Greykin Mountain

| 72 | To Silverlake City

          This was his body—his ethos. And he was in control.

          Something landed in the snow, and a weight was lifted from his neck.

          Jackson opened his eyes, and when he saw the amulet lying at his paws, his tense body began to relax.

          "Rachel put this in your pack," Damon said, and then picked the amulet up with his teeth.

          While he watched Damon and Rachel put the amulet in the bags she was carrying, Jackson slowly calmed down. His racing heart slowed, and the bloody snow no longer compelled him near it.

          "Dude," came Julian's voice.

          Jackson turned his head and gawped at them.

          "That was...that was just...oh man," they babbled with a wide grin on their face.

          But Jackson couldn't match their energy right now. While Julian obviously felt excited about what everyone had just witnessed, Jackson felt horrified. The power he felt...the fury. It could have consumed him if he'd given in, and he never wanted to feel it again.

          "We're moving out," Damon called, and then made his way over to Jackson. When he reached him, he quietly asked, "Are you okay?"

          Jackson nodded. "Yeah. I just...I'm okay." There wasn't time for him to stand around and tell Damon what that amulet made him feel. They had to get far away from there before more of Kane's wolves turned up.

          "Okay," the Alpha said with a nod. "Walk up front with me."

          He walked with Damon, and the pack followed closely behind, leaving the mangled corpses of Kane's Epsilons to whoever or whatever discovered them first.

⥗ ❅ ⥖

          The pack walked for hours. When they finally stopped, the moon was descending, and the sky was getting lighter. They were still in the middle of the woods, though, and they hadn't been able to find somewhere to set up camp. Damon sent Brando and Enola ahead several times, but whenever they came back, it was with the same news that there were no caves or glades or abandoned animal dens—there was nothing.

          "What are we going to do?" Jackson quietly asked Damon; he couldn't ignore the angst pooling in his gut anymore.

          "I don't know," the Alpha replied, looking around. "We might just have to stop somewhere around here—use the cover of the trees."

          "There's gotta be a river or something around here," Julian called.

          "Wait," Alastor said.

          Everyone kept walking but glanced over at him.

          "Over there," he said with a nod.

          Jackson turned his attention to where he'd nodded and set his eyes on an abandoned, rusted car. It looked like it crashed into the tree it was hugging a long time ago; the doors were missing, as were the tires, so it had obviously been looted long ago, too.

          "It's better than nothing, right chief?" Tokala asked Damon.

          The Alpha nodded. "Yeah, it'll do for one day. Let's go."

          They all followed Damon over to the car, and once they reached it, they all slumped down and sighed deeply—it was the first rest they'd had since leaving the ruin.