The North

Chapter 15

He blushed and shifted awkwardly on his feet, looking out of the window to avoid our eyes. "You reached maturity, and your scent changed, sweetened more. Your mother put it down to you simply being ready to take a mate. It wasn't until the Blood Drinkers appeared that I began to think otherwise. Your Uncle and I began to notice a strange pattern in the creatures coming from the South."

A lump formed in my throat, threatening to stop my ability to breath. He told this story as if it was one of the old ones, with description and emotion perfect for capturing an audience. And captured Alpha Hati was. Arms braced on his thighs, hands clasped together, he watched my father with the intensity of a hawk siting a mouse. He wanted to know how this story ended. With evermore growing certainty, I did not.

"In areas we frequented, if your uncle or I came across the scent of a Blood Drinker, it was sure to have made to follow you before either getting distracted or chased off. Not that we were sure it was you and not the pack as a whole they were interested in, for you were often with Mànas and Fionnlagh as well. Then the creatures started to grow bolder, more focussed on the hunt. Aonghas and I began to suspect. . ." Dark eyes became pained, the creases at the corner deepening. "It wasn't confirmed until you and Mànas went running down by the sand dunes-"

"No." Biting the word off, panic began to rise within me as my own mind put the puzzle pieces together.

I'd cut my paw on brambles on our way there, it would have left such an easy path to follow.

My blood had been on the trail Yousuf had been following to get here, and he'd been killed by one of them. Uncle Aonghas had died defending us from one who had been stalking us for a full two days waiting to strike. I'd been hunting in the meadow when it appeared out of the thicket, Aonghas had saved me and killed it but at the cost of his own life. And before all of that, Mànas and I had been running in the dunes. . .

Is it you that smells so good? Not like the other wolves I've had.

Those had been the Blood Drinker's words on the road. Alpha Hati himself had said he wasn't sure it was talking about him. He'd also said he'd never heard of their kind actively hunting wolves, that it was humans they fed from and wolves were simply collateral for getting in the way.

A strangled cry left my lips, the weight of grief and guilt crushing my ribs so tight it hurt. My heart too felt as if someone punched through my chest to try and wrench it out. All the while, Alpha Hati watched, silent as a rock.

"Tell me you're lying," I begged, thumping my hand against the bed. "I don't believe you. Don't say it."

"I wish I could, a ghràidh." Kneeling at my bedside, Father implored me to listen. "I don't know how or why, but there is something about your blood that enraptures the Blood Drinks, and once they have your scent, they become determined to find you; unless something else takes their fancy on the trail."

My fault. It was all my fault.

Fury followed grief, bubbling red hot and scorching. A broken sound ripped from my lips as I threw out all the emotions building. "How could you keep this from me? How could you have let me near any of you if this is true? How can you look at me?"

"You did nothing wrong, why would I look at you any different," he tried to sooth, but I wasn't ready to hear, covering my face with my hands in the hopes darkness would sooth the part of me wanting to rip free of my own skin.

It took many deep breaths before I was certain I wasn't going to shift to fur, focussing on the deep rumble that I thought was the sound of blood rushing past my ears but was coming from the quiet male who was respecting this moment enough not to become between a father and his pup.