War of Hearts(13)

*



“Thank you for allowing us to join you tonight,” Peter Canid said as they walked through the Coach House, heading toward the kitchen and back door.

Conall glanced over his shoulder at Canid, his daughter Sienna, and her brother Richard, whom Conall had met a few days ago. The betrothal agreement still wasn’t signed. They had decided to wait until Conall returned unscathed from his hunt. Upon his return, they would sign the agreement and hopefully marry within the next few months, joining their two packs in a powerful alliance.

Between preparation for the hunt and his responsibilities to his businesses, Conall had no time to spend with Sienna. They’d spoken little. Not that it mattered. Once they married, they’d have plenty of time for that.

As for tonight, he felt it only right to ask the Canids to join the pack run. They were to be family after all. His gaze brushed over Richard Canid before turning his attention forward. Not that it particularly pleased him to add Sienna’s brother to his list of familial responsibilities. The wolf was arrogant and spoiled.

“Yeah, it’ll be cute to see such a small pack running together,” Richard sneered.

Case in point.

The little fucker thought he was better than them.

“Small pack they may be,” Peter said, a warning in his words, “but Pack MacLennan are one of the oldest packs in the world. You’re about to experience something extraordinary, son.”

There was a genuine appreciation in Canid’s voice that pleased Conall. The man’s respect for him was honest and true. Conall couldn’t ask for more than that from a father-in-law and ally.

Leading them outside, they faced a good percentage of Pack MacLennan—all of those who lived on Loch Torridon and even a few who had returned home from the city for this special event on the last night of the full moon.

Torridon Coach House sat on the water, surrounded by towering trees. Those trees acted like a trail from the land to the rear of the house, up the hill, interrupted by the single-track road, and then up and up again. Eventually the trees dispersed, baring the rugged moss-and grass-covered rock of the vast mountain peaks.

Conall stood, watching his clan who had crowded in to run with him.

“You may join the pack.” Conall gestured to his people.

Peter and Sienna bowed their heads respectfully and strode toward the others, while Richard walked away without looking at him. He felt tension emanate from his pack members and knew he was not alone in his dislike for the wolf. Perhaps he’d teach him who was alpha here once the shift began.

The tiny villages along the coast of their loch, and the mountains beyond, were scoured for any sign of human activity. Thankfully, they found a climber in trouble and had him airlifted to the hospital in Inverness.

Otherwise they detected no other humans.

Which meant they could run in their true forms.

A werewolf needed to unleash their wolf and the moon seemed to agree. The legends were true. They had no choice but to turn under the full moon. Conall imagined that inconvenient for some, but here the pack had the privacy they needed to turn. Staying in human form all the time was a kind of imprisonment, anyway. When they turned on a full moon, they usually ran and hunted the mountains separately or in small groups. Mostly they did this unscathed as Conall owned not just the land around the loch but the entire estate beyond.

However, it took a lot of coordinated effort to make sure their small drop of earth was safe to run as a pack, and so pack runs were few and far between. It was one thing for a human here and there to witness the presence of a wolf—an animal extinct from Britain for centuries—but it was quite another for a human to witness over a hundred running together.

However, their alpha, their chief, was leaving for dangers unknown and the pack had requested a run of solidarity, hoping their combined energies would imbue him with their strength and support.

Conall would not say no to that.

He sighed and strolled over to where Callie sat in her wheelchair. After Ashforth dropped his bomb, Conall and James had gone to Callie to break the news. The hope that bloomed in her eyes was hard to see. That hope meant he could not fail.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, hands on his hips.

Callie gazed up at him with the same pale gray eyes his mother had also given to him. James stood by her side. As always. “I can witness this now, knowing I’ll get to run soon.”

No, he would not fail.

A few months ago, his little sister complained about fatigue and pain in her lower spine. Conall had asked her to go to Inverness to see their pack doctor, Dr. Brianna MacRae, but she’d refused.

Until the first time she couldn’t shift.

Her body just refused to give in to her wolf, even on a full moon. That’s when she finally allowed him to drive her to the city where after several tests, Brianna announced Callie had what wolves commonly referred to as apogee. Brianna knew of it but hadn’t ever seen a case before because it was so rare in wolves. Just like the human disease cancer, it was an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in the body. In Callie’s case, it was a malignant tumor on her spine.

Unlike cancer, there was no way to beat apogee, and the cases were so few, little funding had gone into developing treatment. Conall had given money to Brianna to share her research with a wolf in Sweden who was already studying the disease, but Callie would be long gone before they made any breakthroughs.