Gareth POV
Black Wolf's gates had never opened faster.
I had ridden through them at speed before - drills, emergencies, the various categories of urgency that came with serving the Alpha of a major territory - but I had never ridden through them with this kind of speed, the kind that came from the calculation that every minute we spent not moving was a minute the Alpha and his Luna were spending at the bottom of a cliff.
The guards at the gate had read our faces before we were close enough to speak. By the time we pulled up, the inner yard was already getting filled up.
Kane was there within minutes.
Looking like a panicked beta who had been forged over decades of service to an Alpha who generated more crises per year than most territories saw in a generation. He stood in the center of the yard and listened to everything I said without interrupting once, and when I finished he said:
"How many do you need?"
"Fifty," Bellick said, before I had finished drawing breath.
