“Then come home. Please.”
I swallowed thickly. “I… can’t. Remember what Joe said? To that hunter. David King. To tell Ox.”
He laughed through his tears. “Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. It’s all happened before and it will all happen again. These circles. We keep going in circles. Ox and Joe. Gordo and Mark. Me and Robbie. We keep making the same mistakes over and over and over.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do about them?” He nodded toward the front of the truck.
“I’ll handle it.”
But he was already gone.
I looked out the windshield.
Wolves growled.
I got out of the truck, hands raised, and was surrounded almost immediately.
“Who are you?” the Alpha demanded, hand around my throat. She pressed me against the truck, the handle digging into my back. “What are you doing in my territory?”
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I managed to get out.
“Then why are you here?”
“Can’t… breathe….”
Her grip lessened, and I sucked in air. Her nostrils flared as her forehead furrowed. She shook her head as she narrowed her red eyes again. “What do you want?”
I reached up and settled my hand on her wrist. I held on gently so she wouldn’t think I was going to hurt her. “I’m looking for someone.”
“There’s no one here for you.”
“Not anymore.”
“Why would you think he was here in the first place?”
I grinned at her. “I never said it was a he.”
She sighed as she let me go. “Shit.”
THEY WERE A YOUNG PACK, all unmated. The oldest, the Alpha, was only twenty. She wouldn’t tell me her name and refused to let me talk to any of the others. That was fine. I didn’t come for them, only for what they could tell me.
Theirs was a house set back in the Canadian wilds. No one else was around for miles. They liked it better that way. They didn’t want me going inside. I never pushed.
“No witch?” I asked as she came back to me after whispering to one of her Betas.
She hesitated. “No. We… had one once.”
“But not anymore.”
“Killed,” she said. “Or so my mother told me. Years ago. In Oregon. Mom said she deserved it. Listened to someone she shouldn’t have. She tried to kill an Alpha. Apparently she took the hand of a witch, and the witch’s mate killed her.”
I looked up at the wide expanse of sky above and thought of Kelly speaking of circles. “Emma.”
The Alpha nodded slowly. “Emma Patterson.”
“She was in over her head.”