He had not been sure it would be him. Leah had more experience—and more involvement with the Singer. As his father’s mate, she outranked him in the pack. His da thought that leadership went to the wolf the majority of the participants wanted in charge. Charles wasn’t sure that was true. He often felt that pack magic—and, by extension, the hunting song—had its own intelligence.

His body still, he processed the information flooding into him, knowing that once the fight started, instinct would guide them more than thought. But for now, he assessed his pack.

Tag’s eagerness for battle overlaid the song. They all felt the addict-level strength of his need to give in to his berserker. Charles lent Tag some of Anna’s Omega-born quiet and felt him settle.

Charles considered the method of the Singer’s attacks and how Anna explained it had affected her. Tag, he thought, would be least affected among them. The berserker was difficult to distract.

Tag’s amused agreement sang through the hunting bonds, because the flow of information went both ways.

Leah … Charles had probably been in a thousand hunts with Leah, though none so dire and none with so few wolves. He was in the habit of keeping as far from her as he could, both physically and in the bonds themselves. Given his success in avoiding her, he suspected Leah did the same. He’d never been in a hunt with her in which he took the lead position.

And still he had expectations based on his previous experience. Through the pack bonds, Leah had always felt like a lethal, whip-quick weapon—cold, controlled, and deadly. He had expected that this time, too—but if he had not known better, he would have thought she was a different person entirely.

Leah’s surface displayed only ripples of her wide, deep, and violent emotions, but the hunting song gave Charles deeper insight; he knew the power of her rage. She would do anything to see the Singer dead. It was a craving so deep it felt like obsession.

But Charles also knew that she had used most of her reserves getting from Montana to here. Any other werewolf of his acquaintance would have been down for the count already. She needed a day’s rest and a lot of food before she would be back up to reasonable fighting trim. Food and rest she wouldn’t get.

He had no doubt that Leah would keep going until she dropped—but he was afraid she was close to her limit. Exhaustion would slow her. What he knew, the hunting song knew. The pack understood Leah’s current limitations, understood they made her vulnerable.

He would keep her at the edges of the battle when he could, if he could. It was impossible to really determine tactics before the Singer emerged. They knew something of its magic—though the power still rising from the ground worried Charles. And they had only a vague idea of the Singer’s physical being—as he thought that, Leah’s glimpse of it filtered through their bonds.