“We’re running out of time,” Dash said.
“For what?”
“For whatever is coming.”
“Are you being cryptic on purpose? Or is there something I should know?”
“Nothing concrete, but be careful over the next few days. Something is in the air.”
“You can tell that from Slovakia?”
“Of course. I sired you, Devan. Your distress is my own.”
It made more sense than Devan cared to admit, even though it made no sense at all. “I’m not distressed. My head is clear... thanks to Zio, but I’m tired. I underestimated the strain full-time healing and an unfulfilled bond would put on me.”
“Everyone underestimates the power of a bond until it hits them. But I’m glad you and the young wolf are working on it together. It bodes well for your future that it hasn’t torn you apart.”
It is tearing me apart. Devan sighed. “I don’t know how long I can resist it. It’s more than a potential bond, Dash. I love him.”
“I know.”
“You do? How is that possible when I didn’t until I just said it?”
“Assumption, knowledge, instinct. You wouldn’t be the shifter I turned all those years ago if you didn’t embrace the most difficult things. It was the quality that made you such a remarkable human.”
Devan rolled his eyes. “I was a gangly student who didn’t know which way was up.”
“Even as a human, you were an industrious young man who already knew he’d been put on this earth to help people. I hope one day you meet someone truly ordinary so you can see the difference.”
The whole world was ordinary compared to Zio, but Devan was pretty sure Dash hadn’t called to hear him wax lyrical about his longed-for mate.Actually, why did he call?
But twenty minutes later, Devan bid goodbye to his alpha, none the wiser and further away from camp—and from Zio—than when he’d answered the phone. He searched his brain for threads of logic in the hope of tying some together but found none. He’d been entirely truthful when he’d told Dash he was tired, and beyond the need to link up with Zio as soon as possible, stringing coherent thoughts together just wasn’t happening.
Lost in thought, Devan retraced the half mile he’d wandered from camp. His senses were naturally attuned to Zio, but as he walked, the cracking current between them faded, as though Zio was somehow getting further and further away from him. After a solid twelve hours in each other’s company, the loss of their connection hurt. Devan rubbed his chest and picked up his pace, breaking into a run as he neared the camp.
Multiple emotions hit him at once, none of them pleasant, and none of them Zio’s.Panic. Distress. Fear. Anger.
Devan leapt the boundary and faced the scene of dozens of shifters running around, vehicles revving, shouting, howls as humans became wolves and raced into the night.
He grabbed the nearest body to him—a young woman who manned the comms tent. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Raid. At the compound. They’ve attacked our home.”
Devan let the woman go and she disappeared into the throng, but her panic remained and lodged itself deep in Devan’s soul. The compound was the pack’s strongest position, the only place on earth where they felt safe... whereZiofelt safe. It housed their families, human and shifter. It was the heart of the northern pack and the only home Zio had ever known.
And with Varian’s fiercest fighters deployed to protect the border, it was woefully undermanned, unless the combat squad could somehow get back in time to defend it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Devan whirled around, searching for Zio, for Michael, for Danielo.
He found Shannon and grabbed him, claws sliding out to dig into Shannon’s flesh. “Where’s Zio? And the rest of you? We need to get back.”
Wild wolf eyes stared back at him. “They already left.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zio ran like the wind, abandoning the vehicles where the human police had stopped them at the roadblocks they’d set up to keep the fighting contained. Warning shots rang out behind him, but he didn’t look back, his entire being fixated on defending his home. Hispack.