They look to me. So does Killian.
I could say no, I want to go with them now. He’d listen. He’d walk us back to camp. He’d let me go with them to a new cabin, and he’d sit on the porch, but he wouldn’t say another word. I know this in my heart. It streams through our bond. I outrank him. I am his alpha.
This must be what it feels like to fly a fighter jet. Or a space shuttle. The pure power.
Killian opens his hand and holds it out. “Come with me?” he asks.
I don’t know where he wants to go, but yes.
I’ll go with him.
I take his hand.
He leads me away, and I follow.
16
UNA
Killian takes me further up the hill, past the other dens, to the very last one to be occupied. When I was a little girl and my parents were alive, my mother would bring food up to the elders who lived here. I was fascinated by them. They split their time almost evenly between fur and skin. They hunted their own food, and bed down with the rest of the pack in piles. I always got the sense when I talked to one, I talked to all of them.
We don’t live like this anymore. We have our own cabins, keep to our own little groups. There’s a thread that still runs through us all, though. No matter how we change. We’re swept along by time together. We share a past and a future.
Killian has carried it all on his shoulders for a long time now. When we first moved out of the dens, we split. Under his father, we divided into winners and losers, the strong and the weak. Rank ruled. Killian figured out a way for our males to fight for us, not amongst each other. He couldn’t change rank, so he slowly made the strong the protectors and the weak, the protected.
Imperfect. Infuriating. Downright maddening.
But he kept us together. And what he did, he did alone.
I squeeze the calloused hand still holding mine. He glances down, surprised.
I offer him a small smile.
His grin splits his face.
I scent Gael and Tye on the wind, hanging back, but following. Guarding us. And for some reason, I catch a whiff of Kennedy, too.
I don’t have the chance to puzzle that out before Killian pulls me through the entrance to the cave we call “the overlook.” It opens facing the old quarry. There’s a view of the emerald green rainwater collected at the bottom, and in the distance, the wooded hills that lead to the border of our territory to the south. It seems high above the world, and when there is a moon illusion, it feels like you can reach up and touch it.
The ceiling is low, but Killian can still stand without stooping. The caverns go back a long way, but you can’t tell from the first room. It’s like any other cave with a narrow split in the rocks at the back.
I haven’t been inside in years. There aren’t cozy nests on frames strung with ropes or fires with kettles hanging above on tripods anymore. The space has been swept clean. There are waterproof plastic tubs along the walls. I guess that’s where the bedding is stored for females who do their heat up here. It’s supposed to be auspicious to conceive young in the dens.
Is that what Killian is thinking? The excitement earlier—and the scent of other males—tamped down my heat, but it’s returning now, stronger than before. I can’t see how it can ebb again. I think when it comes this time, it’s going to carry me away until it ends.
My belly is unsettled. Last time with Killian was good—until it was awful. And Killian and I haven’t really worked things out between us. Have we?
I fuss in my head while he guides me through the back caverns. The floor slopes downward, and the ceiling rises higher. Now there are stalactites dripping down, slick and pearlescent. There’s a pitter patter ahead, like raindrops.
It’s the pool. The elders used to take us young down here while our parents chatted around the fire. It’s bigger than a bathtub. Almost the size of a small swimming pool. The water is perfectly clear.
The elders explained how the rainwater is cleaned as it sinks through the bedrock and how it collects and never evaporates because there’s no sunlight down here, only the bare lightbulbs rigged up on a string along the walls. They’re not quite fairy lights, but they cast a warm glow around the cavern.
Killian leads me to the edge of the pool. It’s chilly this far down, but my skin is hot. Inside, I’m a furnace. My heat is coming on hard.
“Wait,” he says. He jogs back the way we came, and for a few minutes, I’m alone, deep underground. It’s a surreal place, magical and shadowy and silent.
This whole day has been strange. I should be reeling, but I’m not. I feel steadier than I ever have before. I made a choice. I claimed my place in this pack. With Killian.
I’m not living one foot in, one foot out anymore. This is my life. For good or ill. And it doesn’t feel like giving up or making do or accepting that which cannot be changed. It feels like fate. A fate that isn’t a trap but a path.
I run my fingers along the smooth, cool walls. We came from here, and we keep coming back. Not because we can’t get away, but because there’s power in where you come from. What made you.
Fate made me Killian Kelly’s mate. That doesn’t mean what I thought it did. I’m not his to do with as he pleases. He is mine.
I think these big thoughts while my body goes haywire waiting for my mate to return. My nipples peak, aching. My skin shivers and there’s a bubbling in my belly.
I want my mate.
“Hurry,” I send through the bond.
“Yes,” he answers me instantly.
When Killian returns, his loud steps give me plenty of warning. He brings a pile of clean blankets, towels, and washrags.
“I thought we should get the blood off before we take a dip,” he says, arranging the linens in a pile. It’s all wrong. I’ll fix it once I’m clean.
Killian stalks over to the pool, oddly bashful. He tests the temperature and scrubs his own hands. He’s not meeting my eyes.
Then he dips a cloth in the pool, wrings it out, and comes to me. I stand very still, flushing hot, breathing quicker and quicker.
He wipes my neck first, lingering over his bite mark.
“You almost killed me back there,” he says, his voice low and smoldering.
He traces the pink scars of his claiming bite. They look like the wounds on my legs, but they don’t hurt at all.
“Don’t ever put yourself in danger like that again, Una. Promise me.”
“I knew you’d get Lochlan before he had a chance to hurt me.”
“I didn’t though. You took him down.” He smiles as he smooths the cloth down my shoulder and arm.
“Yeah. I don’t know why he used a knife. If he’d used his claws, it would’ve been a lot closer.”
Killian tenses, but his strokes remain calm and even.
“It’s a tactic. In case of invasion, wolves expect to fight wolves. If you outnumber the attacking force, armed males have the advantage.”
“You taught them that, didn’t you?”
He huffs a sigh. “I taught them everything they know.”