DARKMOON

The Cain Chronicles: Episode 5

SM Reine

Copyright © 2012 SM Reine

Published by Red Iris Books

SERIES BY SM REINE

The Cain Chronicles

The Seasons of the Moon

The Descent Series

For Gen.

PRELUDE

Labor

Rylie staggered through the forest. The mud squelched between her toes and sucked her heels into the mire with every step. She wasn’t sure how long she had been running anymore—all she could think was that she needed to stay on her feet, keeping moving, try to escape.

A contraction struck her hard, and it was like being squeezed from her head to her toes. She gasped and braced herself against a tree as her vision blurred.

The wind picked up, and she could smell danger on the breeze.

Hunters. They were coming for her.

Her vision cleared long enough for her to climb down a valley filled with rocks. A tiny waterfall trickled from a brook above, making the stones slick with moss and moisture. There was a shadowy place at the bottom of the valley, and that was where she rode out the next contraction, fighting not to make a sound. Each one was worse than the last—longer and more intense. She tried to breathe and relax and get the contractions to slow.

But there wasn’t enough relaxing or breathing in the world to stop the contractions now.

Rylie was alone in the wilderness with hunters on her trail, and she was about to give birth…whether she was ready or not.

ONE

The New Status Quo

Six months earlier.

It was seven o’clock at night on a cold December evening, and the news was bad. Seth sat in the living room with Levi rigid beside him. Neither had moved for ten minutes. The others weren’t any cheerier: Bekah was slumped against the wall, Scott and Gwyn were by the window, and nobody breathed as they watched a familiar face give a speech on the TV.

“Evil is real,” said Tate Peterson. His hair was spiked in the front, his eyes were clear, and he wore a three-piece suit. His knuckles were white as he gripped the podium in front of him.

Cameras flashed. He swallowed hard and glanced at his note cards.

“Evil is real,” he said again. “I’ve seen it myself. Evil took my mother—a respected county commissioner—and now evil has taken my grandfather, too. The man that you all know as Senator Peterson.”

Another pause, more shuffling cards.

“Evil comes in many forms. There’s evil in the hearts of men. The kind of evil that makes families fight, or forces us to commit crimes. I was a troubled kid. I knew that kind of trouble intimately before I found God.” He looked straight into the camera. “But there is a more literal evil in the darkness, too. It doesn’t care if you smoke pot or engage in homosexual behavior. There are creatures that want your blood, life, and soul. A thousand different kinds of demons: incubi, strigoi, mara.” Tate’s eyes narrowed. “Werewolves.”

Levi stood in a swift motion, haloed by furious energy. “Tate,” he growled, as if he thought his ex-boyfriend would be able to hear him through the TV.

Scott reached for his arm, but Levi jerked away and stormed out of the room. His father moved to follow. Bekah held up a hand.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I’ve got it.”

Tate was still talking as Bekah followed her twin brother out of the house. Seth barely heard the rest of the speech, but he didn’t think the details mattered anyway. The sentiment was perfectly clear.

A hand appeared from off-frame and pushed Tate gently aside. A new man took the podium as the camera zoomed back to show both of them. This speaker was older than Tate, and not nearly as handsome; he kind of looked like an ape in a suit. He had introduced himself at the beginning of the event as Gary Zettel, secretary for the brand new Office of Preternatural Affairs.

“Thank you for sharing that with us, Mr. Peterson,” Secretary Zettel said, a totally inauthentic smile glued to his lips.

It had been eighteen hours since a senator had been assassinated at his office in Washington, allegedly by some kind of demon. Tate’s speech laid out everything for the public. The truth that most people chose to ignore, and which most supernatural creatures tried to conceal from the public.

The United States government had just destroyed centuries of secrecy in one fifteen minute speech.

Only the blast of cold air blowing through the living room managed to draw Seth’s attention from the TV. Stephanie Whyte, doctor and witch, shut the door behind her, unwound her scarf, and hung her jacket on the hook.

Gwyn grabbed the remote and lowered the volume. “Thank goodness you’re back. Did you get everything?”

Stephanie lifted a plastic bag. “I did. Where is she?”

“In our bedroom,” Seth said, queasy with nerves. It wasn’t from the press conference. He had even bigger worries than that. “Should I come with you?”

“I’d like to talk to her on my own first. Wait out here.” Stephanie tucked the bag under her arm and disappeared down the hall.

Seth dropped to the couch again, and Gwyn sat beside him. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, rubbing a cool hand over his arm. He forced a smile.

“Thanks, Gwyn. You’re probably right.”

Secretary Zettel continued to speak in front of the blue curtains with Tate hovering at his back.

“Evil is real, but there’s no reason for the American people to be afraid.” He removed the microphone from its stand and paced across the stage, forcing the camera to follow him. “Yesterday’s attack represented more than just an assassination on a respected senator. It’s an attack on our very freedom. Our nation has come face-to-face with evil, and we will respond from the core of America’s good heart.”

As he walked across the stage, Seth glimpsed people standing behind Tate. The press conference was being staged outside of Senator Peterson’s home, which meant that the rest of the surviving members of the Peterson family were there: Tate’s dad, his aunt, and his newly-widowed grandmother. There were also a cluster of men in black suits. Seth almost skimmed right over them until one of the faces caught his eye.

“Wait,” he said, reaching for the remote. “Are you recording this, Gwyn?”

“Recording it? With what?” she asked.

Seth punched several buttons, but nothing happened. They had canceled their satellite subscription when they thought that the entire pack was moving to California, so their DVR didn’t work anymore.

“Watch the background,” he said, crouching in front of the screen and pointing at the corner.

“What are we watching for?” Scott asked.

“Just watch.”

Seth held his breath as he waited for Secretary Zettel to pace in the other direction again. And there he was: the man among the people that Seth had initially assumed were Secret Service. He was only on-screen for an instant before the speech ended and it cut back to the newsroom.

“Jesus,” Gwyn breathed. “Was that…?”

“I don’t understand. I didn’t see anything,” Scott said.

It felt like Seth’s heart was going to pound out of his chest.

Those hadn’t been Secret Service. The black suits, black shirts, and Bluetooth earpieces were all hallmarks of the Union.

