“That is …，” Randall said, and retched again. “Useful, but horrible.”
“I think that sums me up in a nutshell,” Bryce said.
Randall laughed, vomited again, then wiped his mouth and stood. “You’re not horrible, Bryce. Not by a long shot.”
“I guess. But this is,” she said, and gestured up at the structure before them. At the swirling mists.
A massive arch of clear quartz rose forty feet into the air, its uppermost part nearly hidden by the drifting mist. They could see straight through the archway, though, and nothing lay within it except what could only be described as a ripple in the world. Between worlds. And more mist on its other side.
“The Asteri must have built the archway around the Rift to try to contain it,” Bryce said. “Or try to control it, I guess.”
“I’ll say this once, and that’s it,” Randall said. Behind him, closing in, Hunt and Ember approached from above. “But is opening the Rift … the best idea?”
Bryce blew out a long, hot breath that faded into the mists wafting past. “No. But it’s the only idea I have.”
* * *
There wasn’t one black ribbon of mourning in the Den. No keening dirges offered up to Cthona, beseeching the goddess to guide the newly dead. In fact, somewhere in the compound, a stereo was blasting a thumping dance beat.
Trust Sabine to proceed as if nothing had changed. As if an atrocity hadn’t occurred in a neighboring district.
At this time of year, it was tradition for many of the Den families to scatter into the countryside to enjoy the changing of the leaves and the crisp autumn mountains, so only a skeleton crew of packs remained. Ithan knew which ones would be there—just as he knew that only Perry Ravenscroft, the Black Rose’s Omega and Amelie’s little sister, would be on guard duty at the gates.
A bronze rendering of the Embrace—the sun sinking or rising out of two mountains—was displayed in the window of the guard station. And it was because he knew Perry so well that he understood that this small decoration was her way of telling the city that there were some in the Den who mourned, who were praying to Cthona to comfort the dead.
Perry’s large emerald eyes widened at the sight of Ithan as he prowled up to the guard booth. To her, it must have seemed like he’d materialized out of thin air. In fact, his stealth was courtesy of his new speed and preternatural quiet—furthered by the fact that he’d traveled through the sewers, needing to remain out of sight until the last possible minute.
Perry lunged for the radio on the desk, long brown hair flashing in the afternoon sunlight, but Ithan held up a hand. She paused.
“I need to talk,” he said through the glass.
Those green eyes scanned his face, then drifted to a spot over his shoulder, to the sword he carried. Perry stared at him—then opened the door to the booth. Her cinnamon-and-strawberry scent hit him a heartbeat later.
This close, he could count the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The pale skin beneath them seemed to blanch further as she processed what he’d said.
“Sabine’s in a meeting—”
“Not Sabine. I need to talk to everyone else.” Ithan pushed, “You were the only one who checked in to see if I was alive after … everything.” She’d texted him occasionally—not much, but with Amelie as her Alpha and sister, he knew she didn’t dare risk more communication than that. “Please, Perry. Just let me into the courtyard.”
“Tell me what you want to talk to us about, and I’ll consider it.” Even as Omega, the lowest of the Black Rose Pack, she didn’t back down.
It was for that courage alone that Ithan told her his secret first. “A new future for the wolves.”
* * *
Ithan knew it was due to how loved and trusted Perry was within the Den that so many wolves arrived in the courtyard quickly, as soon as her message went out about a last-minute announcement.
He kept to the shadows of the pillars under the building’s north wing, watching the people he’d counted as friends, almost family, congregate in the grassy space. The red and gold trees of the small park behind them swayed in the crisp autumn breeze, the wind luckily keeping his scent hidden from the wolves.
When enough of a crowd had assembled—a hundred wolves, or so—Perry stepped out onto the few steps in front of the building doors and said, “So, uh … almost everyone’s here.”
People smiled at her, bemused yet indulgent. It’d always been that way for Perry, the resident artist of the Den, who at age four had painted her room every color of the rainbow despite her parents’ order to pick one hue.