The night was sill, calm, the faint shimmer of the moon dim in the sky as the pitch of night faded with the coming dawn. It was still difficult to clearly see any more than the faint outlines of the rolling hills around the hollow where the farm buildings nestled, and the dark shadow standing still as death beside the back door was indiscernible from the night.
Mac waited beside the dark gape of the doorway, motionless, his entire focus directing and channelling his wolves in the almost silent, furious battle going on inside the farm complex. One of the juniors behind him was shuddering slightly in tension, and Mac noted the lapse with the corner of here-and-now awareness that never entirely tuned out.
Steady
, he shot the order backward silently.
Finally, the awaited image flashed from Debbie, and Mac refocused on the black opening, poised. He seized and lifted the figure that came streaking out of the doorway before it had a chance to see him, then allowed the lycan to scream, as had most of his predecessors, before he silenced him and threw him to the crew behind. The alpha turned silently and slipped off around the building to the kitchen window, his shadows following.
The teeming seethe of images and cries in his mind were whirling, melding, dancing in their ceaseless pattern and he could feel his internal concentration balanced, braced against the melee, pulling in harmony on every fibre of his being to hold steady and sustain his calm, his control and clarity.
Mac directed Graeme over to the front door and himself took down the three lycans who tried to force a breakout through the kitchen, before moving on toward the garage, tightening the pattern of Mackeld warriors fighting inside to force the invaders back down to the ground floor. The mental images conveyed from his pack were melding into a seamless stream - Tzo's troop were making a stand, regrouping in the passageway between the living room and the garage as they didn't dare to break out of the building, knowing that the Mackeld was waiting somewhere in the dark outside.
The had heard what had happened to their packmates when they had attempted to run.
Mac halted his fighters while he conveyed the idea of yielding to the invaders, and got a silent
Fuck You
in response. Tzo was notoriously not at all lenient on the families of warriors who didn't fight to their last breath; there was no joy in living if your family died for it. Tzo wolves were allowed to retreat but not to surrender
.
Live to kill his people another day? -- fuck that
. Mac streaked through the garage and led the four poised Mackeld warriors in an abrupt charge down on the remaining eleven enemies braced in the passageway. As he leapt into the melee he could feel the burn of Will and Karl and Rebecca's exasperated fury in his mind, but he ignored the silent censure from his seconds. He had kept mainly out of the battle this far, but he was damned if he was going to send his wolves in against that formation while he hung back. So what if Tzo's fighters noticed that his skin was a bit grey, his frame gaunt, and his reflexes fractionally less fast than they should be. They wouldn't have time to convey anything back to their Alpha- he had the last bunch of them cornered now and was positively
enjoying
holding their entire focus.
The weak, early morning sun was gleaming on the slate roof of the old farmhouse by the time it had all quietened down. Will was rapidly cleaning and stitching closed a deep gash on Mac's left shoulder, grumbling to himself under his breath while his patient tilted back his stool and leaned tiredly on the mellow pine boards of the kitchen wall. Mac could feel his battle focus gently relaxing, the creeping guilt that always rose afterwards beginning to colour his mind. He tensed slightly as the pounding in his head from holding focus for so long began to bore into his skull, intensifying as he silently acknowledged and disengaged from each pack member in turn, assessing their wellbeing with each brief exchange, hiding his own. Yes, his responses were actually way too slow -- damned silver. He cracked open an eye.
The warm pine kitchen was a shambles, the splintered pieces of the smashed chairs and cupboards had been scraped messily into a corner to make space for the wounded, and the drying blood on the floor was mixed with flour, broken eggs, spilt wine and shards of glass. His wounded wolves were spaced around the walls, the least badly hurt standing quietly, while others occupied the remaining chairs or the long stone settle beside the doorway opposite him. Each was having pieces of shrapnel extracted, or bark antiseptic carefully coated onto various wounds, before the skin closed over and any contamination began to fester. Most were back in human form, slowing their bodies' healing in order to give the pack-mates tending to them more time to work.
However, three of the wounded were still lycan, leftover tension from the battle or the pain of their injuries not allowing them to relax enough to make the shift. Mac centred himself and conveyed to each of the three, the calm he had mastered over the years leaching into them with the quiet words he sent, settling them, and they in turn slowly shimmered to human, briefly meeting his gaze in thanks. He felt the wince in one of the minds he spoke to. Helen had never been in a battle before, never had to hold her focus so hard for so long, and it hurt. Many of the wolves moving quietly around the kitchen were frowning, the assorted grimaces twisting their features testimony that the
piquant,
the battle headache, was grating through their minds in the aftermath.
Then the slight shudder of an unsteady intake of pained breath drew Mac's eyes to the tableau in the centre of the room.
His cousin, Katherine Mackeld, was standing over the sturdy pine table with his sister Rebecca, tears rolling slowly down her face as they gently, silently cleaned and groomed the blood and dirt from her mate's body. The heavy lycan form seemed smaller and older in death, a quiet copy of a boisterous wolf. Katherine's youngest son had an arm around her shoulders, staring down at his father, expressionless, as his quiet, tired voice continued to describe the ambush in the middle of the night, then the ferocious retreat they'd fought while holding on for the Alpha to answer the distress call. Four of the ranch fighters had died in the failed ambush, and six more with his father Michael as they held the retreat, but they'd defended the stairway, with the non-warriors safe on the upper storey. There was quiet pride mixed with the pain in the hoarse young voice, and silence fell as he completed his report.
