Two hours east turned out to be two hours east through the most unpleasant terrain I had ever walked.
Steep ground. Loose rocks. Branches that seemed personally motivated to hit me in the face.
---
Pip moved through it like they had done it a hundred times. Which they probably had.
Riven moved through it like the ground was flat and the branches did not exist.
I moved through it like a person who grew up in a village and had never done anything like this in her life.
---
"You alright back there?" Dane asked from behind me.
"Perfect," I said. I grabbed a branch before it could swing back into my face.
"You are going to need to get faster than this," he said.
"I am aware," I said.
"Just noting it," he said.
"Noted," I said.
---
Riven glanced back at me.
I kept my expression neutral.
I was not going to complain. Not on the first day. Not in front of these people who had been living rough in unclaimed territory while I had been sleeping in a crooked village at the edge of pack lands.
My legs hurt and my lungs hurt and I kept my mouth shut about both.
---
Soren appeared from somewhere to my left. He had been ranging out ahead of us and coming back periodically. Checking the path.
"Clear so far," he said to Riven quietly.
"How far out?" Riven asked.
"Far enough," Soren said.
That seemed to satisfy Riven. It did not fully satisfy me but I was learning that Soren said exactly as much as he felt was necessary and not one word more.
---
Pip stayed close to me as we walked.
Close enough that I noticed but far enough to not be obvious about it.
"You keep looking at me," I said after a while.
Pip looked away immediately.
"Sorry," they said.
"I am not annoyed," I said. "I am just wondering why."
---
Pip was quiet for a moment.
"I have been looking for you for three weeks," they said. "Ever since the word started spreading about the pendant."
"Three weeks," I said. "I only got the pendant yesterday."
"The healer sent word before she gave it to you," Pip said. "She wanted someone to be ready."
---
I thought about the old woman. Her sharp eyes. The way she had not seemed scared even with soldiers at her door.
She had been planning this. For how long?
"Is she safe?" I asked.
"I do not know," Pip said honestly.
That sat heavy between us for a moment.
---
"How did you find out about the pendant?" I asked. "The others. How did word spread so fast?"
"Hybrids talk," Pip said simply. "We have our own ways of passing information. We have to. Nobody else passes it for us."
That made sense.
When you are shut out of every official system you build your own.
---
"What do the others expect from me?" I asked.
Pip glanced at me sideways.
"Hope," they said. "Mostly."
"That is a big thing to carry," I said.
"Yes," Pip said. "But you are already carrying it whether you want to or not."
---
I could not argue with that.
The pendant was proof enough of it.
---
We smelled the camp before we saw it.
Fires. Food. The particular smell of too many people in a small space.
Then the structure appeared through the trees.
---
It was old. Stone walls that had been repaired recently with newer timber. A roof that was mostly holding. Windows that had been covered with whatever materials people had managed to bring with them.
Big enough for forty three people to shelter in.
Not comfortable. But standing.
---
Someone spotted us coming and called out. Not an alarm. A signal.
By the time we reached the entrance people were already coming out to meet us.
---
They were all kinds.
Young and old. Men and women. Children clinging to adults. Some clearly wolf hybrid like me. Others a mix I could not immediately identify.
All of them had the same look.
The look of people who had been uprooted. Who had lost something and were still figuring out what came next.
I knew that look. I had seen it in my own reflection enough times.
---
They parted to let us through.
Eyes on me. On the pendant they could not see but somehow already knew about.
I kept my head up and my face steady.
Do not let them see that you are scared. They are already scared enough.
---
A woman stepped forward from the group.
She was older than me by maybe fifteen years. Strong looking. The kind of strong that came from hard work not from training. Her eyes were direct and tired and sharp all at once.
"You are Kaia," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I am Maren," she said. "I have been keeping this group together since we left the villages."
---
She looked me over the way people do when they are deciding something important.
I let her look.
"You are younger than I expected," she said.
"I get that a lot lately," I said.
Something shifted in her expression. Not quite a smile.
"Come inside," she said. "There are people you need to meet."
---
The inside of the structure was warmer than outside. Fires in two corners. People arranged in groups. Children in the back section furthest from the doors.
Organized. Maren had clearly been working hard to keep things ordered.
---
She led me to the far end where a small group sat apart from the others.
Four people. Different ages. All watching me approach with various expressions ranging from cautious to openly skeptical.
"These are the ones who came from the furthest territories," Maren said. "They have seen the most of what the Alpha King's soldiers are doing."
---
A man with a graying beard spoke first.
"We have heard about the pendant," he said. His voice was not unfriendly but it was careful. "We have heard about the bloodline claim."
"Yes," I said.
"And you are what? Twenty?" he said.
"Yes," I said again.
"You have an army?" he asked.
---
I glanced back at Riven. Dane. Soren. Pip.
"I have four people," I said honestly.
The man looked at the four of them. Then back at me.
"And you think you can take on the Alpha King with four people and a pendant," he said.
---
"No," I said.
That seemed to surprise him.
"No?" he said.
"Not yet," I said. "Right now I have four people and a pendant. And forty three people in this building."
I looked around at the faces watching me.
"But the Alpha King is pushing people out of their homes every day," I said. "Every person he pushes out is someone who has nothing left to lose."
---
I let that sit for a second.
"People with nothing left to lose are looking for something worth fighting for," I said. "We just have to be worth fighting for."
The graying man was quiet.
The others in the small group were looking at me differently than they had thirty seconds ago.
---
Maren was watching me with those tired sharp eyes.
"That is a good answer," she said quietly.
"It is the only honest one I have," I said.
---
Riven appeared at my shoulder.
"We cannot stay long," he said quietly. "If the Alpha King's people are tracking the pendant they will widen their search when the first scout does not report back."
"I know," I said.
I looked at Maren.
"I need to know everything," I said. "What the soldiers are doing. How many. Which territories they have moved through. Everything your people have seen."
---
Maren nodded.
"Sit down then," she said. "This will take a while."
---
I sat.
People gathered. Some cautious. Some desperate. Some just tired.
One by one they started talking.
And I listened to every word.
---
An hour later my head was full of information and my chest was full of something heavier than I had words for.
The scale of it. The number of people displaced. The speed the Alpha King was moving.
This was not a campaign against hybrids.
This was a cleansing.
---
Dane crouched beside me after the last person finished speaking.
"You understand now," he said quietly. It was not a question.
"Yes," I said.
"Still want to do this?" he asked.
---
I looked at the people around me.
At Pip sitting with a group of children in the corner keeping them calm.
At Maren who had held forty three people together through sheer determination.
At the graying man who had questioned me and was now listening with his arms uncrossed.
---
I put my hand in my pocket and closed it around the pendant.
That feeling. Patient. Waiting.
Pushing back.
"Yes," I said.
---
Dane looked at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Because I counted the tracks around this building on the way in."
I looked at him.
"Someone has been watching this place," he said. "And it is not one scout this time."