Chapter 66

[ 974 words ]

Pack territory

66: 66.

Pack territory Aria

Chaos greets me the second we cross into pack territory.

Wolves dart in every direction, arms full of bags, crates, weapons.

Voices overlap, as mothers call out to their pups and enforcers guide people into groups.

Everyone is carrying a pack, stuffed full.

Anxiety, reluctance, and fear perfume the air.

The sour, vinegary smell makes my wolf uneasy.

However, this time it is not the desire to protect me that passes through her, it’s the desire to protect her pack.

A forever mama bear instinct I didn’t know I had.

Ronan sets me onto my feet, and I push through the jelly-like feeling in my limbs.

The further we got from danger, the more my fire subsided, leaving me feeling like I had run a ten-mile sprint.

Barric is waiting for us by the front gate, a serious expression on his face.

He’s in front of me in less than a second, hands on my shoulders, eyes scanning every inch of me like he expects to find blood.

“Are you hurt?” he demands.

“I’m fine,” I say quickly, grabbing his wrists to steady myself.

“I promise.”

His gaze lingers a second longer.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“We’re getting our emergency defense in place.” He waves us forward with his hand, and we follow him towards a group of others.

He turns to Ronan.

“What happened?”

The shift in Ronan is immediate.

He is not just my mate, the male I am coming to learn and trust.

He’s the Alpha.

His spine straightens, his presence expands, and even the chaos seems to bend slightly around him.

“The Assembly made their move,” he says, voice cold and clipped.

“Anyone who didn’t vote for Project Ashfall has been labeled a traitor. They didn’t wait for discussion; they ordered the attack on everyone who didn’t agree.”

A chill slices through me at the memory of how quickly those other packs turned on us.

“They what?” Barric growls, anger sharpening his voice.

“It was planned,” Ronan continues, jaw tight.

“Their judgment was too quick, and while we were attacked, they watched.”

Barric curses.

My wolf snarls, teeth bared.

Cowards.

Before I can ask anything else, another figure approaches, lean and lethal with feline-like eyes.

His scent is sharp, authoritative.

Enforcer.

One I’ve never met before.

He goes straight to Liam, who looks worse than I realized—blood at his temple, movements stiff.

“Inside, babe,” the enforcer says, already guiding him toward the building.

Liam doesn’t argue.

That alone tells me how bad he must be feeling.

Ronan turns, his voice cutting through the noise like a blade.

“Is everyone almost ready?”

Ready?

The word hits me wrong.

“Ready for what?” I ask, confusion threading through the fear.

Kade appears at my side, intercepting the conversation.

His hand finds mine, firm and grounding.

“Come on,” he says, already pulling me with him.

“Kade—”

“We don’t have time to stand here.

We have to get ready to leave.”

“What do you mean to leave?”

“It’s a code black emergency procedure.

The assembly will come for everyone who escapes and their pack.

They won’t want opposition.

We can’t afford to risk having vulnerable people exposed, so we’re moving to a safe house.”

I let him lead me, weaving through the chaos toward Barric’s cabin.

My pulse pounds in my ears, every instinct screaming that something massive is shifting beneath my feet.

“Is it big enough to fit all of us?” I ask.

He smirks but doesn’t give me a response as we walk through the front door.

Inside, the cabin feels like a strange pocket of stillness.

“Pack,” Kade says, already moving to a dresser.

“Essentials only. Keep it light.”

I stare at him.

“Alright.

What about you?

“I have an emergency pack ready.

Most of the pack keeps one.”

“Oh.” The realization that all these people are being asked to leave their homes makes my stomach somersault.

“What about the other packs that stood with us?

The Assembly will be coming for them, too.”

“All packs have contingency plans for situations like this,” he says.

“Safe houses. Evac routes. We train for it. We just hoped we’d never have to use it like this.”

My mind flashes back to the stories I’ve heard about the hunter and the ear that wiped one third of the population out.

“This is like that, isn’t it?” I ask quietly.

His silence is my answer.

I head to the bedroom with him on my heels and open up a bookbag.

Stuffing random shirts and pants in my pack, I peek back at Kade.

He is leaning against the door frame, his sky blue eyes far away.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Then, “They’ll come here. The Assembly won’t stop. Not after making a declaration like this. They need to prove a point, and they will kill anyone and everyone they view as a threat, just like they did to the wolves who refused to abandon their human mates and halfbreed pups.”

A cold weight settles in my chest.

“What did you just say?”

“The Vail and the restriction on shifter/human relationships weren’t the only things the Assembly did.

There were shifters whose true mates were human, who had family, children, and the Assembly wanted to separate them.

When those shifters refused to leave their families, they were forced to go into hiding or be labeled as traitors and sentenced to death.”

“The shifter community just let that happen?”

“Some were scared.

Others stood by them.

But eventually people started showing up dead, and nothing could be traced back to the Assembly, so there was nothing we could do.”

Those bastards.

“So what do we do now?”

“We leave, regroup, then plan our attack.”

I nod slowly, even though it still feels unreal.

I put my last few items in the bag and zip it up.

“Alright, I’m ready.”

Kade nods, and we turn to leave the cabin.

It feels strange knowing we won’t be coming back here.

I mean, it’s not like we really had one place we stayed, but we were always together.

It felt like we were developing a routine.

Now we will have a new one, my wolf says.

I walk beside Kade, not really seeing anything around me.

“Aria.”

I look up.

Kade is watching me, something softer beneath the urgency.

“We’ll come back,” he says.

I want to believe him.

So I nod.

“I know.”

We will, my wolf echoes, though there’s a sharp edge of doubt beneath it.

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