Chapter 59: Chapter 59

Atticus

“Two?”

“Two of our wolves?”

The chorus rose quickly, spreading through his pack like wildfire. Everywhere Atticus looked people were turning to their friends and family, their neighbours, ensuring that everyone they’d seen moments before was still beside them.

But it was Alvaro’s words that cut through the crowd noise. “Calling off the attack?” he asked, stepping to the front of the amassed wolves. “After all we have been through the get to this point?”

How dare his father make him look a fool in front of his pack?

Atticus held up a single hand. In an instant, silence swelled.

“Alpha? Which two?” asked Siras.

Everyone nodded; some whispered, “Who’s missing?” to those stood near them.

Atticus inhaled slowly, filling his lungs to such an extent that his chest puffed out. He relished in the stretch, focusing on it rather than the sea of eyes watching his every move. He had never felt the pressure to lead, and to lead well, so keenly as he did in that moment.

“The Warrior Wolf, Maveln Cole… and his daughter, Lily.” Atticus swallowed hard. Even saying her name made his chest ache with longing.

He hadn’t failed her. Not yet.

A confused murmur rose from the crowd. Atticus blocked it out, blocked them all out. He could not let them see just how broken his poor, battered heart was. He looped a fresh length of rope around it, tightened it once, twice, three times, and then faced his pack anew.

“Excuse me, Alpha,” said a voice that should not have been. “I’m right here.”

Maveln stepped out of the crowd, his eyes – her eyes – squinted in confusion. Atticus shook himself. This was impossible.

“Maveln?” Atticus closed in on him, green eyes piercing through the haze of the dawn. His own gaze was marred by disbelief: Maveln was stood before him, as real as any of the other wolves in his pack. Sunlight glinted off his forehead; Maveln raised a hand to block the glare from his vision.

Atticus grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“How can this be?” he said, his voice so low it almost sounded like a growl.

“I – I don’t know, Alpha.”

Atticus couldn’t look at him. Instead, he turned to Marley. Fury clouded his vision, making the yellow dawn turn red. His whole pack was watching his carefully constructed façade of togetherness, of innate, endless power, crumble. He had to regain control.

“The information you brought me was wrong,” he said, calmly, simply. He let his face say what words could not. Atticus shifted his muscles into a well-practiced expression, one designed to instil bone-chilling fear into whomever was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it. His eyes, usually alight with passion, went cold. His upper lip pulled back from his teeth, and his jaw clenched.

Marley quivered before him. “I’m sorry, Alpha.”

“Your apology means nothing to me. Tell me why.”

“I just repeated the information the scout told me, I–“

“Enough.”

“Atticus–“ Alvaro tried.

His son turned to him with venom in his glare. “You are not the Alpha anymore, Father. You do not dictate what I do, how I behave.”

Atticus could feel his world tumbling down around him. Was there any truth to what the scout had said? Should he take back his plan and march on to Sea Pine? Would his wolves still follow him after this? Had Lily been taken, after all?

He needed answers. He needed clarity. He needed certainty.

“Bring me the scout,” he said, barely glancing at Marley as he barked his orders. His head swirled with a myriad of possibilities. Marley was the least of his concerns – so long as he did as he was told. “I want to hear it from the source.”

* * *

The scout, Tristin, stared up at his Alpha helplessly. “It was Maveln,” he said, for the hundredth time. As he spoke, he turned to look at Lily’s father. “I saw you,” he added, the sincerity burning in his gaze making Atticus question his current reality even more.

“I don’t see how,” muttered Maveln, scrubbing a hand across his stubble-covered jaw. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Was Maveln the liar? Had he helped Lily to escape Elijah’s crutches – by giving her to another, stronger, pack? Atticus shook his head. Surely not. Maveln was, at heart, a coward of a Warrior Wolf. He was ferocious in battle, but only because he feared Atticus, and Alvaro before him, as his Alpha. It suited Atticus, and it also meant that Maveln was unlikely to double-cross him – even to help his own daughter.

“Do you have a twin?” blurted Tristin. His huge brown eyes glanced from Atticus, to Maveln, to Marley, and back again. His fingers twitched at his sides, though his arms hung unnaturally still.

“No,” said Maveln slowly. “I do not.” He bit his lip before speaking again. “You saw Lily? Truly?”

The hope that lit his eyes would have been heart breaking – to someone, anyone, else. It made Atticus’s pulse throb loudly in his ears. Maveln had a right to be broken by Lily’s disappearance. Of course, he did too… except a tiny, traitorous part of his mind smirked at him, and reminded him that he did not.

“I did. I swear it.” Tristin picked at the skin around his fingernails. “Just as I swear that I saw you. Unless I was mistaken in some way…” He shook his head. “No. I know what I saw, and I stand by it.”