And his half-brother, Cain, had been standing among them.

Rylie gnawed on her thumbnail as she paced in the twelve foot by twelve foot box that was her bedroom. She hadn’t stepped outside the door for hours. Not since Abel had claimed to be responsible for her pregnancy at the wedding.

She couldn’t face the awkward silences and judgment in the eyes of her werewolf pack. Nobody had to speak for her to know that everyone thought that she had cheated on Seth.

It seemed so stupid to be hung up on that when they had just defeated Cain, but she was. She didn’t even care that she had witnessed her evil mother-in-law die a second time. All she cared was that her pack thought their Alpha was a slut. Her cheeks burned with the shame of it.

She jumped when her door creaked open, but it wasn’t Bekah trying to console her again. It was Stephanie Whyte, who was her usual brisk self. “Heck of a night, isn’t it? Lie down and expose your stomach, please.”

The nonexistent bedside manner probably should have bothered Rylie, but it was comforting, for once. Stephanie couldn’t have cared less if Rylie was sleeping with Seth or Abel or Seth and Abel, or every single werewolf in the world. All that Stephanie cared about was doing her job.

Rylie stretched out flat on her back in bed, lifted her shirt above her navel, and wiggled her jeans lower on her hips. “What are you going to do?”

Stephanie dragged the desk chair to her bedside and sat down. She squirted a dollop of hand sanitizer onto her fingers. “I’m just going to see if I can feel your fundus. This won’t hurt.”

“My what-us?”

“The top of your uterus. It will help me date your pregnancy.”

Rylie shut her eyes and tried to remember how to breathe. My pregnancy. It had been almost two weeks since she had taken the pregnancy test and saw those two pink lines, but she still wasn’t used to the idea of it.

Stephanie palpated Rylie’s lower abdomen, eyes going distant with thought.

“Well?” Rylie asked after a few seconds of silence.

“What’s the date of your last menstrual period?”

“I don’t know. I don’t keep track.”

She pressed a little harder, but not painfully so. “Hmm. Well, when was the last time you changed into a wolf? Three months? Four?”

“It hasn’t been that long. I skipped a few moons, but…two months? Maybe less?”

“You can pull your shirt down.” Stephanie sat back, steepled her fingers, and gave Rylie a thoughtful look. “The average werewolf can’t sustain a pregnancy because of frequent, violent physical changes. Did you know that?”

“Yeah. Seth told me that I’d never have a baby,” she said.

“So I imagine you weren’t even using condoms, were you? Don’t answer that. I don’t need to know.” The older woman heaved a sigh. “Look, Rylie, you’re not an average werewolf. You’re an Alpha. And you feel like you might already be four months pregnant.” Rylie’s jaw dropped, but Stephanie wasn’t done. “Your fundal height is almost to your navel. You aren’t really showing because first time mothers have strong abdominal muscles.”

If Rylie hadn’t been in bed, she thought she would have fallen over. Dogs only gestated for sixty days. Was she going to have a dog pregnancy? “What does that mean? Does that mean I’m growing supernaturally fast? Do werewolves do that?”

“We don’t know anything yet. It’s too soon to worry.” Stephanie grabbed the plastic bag she had brought off the floor. “You’re hyperventilating, Rylie. Relax.” She punctuated those words by pulling out several color-coded vials and a needle. A very long needle.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s so I can draw your blood and make sure things are progressing normally. We’ll have to treat this as a high-risk pregnancy…assuming that you plan on keeping it.” She snapped on blue latex gloves.

Rylie was grateful for the surge of anger she felt at that suggestion. It was a nice change from the utter terror. “Of course I’m keeping it! What kind of person do you think I am?”

Stephanie wiped down the inside of Rylie’s elbow with an alcohol swab. “I think you’re the kind of person that turns furry twice a month. We’re not even certain that you can carry the baby to term, or that it will be healthy. This isn’t a simple situation, and I would understand if you chose to abort.”

That was such an ugly word: “Abort.” Rylie felt sick again.

“Seth’s the father. I’ve only ever had sex with him.”

“Right,” Stephanie said.

A sharp prick, and the needle was in. Rylie watched in sick fascination as the blood spurted into the vial with every beat of her heart. Once the first was filled, Stephanie swapped it out, and she ended up filling four vials. She pressed cotton against the needle’s insertion point and withdrew it.

There was no need for a bandage. Rylie healed instantly.

“I can send one of these to a lab for paternity testing,” Stephanie said, turning the chair toward the desk to label the vials.

Rylie sat up, rubbing her arm. “Are you listening to me? I don’t need paternity testing. I would never cheat on Seth!”

Aside from the one time she had kissed Abel, anyway. But kissing didn’t produce babies.

“As I said, you’re not a typical situation. If you think that there’s any chance—even a small one—that you might have mated with Abel while in wolf form, then I recommend a paternity test. It would be good for your peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Rylie groaned and let her head bump against the wall.

Squeezing her eyes tight, she nodded once.

Stephanie dropped the vials in an envelope. “I’ll contact the hospital and arrange a dating ultrasound as soon as possible.” She removed her gloves and threw them in the trash. “I think it would be best if I performed the scan myself.”

“You don’t think you’ll look inside and see a puppy, do you?” She meant it as a joke, but Stephanie didn’t laugh.

“I’ll tell Seth he can visit you again,” she said on her way out of the room.

Rylie grabbed the wastebasket and threw up for the third time that day.

She had been having morning sickness for a while, and it wasn’t getting any easier. It always left her feeling dizzy and weak—almost as bad as silver poisoning. But Rylie could try to purge silver from her system. There was no purging a baby.

Assuming you plan on keeping it, Stephanie had said.

The suggestion of abortion angered Rylie, but it wasn’t the first time she had thought about it. Whether Seth or Abel was the father, it was going to be Eleanor’s grandchild. Eleanor was pure evil, and so was her oldest son, Cain, who was also a werewolf. And since there was no chance that Rylie was going to produce human offspring, the odds of making a baby like Cain were pretty high.

She buried her face in her arms. Maybe her baby was going to be a monster, but Rylie couldn’t kill it. She couldn’t.

The door opened, and Seth entered. “We have a problem,” he said.

“I know.” Rylie’s chin quivered.

