she looked sharply away, color rising in her face. "Josephine," she said. No pack name attached. I'd expected that.

"Can you stand?"

She considered the question like it might be a trap. "Maybe."

"Where did you leave your clothes?"

She gestured vaguely behind her. "Back somewhere that way. I lost track of where I was running."

I glanced at the team. "Jules perimeter, take Duncan and Tom. The rest of you, backtrack her scent and find her things."

I didn't need to watch them go. I heard the forest shift as they dispersed.

Josephine's shoulders came down a fraction. The absence of a crowd helped.

"What brought you out here alone?" I asked.

Something moved through her face, a weight settling in, the kind that doesn't shift easily. "My dad died a few weeks ago. I came to scatter his ashes." Her voice came out quiet and careful, like she was still getting used to saying it out loud.

The words hit closer than I expected. "I'm sorry," I said.

She looked at me sideways. "I usually hate hearing that."

"But?"

She didn't answer right away. "I don't know. You sound like you mean it."

"I do." I was quiet for a moment. "My parents died when I was young. Pack raised me the rest of the way."

I hadn't said that to anyone in a long time. I wasn't sure why I said it now. She just looked at me and said, "I'm sorry," and I found myself responding the same way she had. It didn't land wrong, not from her.

"I'm going to look at your side," I said. Not asking, but she didn't pull away.

The smaller cuts had already begun closing, shifter healing was reliable that way but the gash on her ribs was deeper and ragged in a way that would take longer. Wounds from other shifters always did.

"You'll come back with us," I said, keeping my hand light on her hip as I straightened. "You need time to heal before you go anywhere."

She leaned into my hand the smallest amount, probably without realizing it. Her skin was warm. I kept my expression neutral and my hand exactly where it was, professional and still, while every instinct I had pulled in a direction I had no business following.

She wasn't mine. She wasn't packed. She was hurt and alone in unfamiliar woods, and she was under my protection.

That was all this was. That was all it could be.

I told myself that, clearly and firmly, and moved to help her up.