Rogue Rage

Chapter 12

Hidden in the crook of a tree, I looked around desperately. This was where I had left him. I was sure of it. I knew this part of the forest. Did he leave me? The thought sent a jolt of fear through me. My hands trembled as I tried to tighten the leather belt holding up my pants. The mud had made my clothing heavier and harder to run in. I clenched my hands together as tightly as I could.

Calm down and think. He could have moved. Maybe wolves spread out to cut Keith off, and Samuel had to hide.

I looked around. There should not have been any more watchmen nearby, but I was not about to leave the shadows. I did not know Samuel any better than I knew the people in Alpha Gabriel’s pack, but I was fairly sure he would not leave me to fend for myself. I looked up. I would have to climb the trees and move from branch to branch. That was my only option. I started scaling the tree I had been leaning against. Once I found my footing on a stable branch, I gasped. A tall, cloaked figure stood in the middle of it.

I steadied my breathing before I dared speak. “Um—” She raised one pale finger to her lips, and the sound died in my throat. The forest seemed to obey her silence. Even the leaves stilled around us, though the wind moved through the higher branches like a distant tide. In the darkness, I could tell she was female, but there was something about her that did not belong to ordinary night. The shadows bent around her cloak instead of swallowing it. She pointed toward the trees rustling in the distance, and for one impossible second, the direction she indicated shimmered faintly, as if moonlight had gathered there just to show me the way.

“Go there,” she whispered. Her voice was soft, but it carried through the branches like a bell struck beneath water. “He is looking for you.” The disturbed trees stood in the direction Samuel and I had come from. Was he being attacked there? Was he hurt? The thought sent cold fear through me. I would be useless in a fight, but the way she said it made the choice feel less like a warning and more like a thread of fate being placed into my hands.

Still, I had no idea who she was or where she was truly sending me. Nothing in Damian’s world came without a hook buried somewhere beneath the kindness. “Who are you?” I whispered.

She lifted her head, and the darkness changed. Her eyes were a vivid, impossible blue, glowing softly as if starlight had been trapped behind them. The light did not hurt to look at. It spread gently over the bark, silvering the branch beneath her feet and turning the edges of her cloak to frost. Her face was pale and flawless, not lifeless like stone, but luminous like moonlit porcelain. Strands of her hair lifted in the wind without tangling, wild and weightless, moving as though the night itself was combing through it. She was beautiful in a way that felt ancient, the kind of beauty that made legends seem less like stories and more like things people had survived.

“Trust is hard for you,” she said, nodding once, as if she could see every scar that had taught me not to. “For good reason.” She reached out and placed her hand over my heart. Her touch was cool, but not cold, and something quiet bloomed beneath my ribs—like a single white flower opening in soil that had never known spring. “Trust in me, and he may yet be saved.”

She lifted her hand, and the very essence of my soul felt its absence. She turned away with impossible grace. “Wait,” I called, with an urgency I had never felt before. I was not completely sure what I wanted to say. All I knew was that I wanted to recapture her attention.

“If you wait any longer, you’ll miss your chance to save anyone.” She stretched out her hand in the same direction. “You’ll make it there without trouble.”

Her dismissal hurt in a way I didn’t know how to explain. It wasn’t like being abandoned. It was more like hearing the first note of a song and having it stop before I could learn the words. I had never prayed, not really, and I had never trusted anything I couldn’t hold in both hands, but standing there with her light still fading from my skin, I understood why people believed. I understood how someone could kneel, not because they were weak, but because something too beautiful and too powerful had finally made them want to. Every part of me wanted to stay with her, to ask who she was, to ask why my chest felt open and aching, to ask if this was what faith felt like when it found someone who had never known how to look for it.

For the first time in my life, I put all my trust in someone. I moved to the next branch effortlessly. Wanting to confirm what I had seen, I looked back, but she was already gone. I continued on, keeping a watchful eye out for any of Damian’s followers.

The snap of jaws reached my ears, and the scent of blood hit my nose. Fear twisted my stomach. I had never been this close to a real fight—not until these past few days. I was used to hiding in shadows, being overlooked, and reporting scraps of harmless information. Now the truth of where I stood, and what I had stepped into, pressed in on me.

As I neared the violence, the shapes broke apart through the trees—two wolves, nothing more than flashes of fur, teeth, and blood in the dark. One was Samuel. The other was Maddock. For a breath, I couldn’t make sense of it. Then the pieces slid together with a cold, terrible clarity. Maddock must have chased Keith this far and found Samuel waiting in the shadows. To him, it would have looked obvious. Samuel standing there. Keith running. Maddock had not found the truth—only enough of it to believe the worst.

I could tell that Samuel was holding back. He was evading and attempting to pin more than actually fighting. s**t, what do I do? Going down there was suicide.

“Hey!” I called, just loud enough for them to hear without carrying through the trees. Neither wolf stopped. I scanned the branches around me, grabbed the one beneath my hand, and snapped it free. With both hands, I hurled it down. It struck Maddock in the neck, breaking his focus long enough for Samuel to move. In a blur of dark fur and muscle, Samuel drove him to the ground and pinned him there. Maddock still snarled and snapped beneath him, but Samuel held firm. I climbed down as quickly as I dared and approached them.

“Maddock, stop!” I whisper-yelled. “You’re going to draw attention this way!” Maddock’s snout turned toward me, and he inhaled. When he seemed less homicidal, Samuel released him. Maddock glared at Samuel before shifting.

“Why are you covered in mud?!” His anger had eased, but it had not vanished. I still couldn’t tell whether he was safe, so I took a careful step back.