“I want to find her.” Maveln met Atticus’s gaze with steely eyes, lit from within by Lily’s fire. “I don’t care if it’s a rouse. I don’t care that I’m somehow in two places at once.” He heaved out a breath. “All I care about is Lily.”

That was a sentiment Atticus could get behind. Sharing a rare moment of solace, Atticus nodded. “I care about her, too,” he admitted, so quietly he could hardly hear himself.

Maveln offered him a tight smile. “I know you do.” Marley and Tristin both looked away.

“Then we find her,” said Atticus. “Tristin.” He turned back to the scout. “Are there others that could vouch for your claim? Or any with more information?”

“I’m sorry, Alpha. I don’t know.”

“Then tell me everything you do.”

* * *

The forest was closing in on them.

Night had fallen, swift as a bird on the horizon. Atticus rested a heavy hand on the dagger at his side. He could barely make out the ground a foot ahead of him, and with every step further into the trees it became harder to pick out the wolves that had volunteered to come with him.

Atticus had wanted to leave his father behind. Unfortunately, Alvaro had insisted. He didn’t trust Atticus – a fact that stung every time he saw the blurred shape of his father moving soundlessly through the pine forest.

Atticus had had a plan. His father, ideally, would have remained with the majority of the pack. They would wait for his return, but they would have their old Alpha to guide them should any unprecedented attacks come their way. The full moon was nearly upon them, and Red Ripper were close. Sea Pine surely knew of their approach.

But Alvaro had insisted. As had Ralphin, though Atticus had managed to convince Trove, his Gamma, that one of them must remain with the pack. Maveln flanked him, and Marley brought up the rear on his other side. Tristin was a few paces ahead, picking out a path from memory. Even with such a small group it was becoming increasingly difficult to manoeuvre and communicate in the forest.

Atticus paused, listening. Something was wrong. The air around him felt… off. Like a house long left unused, he expected the space between the trees to feel desolate, empty, devoid of anything other than trees with old memories. It carried a similar quality, but the air had been stirred – as though another presence was with them, invisible to the eye and silent to the ear. Atticus could feel them with a sense that he did not understand, though there was no evidence in the natural world that anyone else existed.

The group came to an uneasy halt around him. A hand grabbed him around the bicep and squeezed.

“Atticus,” Alvaro hissed. “I need to speak to you.”

Atticus could just make out his features in the dark. He made sure to glare at his father’s green eyes, so similar physically and yet so different within to his own.

“Fine.” Atticus yanked his arm back. “Away from the others.”

“Fine,” Alvaro parroted, his voice slow and laden with exhaustion. Atticus rolled his eyes. What a martyr.

They found their way to a small clearing, large enough for the two of them to fit and little else. Atticus was bristling with furious energy by the time they stopped; he clenched and unclenched his fists, needing something to do with his hands in the hope that it would stop him from hitting his own father.

The ruined mate bond had turned him into someone he hardly recognised. Atticus took a deep breath.

“What is it, Father?”

Alvaro sighed and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. “We’re chasing a dream, Att. Tristin said he saw Maveln with Lily, and yet Maveln is here, with us. This is blind hope, Son.”

“You didn’t hear him.” Atticus cracked his knuckles, one after the other. He focused on each individual joint, on the pressure, on the release. “He was certain. Red Ripper have magic – they could have conjured an image of Maveln to get Lily to go with them.”

Atticus looked him deep in the eyes. Atticus felt as though he was searching for something long since lost within his gaze. “You’ve said it yourself,” his father said eventually. “They have magic. There is no telling what Tristin really saw.”

“Why don’t you want to support me?” Atticus felt his temper burning a hole in his chest. “You were Alpha once. You understand the responsibility, the weight, that comes with everything I do. I need Lily back. Surely you see that.”

“I do, Att. The mate bond is a complex thing – nobody really understands it. Regardless, I do agree that you need to see Lily, in the flesh. You are destined – for better or for worse.”

“For worse?” Disbelief coloured his tone. Unable to stop himself, Atticus raised his voice. “How dare you? You have seen me these past months.”

“I have.” Alvaro took a half-step towards his son. “And I worry for you, Att, terribly so. If this leads to nothing–“

“You continue to lack faith in me!” Atticus roared.

Roosting birds shot into the night sky. The forest trembled around him, leaves curling in on themselves and trunks arching away from his explosion of anguish, pain, and torment. His anger was the throttling force of tears, choking him, stealing his breath, and it enveloped the space around them.

Silence fell. Deadly silence, the kind that only comes before something terrible. Atticus swallowed hard. His father stared at him, and he stared back.

Behind them, a twig cracked underfoot. They’d left the others far behind – in the opposite direction. The animals had fled at the sound of his voice. Hope and fear tumbled over one another in his heart.

Holding his breath, Atticus turned.