“You already know?” Seth looked puzzled. “Were you watching the news in here?”

“Huh? I was talking about this.” She placed her hands over her stomach. “What are we going to do?”

The shock vanished from Seth’s face and was immediately replaced by sympathy. “Oh, baby.” He sat at her side and wrapped his arms around her. Tears spilled out of her eyes and splashed down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Seth.”

He pulled back to look at her. “Sorry?”

“I didn’t tell you. I can’t…I just…”

He wiped her tears away with the palm of his hand. “I just wish you had told me so that you wouldn’t have to deal with it alone. I’m not angry. Just surprised.” Seth gave a shaky laugh. “I didn’t think I’d ever be a dad.”

His hand trailed down her stomach and rested on her belly button, and Rylie put her hand over his. There was only a small, soft lump under her shirt. “Stephanie thinks that I might be growing too fast,” she said, and she couldn’t keep her voice from shaking.

Seth responded by kissing her, slow and deep, without moving his hand. Even though she had been throwing up, he still kissed her like he meant it.

“What were you saying about the news when you came in?” Rylie asked, grateful for a distraction.

“Forget it. What about…” He trailed off, seeming to choke on the words he wanted to say. He cleared his throat and tried again. “What about Abel? I mean, there’s no chance, right? There’s no way that Abel could be…”

This time, when his words failed, he gave up speaking. But Rylie couldn’t respond.

When she remained silent, he kissed her again.

“Whatever happens,” he murmured against her lips, “I’m going to be here for you. We’ll do this together. Okay?”

Rylie rested her head on his chest. “Okay.”

TWO

Zombies

The news of Senator Peterson’s assassination followed Abel everywhere he went in the city. Tate’s speech for the Office of Preternatural Affairs was getting played and replayed by all of the major networks, so Abel was getting sick of seeing that asswipe’s face around every corner.

Abel couldn’t make people shut up about that stupid assassination, so he took care of the problem in his favorite way: by going to a bar and knocking back a gallon of cheap whiskey.

Three hours later, Abel wasn’t drunk, and Tate was still being displayed on the TV in the corner. “Evil is real,” he said, looking so damn earnest. Hadn’t that kid been a chilled out pothead a couple of years back? What went wrong with him since then?

The news switched to showing a couple of talking heads with perfectly-coiffed hair. Bemused, Abel watched them try to explain what a strigoi was to the general public. It was a kind of Greek vampire, he knew, but they were talking about biology and genetics and mutations. Morons, all of them.

Everyone else in the bar was watching the TV, transfixed by the new reality unfolding in front of them. A haggard woman with a back-combed perm was praying over a rosary in the corner. Two college guys in a booth were talking loudly about government lies. Everyone else seemed quietly worried. The information they were being fed was definitely bizarre, but something about the White House logo on the podium loaned a little credibility to the incredible.

What would all of those people have done if they realized that a werewolf had been trying to get drunk with them all night?

Abel stood and pulled a wad of twenties out of his pocket. “What a freaking mess.”

“No kidding, brother,” said another drunk patron, who did a double-take at the sight of Abel’s scarred face.

“Want your change?” the bartender asked as she collected Abel’s cash.

“Hell yes, I do. I’m not just standing here for this dive’s ambiance.”

She went to the register, returned with three dollars and ninety-six cents, and muttered, “Tightwad.”

He stuffed the change in his pocket and headed out onto the cold city streets.

Scott Whyte had sent Abel into the city to pick up supplies for spell-casting. Apparently, the old geezer was still hoping that he could do necromancy, even though he was a zombie himself. But Abel knew that wasn’t really why he had been sent on an errand that required over an hour of driving in each direction. It was because the doctor was going to look at Rylie, and nobody wanted Abel there for that.

“Screw them,” he muttered at nothing as he stalked up the street. A group of people were clustered by the window of an electronics store to watch the news on six different flat screen TVs, and Abel had to step into the street to get around them.

Tate had picked a hell of a time to drop that bomb on everyone. The pundits were talking about what the new Office of Preternatural Affairs would mean. Registration? New laws? Rounding up all the “evil” and shooting it?

Shitty time to be a pregnant werewolf.

Abel headed down to a corner drugstore and gave Scott’s list to the guy behind the counter. The pharmacy only had a few of the items, so he had to go to the organic grocery store to find the rest. All in all, it cost almost a hundred bucks. He had just barely enough money left after drinking the rest of Scott’s cash away.

Abel tossed the grocery bags in the backseat of the Chevelle and headed out of the city with the windows rolled down. He hit evening traffic immediately. The bridge was backed up all the way downtown.

He blasted classic rock for a while, but once AC/DC faded away, Tate’s voice piped over his speakers. “Evil is real. I’ve seen it.”

“Shut up, Tate,” Abel said, punching the button for the next preset station.

“—of Preternatural Affairs claims that the assassination of Senator Peterson—”

Next station.

“Demons? Werewolves? Are you kidding me? It’s kind of early for April Fool’s Day.”

Abel gave up on the radio.

Traffic finally broke up enough for him to get moving. He swerved into the fast lane, ignored the blaring horns, and took the first exit off of the bridge. His headlights cut through the darkness like twin moonbeams on the slushy pavement. The tires whooshed through the snow, mud splattered on the side of his Chevelle, and the windshield wipers whisked rhythmically. But none of that was loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

It was a long drive back to the ranch. The gate was locked when he arrived, and he had to get out and climb to the other side to open it.

He parked between Gwyneth’s truck and Stephanie’s Lexus sedan. Before he cut the headlights, he glimpsed figures moving in the shadows behind the house.

Abel sniffed the air. Werewolves. Definitely werewolves.

When he approached, Levi’s voice became clearer. Judging by the kid’s body language, he was arguing with his twin sister, Bekah. He poured stress hormones into the air.

“That wouldn’t solve anything,” Bekah said, following Levi as he paced down to the apple tree and back. “Violence only leads to more—”

“Maybe violence is what we need!”

“Guess this means you were watching your boyfriend on the news,” Abel said, unable to control a smirk.

Levi flipped the bird at him and stalked into the darkness. As soon as he was outside the ring of light from the kitchen window, he stripped off his shirt, changed into his wolf form in an explosion of fur and blood, and shot into the night. His howl echoed over the hills as he fled.

