Chapter 220 Hunted by rogues
Damian’s POV
The guest room in Ronan’s pack house smelled of pine and unfamiliar wolves.
I lay propped against the headboard, my ribs bound tight, every breath a dull blade sliding between them. The healers said I was lucky. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like a caged animal.
My eyes kept dragging back to the window, to the dark sky above the tree line. Ronan had left hours ago.
So where the hell were they?
*They should be here by now,* I told my wolf, for what had to be the tenth time. *He made contact at midnight. Even if she hesitated—*
*You’ve counted the minutes twice over,*the wolf said. *Counting them a third time won’t spin the rotors faster.*
I shoved off the blankets and made it to the window, ribs snarling in protest. Nothing but black forest and stars.
*What if something went wrong? What if they were followed—if whoever’s hunting us got to her first—*
*Ronan knows what he’s doing.*
*Or what if—* I stopped. The uglier thought slid in anyway, cold and quiet. *What if she just... didn’t come?*
The wolf was silent for a long moment.
*She will.Now stop tearing yourself apart and rest.*
I wanted to believe him. Desperately.
But the silence was deafening.
The worst part was having nothing to do but wait.
And remember.
My mind kept dragging me back to that night—the one where everything went to hell.
---
The water had been so cold it felt like knives.
I remembered the impact. The shock of it. Ribs screaming. Saltwater flooding my lungs. Blood clouding the water around my head.
I remembered surfacing—barely—gasping and choking. The cliff face impossibly high above me. Voices shouting. Rick’s voice, raw with panic.
And then the current had taken me.
I’d tried to shift. Tried to let my wolf take over and heal the damage. But between the broken ribs and the head injury, my body had simply... shut down. Refused.
Every time I reached for the shift, agony ripped through me and dragged me back under.
So I’d done the only thing I could. I’d let the sea carry me.
Hours. It had been hours of drifting in and out of consciousness, my wolf fighting to keep us afloat, keep us breathing. The coastline a distant blur. The sun sinking lower and lower.
By the time I’d washed up on that beach, I’d barely been alive.
The town had been small. Remote. The kind of place that probably wasn’t even on most maps.
I’d woken up in someone’s living room, wrapped in blankets that smelled like lavender and wood smoke, with an elderly woman pressing a cup of herbal tea into my hands.
"You’re lucky," she’d said in heavily accented English. "My grandson found you on the rocks. Another hour and the tide would have taken you back out."
Lucky. Right.
I’d thanked her. Accepted the tea. Let her fuss over the cuts on my face and the bruising on my ribs.
And the entire time, my wolf had been silent. Watchful.
It wasn’t until later—after the woman had left me alone to rest—that he’d spoken.
"Something’s wrong."
I’d frowned, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. "Besides the obvious?"
"That boy. The one on the cliff."
The kid I’d saved. Julian. I could still feel his small hands slamming into my chest. The sheer terror in his eyes.
"What about him?"
"His scent." My wolf’s tone had gone flat. Cold. "It wasn’t right."
"He was terrified. Of course his scent—"
"No." The interruption was sharp. "Not fear. Something else. Something... off."
I’d sat up despite the screaming protest from my ribs. "What are you saying?"
"I’m saying that boy’s reaction wasn’t natural. The way he pushed you—the angle, the force. It was too precise. Too deliberate."
The words had settled over me like ice water.
I’d replayed the moment in my head. The crane falling. The kid frozen in place. Me grabbing him, throwing us both clear.
And then—
His hands. Slamming into my chest. Right at the edge of the platform.
*Right where a push would send me over.*
*And those small hands slamming into my chest with force no seven-year-old should have.*
Cold spread through my gut that had nothing to do with the sea.
If the fall was staged, I thought slowly, then whoever built it is watching to see if the body surfaces.
*So we stay dead,* the wolf said. *No calls. No names. Not even to Rick. Trust no one until we know how deep this goes.*
It went against everything in me—Aria was out there thinking God knew what. But I’d survived thirty years in pack politics by listening to my wolf when it bared its teeth.
I didn’t contact anyone.
---
*Damian. Wake up. NOW.* my wolf had woken me just after midnight.*Rogues.*
I’d been on my feet before my conscious mind even caught up. Pain shrieked through my ribs but I shoved it down, reaching for my boots.
"How many?"
"At least three. Maybe more. Upwind."
"How close?"
"Close enough that we need to leave. Now."
I’d slipped out the window. Moved through the darkened streets like a ghost. My wolf’s instincts guided every step—which alleys to take, which shadows to melt into.
The forest had been a blessing. Dense. Dark. Easy to disappear into.
But not easy enough.
"They’re tracking us," my wolf had snarled twenty minutes into our flight. "They know we’re here."
Of course they did. Because nothing about this situation was a coincidence.
Not the crane collapse. Not the kid. Not the rogues showing up in a random coastal town the same night I washed ashore.
Someone had been waiting. Someone had been watching.
*Someone wanted me dead.*
"The mud," my wolf had said suddenly. "There. The ravine."
I’d seen it—a deep gully carved out by runoff, the bottom thick with dark, stinking mud.
"You’re joking."
"Do I sound like I’m joking? Get in. Now. It’ll mask our scent."
I’d jumped. Let the mud swallow me up to my chest. The cold and the stench had been overwhelming but my wolf was right—within seconds, our scent had been completely buried.
I’d stayed there, submerged, listening to the rogues pass less than thirty yards away.
"...lost him..."
"...check downstream..."
"...couldn’t have gotten far, not with those injuries..."
Downstream. They thought I’d drifted downstream. Thought I’d follow the water’s natural flow.
The moment their voices had faded, I’d climbed out and run. Upstream. Straight into the current of logic that said I should be going the other way.
My ribs had screamed. My head had pounded. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandages the old woman had wrapped around my torso.
But I’d kept running.
Hours. I’d run for hours, my wolf pushing us past the limits of what my broken body should have been able to handle.
But a wounded wolf leaves more than scent—a smeared handprint on rock, a snapped branch at the wrong height, the stumbling gait pressed into mud.
My wolf’s ears caught it: movement flanking us on both sides. They’d found the trail.
*Two behind. One on the ridge,* the wolf said grimly. *We can’t outrun them. Not like this.*
Then we don’t run.
The fight was short and ugly. I took the ridge wolf first, dropping on him from the rocks before he could howl a signal—one advantage of being hunted is that no one expects the prey to circle back.
The other two came at me together. Even wounded, they were no match for me—I put them both down and left them breathing. Barely.
But my broken ribs had cost me half a step, and one of them made me pay for it before he went down: claws deep into my shoulder, ripping through muscle and tendon.
I’d barely gotten away. Barely made it across the territory line before collapsing.