I see you.
Words dripped, sing-sung, from a crooked mouth. No face. No body. Just a mouth—bones cracking, jaw breaking.
I see you.
Sharp smile, fanged and smeared with red.
I recognized the voice. I recognized the blood, but this wasn’t my nightmare. It was Chase’s.
Like a strobe light, images flashed in rapid fire in front of me. A man: brown eyes, open face, never aged past thirty. Red teeth. Gray wolf, white star. Jaws snapping.
So much blood.
I looked for Chase, called to him, but I couldn’t find him. I was too far away.
Wolf. Fight.
Not my dream. Not my instinct. Not my haze, but the whole world went blood-red nonetheless, almost purple. Rotted. Congealed.
Chase. I had to find Chase.
I could feel his eyes opening. Lightning in his stomach, jaw aching as he Shifted back to human form.
Look at me, Callum whispered to him, a ghost on his shoulder.
You’re mine, said the mouth with the wolf attached. I made you. You belong to me.
And that was what did it, because Chase didn’t belong to blood and panic. Didn’t belong to a Rabid rotting from the inside out. He didn’t even belong to Callum, steady and sure.
He belonged to me.
Light surged all around us in a starburst, halfway between the moment of detonation for an atomic bomb and the skyline on the Fourth of July.
Warm.
Safe.
Mine.
And just like that, Chase and I were back on a bed of wet leaves and grass, the smell of dirt and autumn reminding me that this was a dream. Only a dream.
In human form, Chase curled beside me, his forehead damp with sweat, and I ran my fingers through his matted hair, as naturally as I had his wolf fur. I folded my body against his, keeping watch until his breathing slowed, and mine slowed, and together, we faded into sweet, blissful nothing.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
My first instinct when I heard Ali’s words was to growl, but as the real world settled back into place and the protective instinct my dream had awakened slipped from me, I remembered two things. First, I wasn’t actually a werewolf and therefore didn’t have the possessive-protective gene dictating my every move, and second, I wasn’t talking to Ali at the moment. Feeling awkward in my own body, I rubbed the sleep out of the corners of my eyes and instead of growling, settled for a pointed glare.
Ali ignored me. She just unbuckled her seat belt and climbed out of the car, shutting the door on me and my mood. While I was still trying to get over the insult, she opened the back door on the driver’s side and unhooked Katie from her car seat.
“I take it we’re stopping?” I asked.
“We’re here,” Ali corrected me. “You slept like the dead and missed breakfast. I’m sure someone can rustle you up some food if you’re hungry.”
Settling Katie on one hip, Ali gestured toward the other car seat. “You mind?” she asked.
I wanted to say yes, but the look on Alex’s face—scrunched up and lopsided—kept me from being difficult on principle. I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door, and slid out of the car. I was halfway through liberating Alex when my mind caught up with my body enough to wonder where here was.
The air was crisp and cool for early summer and smelled like snow in my nose, even though there wasn’t a hint of white on the stretch of grass under my feet. Hoisting Alex into my arms, I turned and looked away from the car, and the way the earth stretched out before me—green and flat and untouched—threw me back.
Turning slowly, I took in the 360 view. There was a large, wooden building up ahead of us—a restaurant, or maybe an inn—and from the distance, I could see a crooked sign hanging over a small porch but couldn’t make out the words. Other, smaller buildings dotted the horizon, looking like they’d been carved from the land itself. There were scattered trees, and in the distance, I could see a denser forest and a hint of blue. Water. Possibly a lake.
And that was the exact second I realized where we were—and who lived in Montana.
Sure enough, as Ali and I moved toward the largest building, the sign came more clearly into view and a man—tall, with a scruffy beard and a deceptively unassuming air—came out onto the porch.
“The Wayfarer,” I said, reading the sign.
“Did I not mention that this was where we were coming?” Ali asked.
“No. You neglected that detail.”
“Oh, right. Because we weren’t talking.”
Sometimes, Ali could be just as much of a brat as I was—the downfall of having a guardian barely twice my age.
“Ali,” the man on the porch greeted her.
“Mitch,” she returned, her tone more or less identical to his—mild, warm, and unsurprised.
“These your little ones?” Mitch asked, his eyes going to the twins.
Ali nodded. “Kaitlin and Alexander. They’re almost four months.”
“Little girl likes her wolf,” Mitch said with a smile. “She’s growing faster than her brother.”
Ali blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes, and Katie, as if she knew exactly what the adults were talking about, arched her back, her pupils dilating.
“Oh, no, little missy,” Ali said. “You wait until Mama’s got you out of these clothes and—”
Katie’s body trembled with the pre-Change, and Mitch came to Ali’s rescue.
“Here,” he said. “I’ll take her.”
Katie went to him willingly, and for a moment, it was like she’d forgotten about changing altogether, which was a minor miracle that wouldn’t last. Since the day she was born, Katie had never been this long in human form, and now—with the wilderness spread out before us—her urge to Shift would win out, without question or doubt. It was only a matter of time.
“Bryn,” Mitch greeted me. He didn’t look twice at my battered face. He didn’t seem surprised that we were here.
He knew.
I felt like I was back at the Crescent in front of the pack, stripping down my mental defenses, letting them in just so they could beat me later.
Screw that.
What had happened was no one’s business but mine.
“Hey, Mr. Mitchell,” I said.
“Mitch,” the man corrected gruffly, but he had to have known it was useless. Something about him always kept me from calling him by his preferred name. Maybe it was the fact that though he was a part of our pack, he visited the stronghold rarely.
Or maybe it was because he was Lake’s dad.
“Is Lake …?”