Bekah leaned against the wall with a groan. “What were they thinking? ‘Office of Preternatural Affairs.’ What does that even mean?”

“It means that our miserable lives are gonna get a lot more miserable. Whatever. How’s Rylie?”

“I think Stephanie’s talking to her again.” Bekah caught his arm when he tried to pass her. “You can’t go in there. You know that.”

He loomed over her. Abel was at least a foot taller than Bekah, and twice as wide, but she didn’t look intimidated. “What are you going to do to stop me?”

“I’m going to appeal to your sense of decency. Don’t look at me like that, I know you must have one. Give Rylie some breathing room. I’ve watched you guys together, and I know that she loves you; she’ll find you when she’s ready.”

Abel gave a low growl. “Your miserable attempt at a pep talk won’t fix anything, so save your breath and shut your mouth.”

Bekah threw her hands in the air.

“Fine. Then let’s see what we can do about our zombie problem, huh?”

Scott Whyte had been confined to the cellar beneath the Gresham house for several days, and it had quickly turned from storage for canned goods and camping equipment into a witch’s workspace. He had been keeping busy during his incarceration, too: one of the crates had been converted into an altar, complete with representations of the Mother Goddess and Horned God woven from dry grass; a small circle of power had been painted on the floor in strawberry preserves; and the shelves were filled with crystals and odd rocks.

Abel glared at the giant wooden pentacle hanging on the wall. Scott was a big fan of Satanic imagery.

Bekah caught his look and jabbed a knuckle in his ribs. “I know what you’re thinking. Stop it,” she whispered.

“Like hell you do!” he hissed back, jerking away from her.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re thinking that we should have known Scott was bad because of the pentagrams. How many times do we have to tell you there’s nothing inherently evil about witchcraft?”

Okay, so she had known what he was thinking.

“But he did turn out to be evil,” Abel pressed.

Bekah rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother arguing. Everyone was pretty stung by Scott’s betrayal, even though he had insisted that he didn’t think resurrecting one dead woman would hurt anybody. His youngest daughter seemed happy to accept that excuse, but Abel still thought it was bullshit.

“This will work for the spells I have in mind,” Scott announced, breaking the tension between Abel and Bekah. He was seated at his altar, and being watched by Gwyn closely—very closely. She had her rifle and everything.

The cellar doors creaked open, and Stephanie ducked inside. “What’s the verdict?” Her hair was pulled back in its usual tidy bun, but her clothes were rumpled. She looked frazzled.

Scott was already mixing something with a mortar and pestle. “If I can heal my cranial wound, we’ll know if I can keep doing magic or not.” The doctor reached him in less than a second and snatched it out of his hands. Stephanie scrutinized the herbs, smelling them and stirring the bowl with her finger. “It’s just lotus,” he said.

“Forgive me if I don’t trust you, Father. Learning that you’ve lied about your abilities for my entire life has made me a little testy.” She set his tools back down. “You can continue.”

Scott glanced around the room. “Are you all going to stand here and watch me put the spell together?”

“Yep,” Gwyn said, stroking her rifle like it was a kitten. She was starting to smell a little funny, like stale flesh and graveyards. “We sure are.”

He pushed his hat back to rub the gunshot wound on his forehead, then got down to work.

It took a long, boring hour to prepare the spell. When Scott finished preparing his ingredients, Stephanie took them from him again. “I’ll cast the circle for you,” she said.

“Why?” Bekah asked without looking up from her phone. Her thumbs were a blur as they flew over the screen.

“Whomever makes the circle controls the spell,” Stephanie explained as she finished constructing the circle using the messy ring that Scott had drawn in jam. “I’ll be able to see what he’s doing, and if he tries anything strange, I’ll know immediately.”

Scott hung back, looking more than a little insulted, as his daughter finished putting everything together. Once she was finished, he sat on the floor inside the circle.

Abel never paid attention to the witches at work, so he wasn’t sure how he expected the spell to progress from there. Would Scott sacrifice a kitten? Smear blood all over his face? Speak in tongues?

None of that happened. Scott did hold a small animal skull in one hand, but aside from that, all he did was sit with his eyes closed.

His eyes opened in two seconds. “I can’t do it.”

“Are you even trying?” Abel asked. “You’re just sitting there.”

Scott glared at him. When his forehead wrinkled, it made the gunshot wound on his forehead pucker. “Witchcraft is subtle. I must be able to access a wellspring of power within my core to do any magic, but even though I can feel that it’s there, I cannot reach it.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “Being dead probably doesn’t help.”

“I think I might be able to channel my abilities with the help of a strong witch.” Scott faced Stephanie. “If we could speak to Cain, maybe he would know someone else among the Apple—”

“No way,” Bekah said.

“I agree with her,” Abel said. “Guess it had to happen eventually.”

Scott scuffed part of the circle on the floor, then started putting things back onto his altar. He slammed the mortar and pestle on a shelf. “Do you want me to come back to life or not?” he snapped.

Stephanie took a bottle from him before he could strike that against something hard, too. “You can’t talk to Cain or anybody with the Apple, and that’s that. Now stop being so dramatic.”

“Dramatic? Dramatic? She shot me!” He pointed at Gwyn, who gave him the kind of look that said she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

“Why can’t you do it?” Bekah asked the doctor. “You cast the circle.”

“She’s too weak,” Scott said, yanking the bottle out of her grip.

Stephanie didn’t look offended. She picked up the remaining crystals and the animal skeleton and set them on his altar. “It’s true. I’m fine with ritual, but my abilities in magic are very limited. If we need a powerful witch…” Her hands stilled over the grass figure of the Horned God. “Well, I might have an old friend that could help us with that.”

It took Rylie a long time to fall asleep after her appointment with Stephanie. Seth stayed in bed with her until her breathing grew deep and even. Then he extricated himself from the sheets, grabbed his cell phone from the desk, and slipped outside.

Seth hesitated on the snowy front step. Most of the wedding massacre had been cleaned up, but the gazebo was still standing, and the fairy lights they had used to illuminate the aisle were still glowing. It was bright enough that he could see the places they had tried to shovel snow over the blood stains.

