Once Bitten (Tooth & Claw Book 3) by Heather Guerre

Author:Heather Guerre
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2022-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Max knew he should go home, but he couldn’t leave Cry Lake. Not when he was meant to be returning home with Jules, introducing her to his family and his pack, potentially making the decision that would bind them together forever.

His parents understood, though his mother’s hints that he should come home anyway were gradually turning into pleas.

“You need your pack, kochanie.”

“I know, Mom,” he said quietly, simply. “But not yet. I need… I need to finish some things before I can come home.”

His parents knew that Jules had been killed by a strigoi, made one of them. They didn’t know that he’d knowingly let her go, and that he had dedicated himself to finding her and putting her to rest. He let his parents think that staying in Cry Lake, in the place where he’d known and loved Jules, was helping him grieve. In reality, he was investigating. Researching. Planning.

And some of the pack were planning with him. He’d noticed when he first arrived in Cry Lake that there was a bit of friction between the younger pack members and the elders, but he’d shrugged it off as generational differences. Every pack experienced it. But with the strigoi attack and the loss of Jules, that friction had turned into a minor rebellion. The younger pack members had long wanted greater integration into the outside world and a move away from the pack’s old isolationist policies, among other things. Jules’s death had been the spark that set fire to the simmering powder keg. If Max had been able to tell her more about their world, she would’ve had the knowledge to prevent such a tragedy, they argued. Max didn’t necessarily agree, except in the broader sense that he’d failed to protect her.

But the younger pack members were hungry for a fight, and the strigoi who’d killed Jules was a perfect outlet for the discontent they couldn’t take out on their elders. Parallel to Max’s goals, the Cry Lake rebellion was planning their own course of vengeance. So when Max set out to follow the weak trail left by Jules’s strigoi, he’d had several other noses assisting—all watchers and peacekeepers in the Cry Lake pack, which told Max more than a little about the strictness of the elders here. But that wasn’t his problem—Jules’s strigoi was. And he wasn’t interested in company while he tracked her down, but as a guest in their territory, he couldn’t rightly tell them all to fuck off, either.

So, with help he didn’t want, he went to the clearing where he’d failed to do his duty to Jules. Shame curdled his stomach as he watched the other wolves investigate the scents—they’d detect Jules’s fear and his adrenaline, the anxiety and turmoil he’d been drowning in. None of them gave any indication that they judged him for it, but it didn’t matter. Max blamed himself entirely, and there wasn’t a soul alive who could make him feel worse than he already did. Iris was the only

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