Carter and Joe prowled around the cabin, nostrils flaring.
Kelly knelt before the injured man, hand shaking as he reached out to—
The man’s eyes snapped open, his hand up before we could move and wrapping around Kelly’s wrist. Kelly fell back on his ass, startled at the sudden movement. His brothers were snarling, and I—
“Wolves,” the man whispered. “It’s always the wolves.”
And then he passed out.
I CLEANED and bandaged his wounds as best I could with what I could find in the debris of the cabin. Kelly helped me right the futon while Joe and Carter disappeared into the forest surrounding the cabin, seeing if they could pick up the scent.
Kelly was crouched next to me, grimacing as I wrung out a cloth over a basin of water, now more red than clear. “He was here.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, dropping the cloth to the floor.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why was he here? Who is this guy? Why would Richard want him?”
I pointed to a mark on the man’s chest, near his right shoulder. It’d been split right down the middle, but I could still see the shape of it. The design. The ink in his skin.
Kelly squinted at it. “Is that… a… crown?”
“It’s a sigil. The mark of a clan.”
Kelly took in a sharp breath. “Of hunters?”
“Yes.”
“Why are we helping him? He wants to kill us!”
“I doubt he can do much of anything right now. Turn off the eyes, kid.”
Kelly ground his teeth together, but the orange faded to its natural blue. They weren’t as frozen as his uncle’s, but it was close.
I looked away.
“Do you know it?”
I sighed. “I do.”
“And?”
“It’s not important. They’re all gone now. He’s nothing but an outlier. Probably got out when he was your age.” Because I didn’t recognize him. He hadn’t been one of the bodies lying on the ground while I’d walked through the forest, Mark weak and broken at my side. If he had been, if I’d come across him still breathing, I would have put my hands over his mouth and nose and—
“Gordo?”
Kelly was staring at me, a strange look on his face. I realized just how tense I was. I couldn’t let him see me like this. Not now. Not when—
“Go check on your brothers. See if they need your help.”
“But—”
“Kelly.”
He growled at me but stood and did as he was told. He pushed against the useless door, the hinges creaking, wood splintering further. I heard him howl as he left the house, and there was a burst of BrotherPack where before Carter sang back hereherehere from somewhere in the woods.