He wandered down the aisle, clenching his cell phone in his fist.

If he closed his eyes, he could still see Rylie in her wedding dress with the long white train, the red highlights, and her hair done in curls. She had been more beautiful as a bride than he had ever seen her before. Seth hadn’t been happy ever since Cain came into their lives, but in that moment…everything had been perfect.

And then his brothers ruined everything.

Seth passed the gift table that he had toppled while fighting Cain and sat down on one of the few chairs that was still upright. He took several deep breaths to calm himself before speed-dialing Yasir.

Two rings, and the answering machine picked up.

“This is Seth,” he said. “I watched the speech tonight. I think—I think I saw Cain there. I don’t know if I’m imagining things or if something has gone wrong. I need you to check and see if he made it into the Union’s prison. Give me a call back.”

He hung up and pocketed his phone. He had barely pulled his hand away when his pocket buzzed with a responding text message.

The number belonged to Yasir, and all it said was, “Cain is secure in prison.” That was fast.

If it hadn’t been Cain behind Secretary Zettel, that was one problem he wouldn’t have to worry about. But it still left him with the issue of what to do about his other brother, his fiancée, and a world that suddenly knew werewolves existed. Yasir’s confirmation didn’t make him feel any better at all.

Seth heard a creak, and he realized that the cellar door had been opened. Pale yellow light splashed onto the snow, broken into halves by the shadow of someone tall emerging.

Abel.

The sight of him choked Seth with a powerful mix of anger and jealousy, so strong and sudden that he felt like he had a monster of his very own living in his chest.

Abel strode toward the Chevelle, and Seth moved to intercept him.

“Hey!”

His brother turned at the sound of his voice, but when he saw Seth, he rolled his eyes. “What now?”

“What were you doing in the cellar?” Seth asked.

“Trying to fix the zombies.”

“I probably wouldn’t call Scott and Gwyn zombies.”

Abel snorted. “You also wouldn’t call me your competition, but just because you don’t want to say something doesn’t mean it’s not true.” And there it was, laid out in the open. Abel continued walking, crunching through inch-deep snow, and Seth hurried to catch up with him.

“You really think that you’re my competition?”

“No, not really,” Abel said. He smirked. “But I’m trying to be fair to you.”

Seth clenched his jaw so hard that it felt like his teeth might crack. “We have a new werewolf coming soon. I want you to pick him up from the airport.”

“Why? So you can get me out of the picture?” He didn’t wait for Seth to respond. He flung open the driver’s side door of the Chevelle. “I’m not doing it this time. Tell the newbie to rent a damn car.”

Abel sat at the wheel, but Seth grabbed the door before he could close it. He had been trying not to talk about Rylie, but it all came spilling out before he could stop himself. “You need to stay away from Rylie. Don’t talk to her, don’t look at her, just—don’t go anywhere near her. She doesn’t need the stress right now.”

“Fine,” Abel said.

Seth had been braced for a fight, so the response shocked him. “Fine?”

Abel’s lips peeled back. It almost could have passed for a grin if his golden eyes hadn’t been gleaming with barely-restrained anger. “I won’t have to go anywhere near her. She’s my mate. She’ll come looking for me.”

He wrested the door from Seth’s grip, slammed it shut, and peeled down the road.

THREE

Beta

The entire pack treated Rylie differently once they knew she was pregnant. Whenever she stepped into a room, the conversation died off instantly. People stared at her stomach. And none of the wolves seemed to want to talk with her except Bekah.

“They’re just worried about what this will mean for the pack,” she explained a few days later while they took an easy walk along the highway. “They’re worrying that you won’t be able to control everyone on the full and new moons while you’re pregnant.”

Rylie somehow doubted that was the only reason they stared at her, but it was still a legitimate worry. She had been kind of freaking out about it herself. “It shouldn’t change anything,” she said, rubbing her arms to warm them. Now that the morning sickness was starting to subside, she always felt weird and prickly, like the wolf was restless inside of her skin. “I’m still the Alpha.”

“So maybe you should tell everyone that. I think everyone could use a pep talk after the wedding, and the whole Office of Whatever the Crap is Going On.”

Give a speech? In front of a bunch of werewolves that thought she was a philandering fiancée? Rylie would have preferred to bury herself in a snowdrift without food of water until the spring thaw.

“Maybe,” she said.

Even though neither of them was winded, they kept the walk short. Werewolves could run for hours without getting tired, but Rylie was avoiding the town. She had gone to sleep one night looking bloated and woke up the next day with a big belly. It was like the baby had turned around to jam its feet against her navel. There was no mistaking her bump for anything but a pregnancy now, and she didn’t want to have to explain it to anyone. Especially not when Tate’s speech was still being played nonstop.

After just an hour, they returned to the ranch. Rylie’s mind spun with thoughts of speeches and cheating and failed weddings.

Levi was on the hill outside the house, and he had an audience. Analizia, Pyper, and Daven watched with rapt attention as he paced in front of them. “We’ll have to band together to survive this,” he said, speaking so loudly that Rylie could hear him from the mailbox by the gate. She had never seen him so animated before. “It’s more important than ever that our pack be united and strong.”

The onlookers shifted, and Rylie realized that Trevin was among them. Her heart plummeted. He was one of the only wolves she was certain to be loyal to her.

Bekah caught Rylie’s expression. “He’s just talking to them.”

“Yeah, like how a general ‘just talks’ to his troops before marching to war,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Rylie picked up her pace as she headed for the front door, hoping to pass by Levi’s speech without attracting notice. It totally failed. Every single head turned toward her as she passed.

Bekah got to the door first and held it open for her. “I’ll be inside for yoga in a few minutes,” she said.

Rylie never made it to the shower. Instead, she paced in the living room, fuming silently.

Abel had warned her that Levi was getting big ideas about what role he played in the pack, but Rylie had assumed that he wouldn’t challenge her authority while she was around.

Rylie ran a hand over the lump below her navel. She had a feeling she knew exactly what was making Levi bolder.

The door opened, and Crystal walked in, making Rylie’s day instantly worse.

“How was your walk?” Crystal asked. She was a leggy, dark-skinned girl who only ever wore tiny shorts and tank tops that flashed way too much cleavage. And the way she pronounced her name was irritating: Crystal, emphasis on the last part, as if she was a fancy drink.

