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CHAPTER FIVE

"HE WANTS TO TRANSFER PACKS?"

No matter how many times I said those words, I still couldn’t quite believe that hy Lucas had come all the way to the Wayfarer, a place that must have felt like enen toand bloody, beaten within an inch of his life and unable to Shift, he’d lih the forest and around God kne ht have been spotted and shot--and he’d done all of that in the single-

Me

They say you help people Calluled to keep my head up under the memory of Lucas’s words and the hope I’d seen in his otherwise dead eyes I didn’t want to be anyone’s last hope any end: the Little Hu," Chase said slowly,with Lucas, I’d retreated to the forest to process his request Chase had been waiting forthat had happened passed between us with a single touch Devon and Lake had followed on my heels, and now, there ere, the four of us I breathed in deeply throughmyself that, alpha or not, I wasn’t in this alone

"People do transfer packs," Devon said slowly "It’s a coe? Please, Dev This isn’t Catcher in the Rye Pack transfers happen when a wolf gets exiled from one pack and picked up by another, or after someone’s been peripheral for years That’s how it happened when Mitch left Calluo when Shay transferred to Snake Bend That’s hoorks It’s nature’s way of shaking up the gene pool--and it doesn’t happen like this"

I wasn’t telling Devon anything he didn’t know, but in a show of grace, he didn’t call n that he kne unco at me like I was different fro alpha was one thing with , and ere family, and I would have died for any of them, no questions asked I needed to protect them, more than I needed water or air or any kind of human connection

But this?

Lucas wasn’t a member of our pack I didn’t know him, didn’t love him, couldn’t see inside his mind or feel his emotions as my own I knew from experience--first with Callum’s pack and later with the Rabid--that I had the ability to rewire pack-bonds, breaking another alpha’s hold over a wolf and psychically instatingthe powers that be in our world would let et aith a second tiiving as Callum had been when I’d claimed Devon, Lake, and Chase

The sa our ranks for child brides forbadewith Lucas’s ties to Shay’s pack I couldn’t just welcome him with open ar you on ree," I said slowly, realizing even as I did that Iover or pigs taking flight "For Lucas to transfer froree"

Anything less could start a war--or worse, give the other alphas, Shay included, the justification they needed to take ashi away, made me want to vomit

But I couldn’t risk my pack’s safety for his

--Maddy--

The part of , and I wondered how long she’d debated before joining the four of us in the woods She was the newest recruit to our inner circle, and even though ere Pack, even though thatother people, to believing that they could care about her the e did

Being raised by a psychopath will do that to you

"Hey, Mads" Devon greeted her with a s I did: to protect Maddy, to s or two, she belonged Only this time, thoseMaddywas fine, that ould take care of this, that she didn’t need to worry about Snake Bend or Shay or the battered boy in Cabin 13 But doing that would put up a wall between her and the rest of us It would be saying that Maddy eak or broken, that because she’d been a victi else