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Her face was a mix of joy and fear, and his stomach dropped.

He was glad he\'d come. And terrified of what might happen now.

Zev cleared his throat. "Sasha, he\'s lying. About a lot of it. And… I already told you, it wasn\'t… there wasn\'t anything in it that I enjoyed or… it was ugly. All of it. I did it because I thought I had to, and—"

She launched herself across the dirt and into his arms. He grunted as she ran into his tender ribs, but he didn\'t let her go, holding her tightly to his chest and pressing his cheek against the top of her head as she clung to him.

Her whole body was shaking. Fuck, he hated what this was doing to her.

Eyes on Dunken whose face was still a blank mask, he shushed her when she whispered his name, and held her tightly.

Her hands played on his chest and she trembled in his arms. "I knew it couldn\'t be true," she said. "I just… it\'s hard, Zev. This place is frightening, and I don\'t understand how it works."

"I know, I know. I\'m sorry. I\'m going to try and fix that now, I think," he said with another glance at Dunken, whose face had gone very hard, but he didn\'t argue.

They continue to hold each other, but Sasha was beginning to soften in his arms when he finally addressed his old friend.

"I didn\'t mate anyone who already had a mate," he said through his teeth. "That\'s a lie. And I didn\'t mate all the females—only wolves, and not all of them. At least, not all that were taken from here."

"How comforting," Dunken said dryly.

Zev pressed his lips together to stop himself snapping that now wasn\'t the time for sarcasm. He kept having flashes of the things that he\'d been forced to do over the past three years, and it was making him shake.

He had to make Sasha utterly certain.

He pulled back from her face enough to take her face in his hands and meet her eyes. "No matter what has happened before, those days are finished for me," he whispered. "I will never mate another female in my life, Sasha. You have to know that. It\'s you. Only you. Do you understand?"

She nodded, but her eyes welled with tears. "I just… I don\'t understand how…"

"I believed I was keeping you, and the people safe. It\'s only truth, Sasha. I see the stupidity in it now—that\'s why I left. I learned they were lying to me. But even I didn\'t know the extent… But just know, it will never happen again. I vow to you."

"What are they going to do to you?" she breathed, and he knew she meant the other males. "Dunken said this will make it harder to fight? That you\'ll have to fight more of them, or something?"

Zev clenched his jaw. "I don\'t know," he said truthfully. "But it doesn\'t matter. Whatever is needed, I\'ll do it. I will win the right to claim you, Sasha. Don\'t worry about that. No matter what they think they\'ll put in my path… I\'ll do it."

"You\'re going to have to be a lot more careful," Dunken said, his low voice rumbling. "If you show up when there\'s a group of males there, you might get jumped. And you know Xar isn\'t going to censure them for killing you after this."

Zev nodded and Sasha gasped. He forced himself to smile down at her and wink. "They won\'t find me easy to kill, don\'t worry about it."

"Kill? But I thought… I thought these were fights, like… like just to win. A competition?"

Before he could answer, Xar started speaking again outside. Still holding Sasha, they all walked over to the holes to watch the wily King.

The crowd of males had settled down and were listening, and the humans had taken a more prominent position in front of them. "You are all to stay here while the humans search—under pain of my censure!" Xar called, his voice booming across the square. "I have told the humans that those they seek are not here, but they fear we may have been deceived and they wish to search. None of your personal belongings will be taken, but this will take some time. Cooks, make your fires here today and bring your supplies. Everyone else is to stay here with us. We will share a meal while we wait and reassure our friends that we are not harboring their stolen female."

The hubbub of voices rose then—there were hunters, patrols, and other responsible males among the crowd who were being told they would not have the chance to fulfill their duties that day. A search of the village—even a simple one—would take hours. And they were to stay there for meals?

Zev growled and Sasha\'s arms tightened on his waist.

He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her closer, ignoring the twinge in his ribs.

"If you should recall anything you think can be of use, you need only speak. There will be no punishment for not remembering sooner. Now, take this time to relax and enjoy your brothers while we let the humans do their work."

Zev growled again as he saw his brother, near the front. When Xar finished his announcements and the humans stepped away from him, trotting around and through the crowd towards the dwellings and buildings behind them, everyone began speaking again. Zev didn\'t miss that Lhars turned around, answering a tap on the shoulder from behind him.

But his brother\'s eyes trailed over the fox hole and locked on it for a second, before he moved on.

Did he know Sasha was in there? Zev\'s teeth wanted to snap. Did he know Zev was nearby?

There was no way to know.

Stepping back from the view hole, and ignoring the pointed look from Dunken, Zev pulled Sasha down towards the dirt, urging her to sit next to him. "We should get comfortable," he said tightly. "It looks like we\'re going to be here a while. I\'m not risking taking you out there while they\'re searching.. Even the humans won\'t miss it if they see you."