“It was fine,” Rylie said, folding her arms over her own modest chest.

“Great. So you gonna go kick Levi’s ass or what? He’s talking to the pack like he owns it. You need to show him that he’s not the boss.”

Rylie’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re on my side?”

“I’m sure as heck not on Levi’s. Do you know that he threw out all of my books at the other sanctuary and claimed it was because of toxic mold? Can you believe that?” Crystal shot a nasty glare at the door, as if she could see Levi through it. “Five year old paperbacks don’t get freaking toxic mold!”

“You’re siding with me because of…books.”

“I’m siding with you because you’re the Alpha, and Levi’s a dillweed. But just because someone bestowed you with magical wolf powers doesn’t mean that the pack can’t be taken away from you. Go talk with him.”

The thought of publicly confronting Levi was too much. A wave of sudden, powerful nausea surged in Rylie.

She grabbed a trashcan and threw up every bite of the balanced, nutritious breakfast that Gwyn had forced her to eat that morning.

“Oh, jeez,” Crystal said, hovering a few feet away. “Should I get Stephanie?”

Rylie was saved from having to answer by Bekah’s entrance, which was accompanied by a blast of cold air and snow flurries. “He’s done,” she announced, tossing her gloves on the couch. “I told him to bug off and pull the dictator crap somewhere else.” Bekah finally noticed that Rylie was on the floor. “Are you okay?”

She got to her feet with the help of the coffee table.

“I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” she snapped.

Rylie stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Bekah didn’t speak to Rylie again for a few days. Rylie hadn’t realized how much everyone was avoiding her until Bekah was, too, and it was very lonely being in a house full of people where only Seth and Gwyn would talk to her. She desperately wanted to hang out with Abel, since he had become her go-to guy for relaxing while Seth was at college, but he was nowhere in sight.

So Rylie begged morning sickness for a week and hid in her bedroom to avoid dealing with Levi. Unfortunately, boredom only made the loneliness worse. When Bekah showed up with exercise mats and a book on prenatal yoga that weekend, Rylie was actually happy to see her.

“Have you been thinking about names yet?” Bekah asked, folding her legs underneath her in the lotus position.

Rylie followed suit. “Not yet.”

“Oh yeah? That’s kind of weird. I picked out names for my future kids in middle school.”

Considering that Rylie had spent middle school panicking over the idea of getting her period in phys ed and looking down on boys that hadn’t hit their growth spurts yet, she was pretty sure that Bekah was the weird one in this conversation.

“What names did you pick?” Rylie asked.

“If I have a boy, I’m going to name him Cole. I think I’d want to use Raven for a girl. Don’t use either of those, okay?”

Cole and Raven? No chance of that happening.

“Okay,” Rylie said.

Bekah turned the page on the yoga book. “Let’s try this position.” She lifted her arms in a graceful arc over her head, touching her fingertips together and leaning to one side. Rylie mimicked the position.

“Is it working?” Rylie asked, bent so far to the side that her hands almost touched her bedroom window.

“You should be breathing, not talking.”

“I can’t talk without breathing, Bekah.”

The other girl rolled her eyes and dropped her arms. “You’re not into this at all, are you?” Rylie smiled sheepishly in response, and Bekah snapped the book closed. “Okay! So are you hungry?” Bekah whipped the aluminum foil off of a tray that she had brought with her, revealing enough cold chicken and boiled eggs to feed the entire pack—or one pregnant werewolf. “Look good? It’s all the essential proteins a growing puppy needs.”

Rylie winced as she grabbed an egg. “Don’t call it a puppy. That’s creepy.” She toyed with her food for a minute without biting, even though her stomach was growling. “What should I do about Levi? He’s making a play for dominance, and I can’t just let him take over.”

Bekah tugged the ponytail holder out of her bushy curls. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s just trying to be helpful. I mean, you said it yourself: you’re not up for pep talks.”

“But if someone’s going to take over for me while I’m, you know, on maternity leave—well, it’s not Levi. Abel’s always been the one who helps me.” Even if she hadn’t seen him once since the afternoon of the wedding.

“Levi’s not taking over,” Bekah insisted, fluffing out her honey-colored hair. There was a dent in it from the ponytail holder. “Anyway, Abel’s busy. He’s been running errands for Scott.” She took a piece of cold chicken from the plate. “Did you know he misses you?”

Rylie blinked. “You mean Abel?”

“Yeah. I’ve tried talking to him once or twice.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you can imagine how well that goes over. But even when he’s not talking, I watch him, and he spends most of his time watching you. Maybe you should talk to him.”

Rylie took a big bite, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “Maybe I should.”

FOUR

The Tour

Levi spent hours poring over the Office of Preternatural Affairs’s internet presence, including their United States government-branded website and social media pages—each of which already had several hundred thousand followers. He signed up for every list he could find: text message notifications, Facebook, email, everything.

He told himself that it was a matter of intelligence. He also told himself that his new obsession had nothing to do with the fact that Tate had become the poster boy for the OPA, as well as the face of the victims of “preternatural crime.”

But even Levi knew he was lying to himself.

He sat at the dining room table with his tablet and scrolled through the news of the day. The OPA had sponsored new legislation with a lot of ugly components—things that would completely strip people like Levi and his family of their privacy.

It looked like the Facebook followers were excited about it. Tate was even on tour to drum up support for the bill called H.R. 2076.

“You asshole,” Levi told the photo of Tate on the front page of the OPA website.

Bekah entered and banged around the kitchen, washing dishes, wiping down counters, and generally being her usual, type-A self. The smell of cleaning fluids made Levi dizzy, but he tried to ignore her as he scanned the event calendar for Tate’s promotional tour. He would be stopping in a city just nine hours of driving away: Greenville.

It had been a long time since Levi caught up with his ex-boyfriend.

Bekah opened the fridge. “Want anything to eat, Levi?” She didn’t just smell like cleaning chemicals; she also smelled like herbs and death. She must have just come out of the cellar with Scott.

“I’m fine. How’s our scumball of a dad today?”

Something crashed. He almost jumped out of his chair until he realized that Bekah had slammed a Tupperware container on the table in front of him. “Don’t talk like that,” she said, glaring at him.

