Vance gave a curt nod. “He doesn’t want to live as a vampire,” he said. “He’d rather die.”
“He said that?” Adolf asked.
“Yes.”
For a minute, no one moved. I had an almost irresistible urge to defy them. Panic battered my brain, telling me to hurry, to save him. That I had an obligation to save him, that it was better to live as a vampire than to die. But just as I wanted the girls they chose to have a say in what happened to them, I had to respect Mr. Wolf’s wishes. I knew he was wrong, but I didn’t get to choose this when he didn’t want it. I had to allow him the dignity of dying the way he wanted—as a wolf, not a vampire.
Brooklyn shifted to human and sat up, holding her head. A huge purple bruise was forming on her forehead, but she stood and made her way over. Jose rose a minute later, and Adolf and Donovan helped Alarick. I wanted to ask what was happening, why we weren’t doing anything to help. But they seemed sure that his fate was sealed. Though it went against everything I’d ever known, I didn’t spring into action and try to interfere. We all sat around Mr. Wolf, waiting in respectful silence while he breathed his last breaths.
Then, we raised our heads to the sky and let out mournful howls for the fallen wolf.
Chapter Twelve
“Take him home,” Alarick said at last, when the wolf’s side had gone still at last. He turned to Vance, who was barely injured. Alarick, meanwhile, looked like he might collapse at any moment. Still, his voice was strong and commanding. “We all need time to heal, and then we’ll be gone. Ravenwood is yours.”
I waited for Vance to attack while Alarick was weakest, but after a moment, he nodded and stepped back. He must recognize he was outnumbered, and maybe he was more levelheaded than Mr. Wolf. Maybe he knew that killing a wolf defeated the whole purpose of what they’d been trying to do all along.
Alarick returned his nod before turning away and starting for the cabin.
“I have something I want to say to him,” Brooklyn said, stepping forward and shaking her brown hair back before addressing the dead wolf. “I hope you rot in hell, you sadistic, sick bastard.” She spit on his body, then turned and stomped away.
Vance’s eyes flashed with his wolf. “No one else better dare to disrespect our fallen leader,” he growled. “Or there will be more casualties today.”
We were all too shocked to move, and no one said a word for a minute. I was pretty sure that, no matter their relationship with their father, none of the other wolves would have even thought of disrespecting the dead like that. After a solemn nod, I stepped back and limped toward the cabin where Alarick and Brooklyn had gone. I expected Jose to go off with Vance, as they’d always seemed inseparable, but he followed us to the cabin instead.
There, we set up our plan. Werewolves didn’t heal instantly, despite being able to heal themselves. And I needed energy to heal, which meant I needed food. I wasn’t about to ask the wolves if I could have some of their blood, since they all had wounds of their own to recover from. As much as I hated to, I knew I had to leave Alarick’s side. His injuries were most severe of all, but Donovan assured me he would heal, and I had no choice but to take his word. Controlling my own hunger was getting harder by the minute. By that night, I had to leave the wolves and go back to the school to recover.
“Oh my god, what happened to you?” Svana asked, shooting to her feet when I came staggering into our dorm room and collapsed onto the bed. I’d wrapped my hoodie around my side, but she could smell the blood, of course.
“Wolf bite,” I said, hardly able to speak. Pain was lancing through me with every move I made, and walking back from the cabin had been pure torture. Mr. Wolf had bitten me in the soft area right above the hip, which meant every step was a reminder of the muscles in my side that had been torn through by his savage wolf teeth.
“I’ll get you blood,” Svana said. “Stay right there. Don’t move.”
She returned in a few minutes with twice my usual dinner. “Thanks,” I said, trying to keep myself from snatching the bags and attacking them like the animal I’d been all summer. The relief of eating made me almost cry. I could feel the energy fortifying me from the first gulp.
“I’ll go to the others’ rooms and see who has an extra baggie or two,” she said, going into planning mode. “And let me text Viktor. He’ll get anything the boys have in their dorm.”
For the next week, Svana brought me blood, and I ate and rested, waiting for the horrible wound to heal. I couldn’t help but think about where the blood came from, though. In my bloodlust over the last summer, I hadn’t thought about it. I’d needed it too much. Now, I remembered the girls in the basement of the clinic, hooked up to machines. I knew they would die—the Wolf brothers thought they had died. But the vampires were keeping them alive somehow, through artificial means or magic, and siphoning their blood. I couldn’t help them—as soon as they were taken off the machines, they’d die—but it still bothered me to think about it.
I tried to focus on my own healing, on the fact that I’d die, too, if I couldn’t eat. Actually, I probably wouldn’t die.