Mac tried to fully release his own focus, but a tenuous thread of tension held. There was nothing further he could do here. He could feel Karl out of sight, directing the rest of the crew, Mackelds from this ranch and the main Range quietly clearing up the signs of the battle throughout the rest of the complex. Damned scentless ambush -- Tzo was now using the stuff as well as the Grey, and he
had
to find out how they were masking scent. It had to be silver, there was no other block that effective. And as far as he knew, Mackeld pack was still the only target they used this weapon against. The Grey was cunning - the MacKeld-Grey feud was now so deep that the council would not credit the reports Mac had sent, and there was no point collecting any of the enemy fighters to try to prove the lack of scent again - by the time they were transported to the council centre, they would just smell of death. There was nothing he could do.
Tzo still hadn't won any major ground, yet. Mac checked all of the outer watchwolves across the Range, still uneasy. Something, somewhere was wrong, but he couldn't pinpoint it. All clear. All perfectly clear. Dammit, he was just spooked by what Gemma had told him before Michael's call.
Relax
, he ordered himself, mind skimming the whole circuit for a third time. Nothing. His smothered the tension and slowly felt his control sink, still not convinced that there was no longer the need to maintain it.
A distress call shot in with the lowering of his focus, and Mac winced at the jolt of panic rebounding in his mind at the conveyance. Will's hand gripped his uninjured shoulder hard and the doctor growled softly, "Whatever it is, you can't do any more right now, boss." The wolves in the room all glanced uneasily over at the grey, gaunt hulk of the Alpha, he could see the concern in their eyes, the fear for him. There was also a warm buzz of disbelieving, fear-tinged awe from his seconds - all that silver and their Alpha was still fighting.
Mac ignored them as he absorbed Sharon Fealman's message -- something was wrong at Marshmont. He sat up, abruptly alert. This was it. Her son James had managed to convey a panicked yelp to her hours ago, but she couldn't reach that far without Stephan to find out why, and Stephan had been in the fight at the ranch. She hadn't been able to breach Mac's battle focus to let him know. Yes, she'd conveyed to Peter but the Range second couldn't reach the cub either. It was too far.
Mac snapped his mind from the ranch kitchen, and tuned to the distant cub. As soon as he felt the Alpha contact his thoughts, James cringed with terrified apology, dropped, and rolled onto his back as shame and guilt raced through his mind, tangled with images of his pounce on Gemma, and the raging arousal still evident at the trace of her unforgettable, intoxicating scent. Mac's skin bristled tightly as his blood began to rage, while he absorbed the realisation and controlled his own arousal at the recognition of that doft.
How the hell was that possible
?
However it happened, it happened. He felt himself shift to lycan, trembling, but didn't even try to hold it, focussing on preventing the fury that washed through him from gaining mental control. Her Marsh guards must have scented it coming. Cool it. That won't help her. His skin was cold, tingling with the physical manifestation of a held-in snarl as he pulled himself back in, fighting his thoughts as they tried to tear free in rage. He'd been in battle focus since just after the call from Gemma. What if -- had someone caught his picchu? She was
human
. She couldn't withstand -- he'd torn her himself when he'd first taken her. Mac shook his head as he felt the howl rising, gritting his teeth and forcing down the rage. He focused back on the messenger.
The MacKeld cub was out of doors somewhere -- James was rolling on stubby, dry grass coated in pine needles, and Mac's mind followed the whelp's through a deluge of rapid thoughts and images. They were slinking back up the mountain to the Academy -- all three of the Mackeld trainees, illegally, and very dangerously, awol, as they'd been tracing the mating-hunt of his human for him, trying to stay out of the way of the exceedingly highly strung wolves chasing her. James' ear throbbed painfully, part of it had been torn away when they had run into one of the slower hunters; they'd bellied to him when he'd attacked, and he had let them go with a savage, snarled reprimand, before the hunter had refocused on Gemma's scent trail. Mac bristled at James' memory of the glazed, heated lust in Jerome Marsh's eyes, the growl rolling from in his throat.
Yet the cubs had still, later, circled back to trace Gemma's scent down to the stench of the main road, even more careful to remain well out of the way of the dangerous pack of hunters. They
liked
the human, her notes to them had made them laugh, especially those about
Madam
. Incongruously, into James' mind flashed the joyfully savoured memory of when he'd met Lee - the Marsh prime hunter, three-time winner of the NA Circuit- stalking up the stairs at Marshmont towards the fifth floor with a fluffy white polar bear toy clasped in one huge hand, his eyes darkly daring the cub to say anything. Mac smiled wryly, despite the rage and fear shuddering through him. That was his Gemma.
She'd better not be hurt.
James' mind was tumbling on; the cubs knew that the girl was the Alpha's -- they kind of thought of her as one of their own pack. When she'd gotten to the main road she must have found a lift in some vehicle, there was the scent of another human where her trail had disappeared, and the hunters had all headed northeast, following the roadway, in pursuit. Mac could feel the echo of awe in the cub's mind that a
