Chapter 443

The hunters are coming. We know it, they aren’t even being secretive about it. Every day | become more fearful of losing Grace.

| know she thinks she’s the key to us winning this battle, but | can’t lose her. | won't.

When | get the mind link that the hunters are nearly here, we’re ready. We've been planning this for weeks. | would never tell Grace this, but I’m glad she’s not pregnant yet. | don’t know if | could focus on the fight today if | knew | was not only fighting for my pack and my mate, but also my unborn child. My fear of losing Grace has made my protectiveness almost unbearable as it is.

| know it irritates her that | need to know where she is at all times, so | can’t imagine how much worse it would be if she had gotten pregnant.

The hunters have chosen to attack us near our three borders, so we have an hour's run to get to them. The sprites had alerted our patrols and they are the ones that sent the mind link. We've chosen to stay quiet so the hunters don’t know we’ve seen them.

This will help to keep our patrol wolves safe, knowing the hunters won't attack right away and our packs are on the way.

“Grace, I’m heading over with our warriors. Make sure the groups start their evacuation procedures then join us. Please be safe.

| love you.” | mind link her as | shift and order the warriors to head to our meeting place.

“I'm right behind you.” She tells me.

When my pack arrives, we see Rik’s pack is already there and Liam’s is coming in right behind us. Cara and Angel shift, turning to me. “Where is Grace?” They ask in the mind link.

“She’s on her way.” | tell them, and honestly, I’m surprised she’s not here yet. Maia is fast and should have caught up to us by now.

As one, Cara, Angel, Liam, Rik and | turn our heads at what sounds like an army coming through the forest. | lift my nose in the air, trying to count like Grace does. She’s better at it than | am, but I’m easily getting thousands of hunters.

“Grace?”

Grace opens the mind link to her sisters, their mates and me. “I’m nearly there. I’ve counted 5002 hunters. That puts us at nearly 1:5 ratio of werewolves to hunters.” She says and she sounds like she’s breathing heavily.

She's right, we only have about 1000 wolves in fighting condition with the baby booms we've been having in our packs. Five to one are not good odds. A strong warrior can take that many, but our weaker warriors can’t. Unless we can take them out quickly, we're going to have a hard time winning this battle today.

“We need to spread out. We need to flank them. We can’t go head-to-head with that many hunters.” Liam says.

“My pack will stay front and center, you both take your packs and flank them on either side. Hopefully we can take out a bunch with a surprise attack.” Rik says...

“We'll stay here and wait for Grace.” Cara and Angel say.

“Our pack will need the most protection up front anyway.” Cara adds.

| send the order and we begin to quietly move around the left side of the hunters, creeping up on them. | never doubted Grace and her ability to ‘count’ based on smell but seeing 5000 hunters is completely different than hearing the number. For a moment, | let myself feel overwhelmed. Then |

reign it in. They are here to kill us. They are here to kill my mate. For that, they will die.

We get into position, effectively circling them and nearly connecting with Liam’s pack on the other side. We have them surrounded. This is our best chance for attack.

The moment Kai, Rik’s wolf's, howl goes up, we attack. In the moment it takes for the hunters to realize that we have surrounded them, we are able to take down hundreds of them. As soon as they realize it though, they shift and turn their attention to attacking us.