“Fine. I won’t talk about how our dad betrayed us and lied for years. That’s definitely the best way for us to fix this problem.” Levi dropped his tablet on the table and got up. “I’m going away for a couple of days.”

Bekah leaned around to peek at the screen, which was filled by Tate’s heavily-airbrushed features. “You’re not going to catch up with Tate’s tour, are you?”

“Is that a problem?”

“It depends.” She stepped in front of him before he could walk out the door. “If you’re going because you want to kick his ass, like you said the other night, then it’s definitely a problem. You’ll pull everything down on our heads.”

“No asses will be kicked,” Levi said. Silently, he added, None that I tell you about, anyway.

Bekah wasn’t fooled, and she was too fast for him to step around her. Every time he tried to move to the right or left, she darted in his path again. “The cops are watching for us now. Did you hear about what they did in San Francisco last week?”

Of course he had. Even if Levi hadn’t been obsessing about the OPA, there was no way he could have missed hearing about riots in the Castro. Cops had gone into clubs to clear out demons and claimed to pick up over sixty incubi. In the meantime, twenty-six humans had died, too.

“I’ll be careful. Nobody’s going to know that I’m a werewolf.”

“Just don’t go, Levi. It’s not safe.”

He snagged his coat out of the hallway and headed for the front door. “Watch the pack for me while I’m gone.”

Bekah rolled her eyes. “I can’t watch the pack for you. It’s not your pack. You know that, right?”

Levi jabbed her in the stomach with a finger. That was usually prelude to a good wrestling match—more often as wolves than humans—but this time, she only slapped him away. “It’s not my pack yet,” he corrected.

He grabbed his keys and left.

Levi underestimated how much time it would take to drive across the state in the middle of winter. He left with ample time to reach Tate’s speech and still managed to arrive in Greenville too late; the parking lot was filled by cars with icy windshields, and one whole side had been cordoned off for protesters bundled in puffy jackets and scarves.

He parked on the street a block away and passed the protesters. It was hard to tell what, exactly, they were trying to complain about. Some of them had signs referring to police brutality in San Francisco, but he saw at least one banner that said that the demon problem was actually an alien conspiracy.

Rolling his eyes, he kept walking past the police line and jogged up the stairs to push through the doors. Tate’s speech was reaching its emotional climax. There were a good twenty rows of folding chairs between Levi and the stage, and at least two hundred people watching; a lot of heads nodded in approval.

Even at that distance, with that many people between them, Levi could pick out the smell of Tate’s sweat and aftershave. He still used the same brand that he had in high school, although he wasn’t wearing as much now that he didn’t have to overpower the smell of marijuana.

Tate had always been handsome, but having a team dress and style him made a pretty big difference. He looked like an approachable young politician, with big eyes and an honest face. He could have been anyone’s brother, grandson, or next door neighbor. But he wasn’t just anyone’s grandson; he was related to the late Senator Peterson, and the crowd hung onto his every word.

“These creatures are everywhere,” Tate said. “They’re in our neighborhoods and schools. They’re at the bars downtown, lurking in the sewers, and waiting for us to drop our guards. But will we let them hurt us? Will we stand by and let them hurt our families?”

This was the guy that had made Levi contemplate leaving his adopted family so that they could run away together. And now he was preaching anti-werewolf legislation and talking about God’s mission.

As soon as Tate finished his speech, people stood and cheered, and Tate accepted their adulation with a wave of his hand and a radiant smile.

Levi ducked out of the doors again and headed around the back of the building.

Twin tour buses were parked on the adjacent street. They were massive, square, and painted like American flags. The nearest one had a slogan on the side facing him: “Our Country. Our Freedom. Our Safety.” Levi’s lip peeled over his teeth. Wasn’t it his freedom and country, too?

Tate and his entourage emerged from the back door, and Levi stepped into the shadow of the buses so he wouldn’t be spotted. He watched his ex-boyfriend join another group of people, all of whom smelled like expensive cologne. They discussed the event’s turnout for a few minutes, and then Tate said, “I’ll meet you guys in the buses soon. I have to make a call.”

He stepped away from the chatting crowd. A light flared as one of his entourage lit a cigarette, and the smell of tobacco wafted through the air.

Tate kept walking until he was out of range of the cigarette smoke before pulling out his cell phone, which left him standing next to an alley between an antique shop and bakery. Levi circled around the buses, avoided Tate’s entourage, and slipped behind his ex-boyfriend.

He grabbed Tate’s sleeve.

“Whoa!” Tate protested as Levi dragged him into an alley. His mouth opened wide to shout for help.

“Don’t yell,” Levi said. “It’s me.”

Tate’s face brightened with recognition. “Levi?” He took two steps forward, as if he was going to embrace Levi, and then thought better of it. “What are you doing here?”

“I was curious to hear your speech. This was the closest stop I could visit.”

Giving a shaky laugh, Tate jammed his hands into his pockets. “Man, you scared me. I thought you were a mugger or something. You just… You look different.”

While Tate had cleaned up and gone political, Levi had kind of gone in the opposite direction. His curly hair was all the way to his jaw now. He was also trying to grow a beard, although it was still pretty sparse, so he kept it trimmed to a goatee. Levi rubbed a hand over his chin. “You think it’s bad?”

“Naw,” Tate said, the affected refinement of his professional voice slipping away so that he sounded “normal” again. He was staring at Levi like he had never seen him before, and Levi’s wolf could hear his heart racing. “But look at you.”

Levi tried not to feel too pleased about the approval in his tone. Instead, he concentrated on the reason that he had driven for twelve hours to see Tate. “You’ve been saying interesting things in your speeches. You know, the stuff about angels and demons and…werewolves.”

It was hard to see Tate’s cheeks flush in the darkness. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“Not that crazy.”

Tate’s eyes skimmed over Levi’s body. “What did you think of the speech?”

“I didn’t like it. You’re talking about all of these ‘creatures’ like they’re not Americans themselves. They’re taxpayers and voters, too.”

“Demons aren’t even born on Earth, much less eligible for citizenship.”

“Yeah?” Levi stepped closer to him. “What about werewolves?”

