Free Wolf Pact: A Wolf Pact Novel by Melissa de La Cruz

me—you wanted to help, so you know the drill. If you get into trouble, let me deal with them. Don’t be a hero. Leave them to me.”
    “Sure thing.” Rafe smiled, his sleepy eyes lighting up. “You get your ass kicked, we’ll stay out of it. Let them slap you around a little.”
    Lawson stretched his neck and cracked his back, flexing his arm muscles, preparing himself for what lay ahead. “I just want to have a little chat. It’ll be a cakewalk, I promise.” He slammed the door and led the rest of the team closer to the light. No time to think of whether this was the right thing to do now. He just had to make it through the next few minutes. He had to concentrate. Get in and out before those hounds nearby caught their scent. “Ready?” he asked, preparing the boys for the ritual.
    One by one the brothers whispered the words that bound them, the pact they had sworn to each other. As they recited their words, a small blue crescent appeared on each of their faces. The sigil of their pack, the pulsing sickle throbbed in time with the beating of their hearts, giving testament to the bond they shared. When the testimony was over, the blue marks faded from their cheeks.
    “Allright, then,” Lawson said, preparing himself for battle.
    Next to him, his brothers were doing the same, their shoulders squared, blood pumping, eyes narrowed to squints, ready to attack if hounds appeared. Ready to fight. Edon balled his fists while Rafe cracked his knuckles. They were trained warriors, lean and ready.
    The light blinked on and off through the dense forest of trees. Lawson struck out ahead, Edon next, and Rafe pulling up the rear. They fanned out in a triangular formation, keeping just enough distance from each other that they could easily come to each other’s defense while having space to get away so that not all of them would be captured if it came down to that.
    Lawson left his brothers at the base of the hill and followed a trail to the top until he was standing just outside a dim pool of light centered in a clearing of the trees. Tall shadows radiated in all directions from the circle. The ground was newly cleared, covered with a fresh bed of leaves and ringed with tree stumps.
    “I’m going in,” he called.
    “Go on, then,” Edon said.
    “Get itover with,” added Rafe.
    “Relax,” Lawson chided. The hounds were far enough away. In the silence he could hear only the rustling of the leaves and the soft quiet slithering of snakes in the moss, the sniffing and scratching of woodland animals.
    He stepped into the light of the oculus. Edon had briefed him on how to use it, and it sounded simple enough. Let the light shine on him, and then command it to show him what he wanted to see.
    When he entered, the forest and hill and trees disappeared, and his vision filled with a blazing light, white-hot like the center of a star. Lawson shielded his eyes and blinked. At first he was dazzled by the light, surrounded and engulfed by the white glow, but then he felt a familiar sensation and he realized that it was not light he was seeing at all, but its polar opposite. The beacon was made from a darkness that was complete, the darkness of the abyss, his former home. He had grown unused to it since their escape.
    Inside the oculus he was overwhelmed by images from every place and time; he could see into the past and the present, into all corners of the universe. He had to make it stop, make it show him what he wanted to see, what he needed to see.
    “Show me mymate,” he ordered. “Tala of the Wolves, Born of the Underworld, Slave to None.”
    The whirring images stopped and a vision of a girl appeared.
    Was it Tala? Lawson couldn’t tell. He squinted into the light. If only the oculus would show him more—but the image remained vague and fuzzy. He was beginning to feel frustrated when it suddenly snapped into focus. He took a sharp breath. There was a girl in front of him. But she was definitely not Tala.
    She was