They couldn’t hurt Maverick and his pride.
Wolves were cold. Manipulative. They were traitors.
All of them would hurt another in a heartbeat if it meant they gained something, and none of them cared about the welfare of others. They only cared about themselves.
Rune flexed his fingers again and growled through clenched fangs.
This wolf would be no different.
He had to kill it before it could hurt the females.
Rune ground to a halt and tightened his fists until his bones ached. No. He couldn’t. He looked back in the direction of Black Ridge, not needing to be able to see through the dense canopy of the pines, spruces and firs to see it. He could see it in his mind. Could always see it.
Home.
The only home he had ever really known.
Or at least could remember.
He couldn’t kill the wolf. He felt that in his soul, deep beyond the part of him that raged with a need to spill blood, to protect the females at any cost. To protect his pride.
He wouldn’t have a pride if he slaughtered the beast as he wanted.
Saint would be furious with him, and gods, he didn’t want that. That deeply buried part of him was still waiting for the male to wise up and kick him out of his pride, to realise that allowing him to join it all those decades ago, together with Maverick, had been a mistake.
Rune drew another slow, deep breath, calming his raging need to lash out at the wolf and kill it. Satisfied that he would be able to control himself, he trekked onwards, picking up the trail again. It led him towards one of the mountains, and he frowned and paused again as he found an animal track. There were hundreds of them that crossed through the forest, trails made by years of every beast that lived in the valley using them, whether that was ungulates like the white-tailed deer and moose, or predators like the cougars and bears.
This one was a popular route along one side of the valley, following the line of the mountains, and it led towards somewhere.
An old hunter’s cabin.
It was a long way from Black Ridge, just outside the pride’s territory. The thought that the wolf might be heading towards it gave him comfort, easing his fears, but also had his thoughts darkening again.
If he killed the wolf out there, by that cabin, Saint would never know.
He could lie to his alpha and tell him that the wolf had run.
Rune clenched his fists again. No. He wouldn’t lie to Saint. He would never lie to him. Saint had been good to him, had given him more than just shelter and food. He had given Rune a home. A pride.
And he took great pains to make sure that both Rune and Maverick had everything they needed, were both on their way to leading normal lives again.
So he would never lie to Saint.
He would drive the wolf away and that would be that.
His need to get rid of the wolf before it could cause hurt to the pride would be sated and he could return to the celebration before Maverick or Saint worried about him. Gods, Maverick was going to be worried sick about him. For a tough bear, Maverick had a good heart. He just couldn’t see it. Right now, having lost Rune’s trail, that heart would be filled with fear, with thoughts as dark as Rune’s had been over the last few miles.
Rune was going to have to apologise to him when he returned to the Ridge.
And maybe take a few punches.
Maverick had a bad tendency to do his talking with his fists.
Rune eased to a crouch beside the trail and touched the various paw prints that had been left in the dirt, experience allowing him to pick out even the barest trace of a mark. The scuff of claws was enough to tell him which breed of animal had used the track in the last day, and he easily picked out the tell-tale sign of a wolf shifter.
The grooves dug into the dirt by claws were unmistakably wolf, but the print was too large to be that of the animal variety. Wolf shifters were larger than their animal counterparts. The difference was only the matter of around one hundred pounds, but it was noticeable.
Rune teased some of the dirt in the print loose, brought it to his nose and sniffed it. Definitely wolf. Definitely shifter. The scent had a manufactured note to it, one that reeked of perfume or cologne. One that riled him for some reason, had his mood taking a sharp dark turn and his fangs dropping.
He stood and followed the tracks, picking up pace again as his focus locked onto the distinct shape and size of the paw prints. Everything else fell away, nothing else mattering to him in that moment. He didn’t care about the cougar prints that crossed the path or the distant grunt of a moose. Didn’t care as smaller nocturnal creatures skittered about the forest floor in search of food or the birds in the trees watched him as he passed.
He only cared about the wolf.
About finding it and driving it away.
Or killing it.
Gods, he wanted to kill the owner of that scent. He wanted to rip them apart with his bare hands. He wanted to make them pay for crossing into his territory, for daring to come near his pride.
He tamped down that need, wrestled with himself and somehow found the strength to deny the need to kill.
A rapid heartbeat reached his ears and he slowed to a jog and then a walk, his senses reaching out into the forest around him and instantly narrowing as soon as he detected the owner of that trembling heart.
That fearful heart.
Rune eased through the darkness like a shadow, slowly closing the distance between him and the wolf, his eyebrows knitting hard as he focused on it. It was in distress. Why? Because it knew he was coming?
The scent of fear hung heavily in the air, but couldn’t quite mask the other smell he detected as he closed in on the wolf.
Blood.
Rune steadied himself, breathing deeply to get oxygen into his muscles, to prepare his body for a potential fight to the death—a fight he would win.
As soon as he felt ready, he shifted a step to his right, emerging from behind the thick trunk of a lodgepole pine.
Only he wasn’t prepared for the sleek black wolf he spotted just feet in front of him.
A female.
She desperately tried to bite at something, twisting around towards her hind leg, and snarled as she wrestled with it.
Rune wanted to snarl too when he shifted his focus there and saw why she was scared and why he smelled blood. The wire of a snare wrapped tightly around her right leg and cut into her dark fur. A hunter’s trap.
He stepped out of the shadows.
She froze, amber eyes lifting to him.
She panted hard as she stared across the narrow span of forest floor to him.
Rune caught the pain in her eyes, and the fear too. He looked at the snare that held her at his mercy, bared his fangs at the evil device as it hit him that she knew she couldn’t shift back into her human form and she was desperately holding on to her animal one.
If she shifted, the wire would cut into her ankle as it thickened. At the very least, it would slice deeply into her flesh. If she wasn’t as lucky, it would break the bone.
Rune met her gaze again.
Determined one thing about her, something that resonated with him.
She was a fighter.
She had to be, because usually pain caused their kind to shift back into their human forms. The fact she was still in her wolf form revealed the depth of her fortitude and how desperate she was not to hurt herself.
He stared at her in silence, debating whether to finish her off, but as she continued to gaze up at him, he found he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had a chance to kill a wolf, and he couldn’t.