The Decoy

The woods were darkening as twilight bled into the storm.

Mara moved fast. She didn't walk; she flowed. She kept to the hard rock and the thick roots, leaving no prints.

She circled back toward their entry trail. She found a patch of mud and deliberately planted a boot print. She tore a piece of fabric from her shirt—fabric soaked in Jax’s blood—and snagged it on a briar bush.

She was building a narrative. *The wounded wolf panicked. He went east, toward the river.*

She moved another hundred yards, repeating the process. She was painting a picture of a clumsy, desperate escape.

It was terrifying. Every instinct she had screamed at her to hide, to curl up in a hole and wait for the Alpha to send rescue. But rescue was hours away, and the Rogues were minutes away.

She heard voices.

Mara dropped to her belly in the ferns.

Two Rogues walked past, not ten feet away. They were scanning the ground with thermal scopes.

"He's bleeding out," one said. "Follow the heat. The boss wants his head before midnight."

"Why does the boss care so much about one Enforcer?" the other asked.

"It's not just an Enforcer," the first replied. "It's the Stonebreaker. You take out Jax, the pack's defense crumbles. The invasion starts tomorrow at dawn."

Mara pressed her face into the dirt to stifle a gasp.

This wasn't a skirmish. It was an assassination. They had targeted Jax specifically to pave the way for a war.

The Rogues moved on, following her false trail toward the river.

Mara waited until they were gone, then scrambled up. She had bought him time. Maybe an hour. She needed to get back to the blind, get him moving, and find a radio dead zone to call for help.

She sprinted back to the shelter.

"Jax," she whispered, pushing the door open. "We have to move."

The blind was empty.

Mara stopped. The bloodstained floor was there. The cut bandages were there. But the massive man was gone.

"No," she breathed.

She scanned the floor. There were tracks. Bare feet. Stumbling, heavy tracks leading out the back of the blind.

He hadn't gone toward safety. He had gone west. Toward the Limestone Quarry.

The Quarry was a dead end. It was a kill box.

He knew she had left. He thought she had run. So he had woken up, half-dead and poisoned, and decided to draw the hunters away from her escape route.

He was sacrificing himself. Again.

Mara felt a heat rise in her chest that had nothing to do with fear. It was anger. Pure, molten fury.

"You stupid, noble, suicidal idiot," she hissed.

She racked the bolt on her rifle. She didn't check the wind. She didn't check her ammo. She just started running.

She wasn't running away this time. She was hunting.

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