Tate’s heart sped a little bit faster. “A werewolf killed my mom. Sorry if I don’t think they need voting rights.”

“But the police said that it was a coyote.”

“Dude, I saw the security footage. That thing was way too big to be a coyote. And there was a second investigation performed by the Office of Preternatural Affairs, and they said that it wasn’t a coyote, either.”

Levi planted his hands on his hips. “You mean that the commissioner of a county so tiny that our governor can’t find it on the map hit the federal level?”

There was a little bit of Tate’s old smile. “Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” Levi said promptly. “Let’s talk legislation.”

“I’m not really involved with that, man,” Tate said. “I’m just giving speeches.”

Levi shoved him in the chest. He held his strength back and didn’t push too hard, but Tate still stumbled. “You’re building public support for something that’s going to ruin my life.”

“What are you talking about? All this legislation is going to do is protect the American people from all those unholy creatures.”

“I am one of those unholy creatures,” Levi said with a low growl. “I’m a werewolf, and you’re screwing me over.”

Shock drained the color from Tate’s face. “What?”

Levi pointed at his irises. They were a dark shade of gold that was easy to mistake for brown, if you didn’t know what you were looking for. “Haven’t they told you anything? Gold eyes. Werewolf.”

Tate shook his head, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, like he could make it untrue if he denied it hard enough. “That’s not funny, dude.” When Levi didn’t laugh, or take it back, or whatever it was that Tate hoped for, he slumped against the wall. “Oh man. Were you like that when…?”

“When we were dating? I was a werewolf long before that. Bekah, too. We were victims. Did we deserve to be separated from our families for it?”

“No! I mean—no way, Levi. But you and Bekah, I know you guys. You’re different. You’re not like the rest of them.” His eyes widened, as if something had just occurred to him. “Do you know who killed my mom?”

Levi struggled to keep his face composed. Rylie had accidentally killed Mrs. Peterson while under the influence of silver poisoning. But as much as Levi hated Rylie and her stupid harem of boy toys, he couldn’t admit to Tate that she was a murderer. All it would take was a word to bring the whole Office of Preternatural Affairs down on the pack.

“It wasn’t Bekah and me, if that’s what you’re asking. We didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Tate leaned toward him, pushing away from the wall. “I never would have thought it was you.”

“You’ve got to stop the tour.”

“But this is so much bigger than that. There’s evil out there, real evil—”

“You’ve said that,” Levi interrupted. He grabbed Tate by the lapels. “Just don’t forget where you came from.”

He kissed Tate.

For an instant, he melted into Levi just the way that he used to, and it was like high school all over again. But less than two seconds later, he went rigid and shoved him away, wiping a hand over his mouth like there was something gross on him.

Tate’s face was slack with confusion and horror.

“Don’t forget,” Levi said again. He walked away, leaving Tate to his tour buses and giant American flags.

The bus sank underneath Tate’s feet as he climbed inside. The door to the driver’s compartment was still open, so he could see that Wilhelm wasn’t there; he must have been having a second cigarette outside, since smoking wasn’t allowed in government vehicles.

Tate slid the door shut behind him. The bus was comfortable on the inside, and would have been more than enough room for one or two passengers. It had a couple of couches that folded into beds and a full kitchen in back. But the bus was usually occupied by far more than just one or two people. The entire tour had a staff of eighteen: a hairdresser, someone who handled Tate’s wardrobe, analysts, a documentary team, security, some assistants. When they were on the road, it was far from comfortable.

But the only person on his bus at the moment was a member of his security team, who was absorbed in his laptop. Maybe Tate could actually catch fifteen minutes of sleep before they hit the road again.

Tate dropped onto the opposite couch, tipped his head back against the tinted window, and closed his eyes.

Who was he kidding? There was no way that he would be able to get any rest while his nerves were still jangling from Levi’s kiss.

Levi. God, it had been years.

He had looked incredible. Handsome, smoldering, angry. And kissing him was just as good as Tate remembered—except for the fact that Tate’s platform with the Office of Preternatural Affairs included anti-gay sentiments. He was supposed to be the poster boy for honesty, innocence, and purity. A victim rising above the trouble.

A victim who was considering jumping off the tour bus so he could find his ex-boyfriend again.

Levi had claimed to be a werewolf. Could it really be true?

“Took you a while to get back,” the security guy finally said, closing his laptop screen. He had a deep, pleasant voice, and so much gel in his hair that his coarse blond curls were plastered flat against his skull.

Tate probably should have admitted that he had been speaking to a werewolf. Security wanted to know whenever something preternatural came within a block of the bus so that the team could take care of the “threat.” But whether or not he was a werewolf, Tate just couldn’t classify Levi as a threat. He would never hand his ex over to the OPA’s men.

Especially not someone as scary-looking as his head of security, Cain Blacksburg.

“I was just getting fresh air,” Tate said. “What are you up to?”

“Doing some research.” Cain took an audible sniff of the air. “You have werewolf all over you.”

Tate’s cheeks heated. “I can’t smell anything.”

“That’s because you’re human.” He said that word like it was a racial slur. “Who were you in contact with?”

“Must have been someone I shook hands with at the event,” he said, knowing that Cain would hear the lie in his racing heart. Having a werewolf as his head of security was terrifying, but who better to protect him from the supernatural threat than one of their own?

Cain leaned forward, braced his elbows on his knees, and fixed Tate with a cold stare. “Who are you protecting?”

“Nobody.”

“Fine.” Cain grabbed a platter off the kitchen counter and brought it to Tate’s side. There was a tattooing gun, blue latex gloves, and a needle on the steel tray. “Take off your jacket. We’ll finish your tattoo before we get moving again.”

Tate shucked his coat and rolled up his sleeve, baring the black outline of a bleeding apple.

FIVE

Letting off Steam

Midnight had come and gone, but Rylie couldn’t sleep. The moon was itching at her, getting under her skin, tugging at her breast. It wasn’t quite the full moon again. That was still two days away. But it had been a long time since she had turned into a wolf, and it felt like the moon was becoming impatient.

It didn’t help that Seth took up more of the bed than usual. He was sleeping with a pillow hugged to his chest and his feet hanging off the end, and there wasn’t enough space to get comfortable. The air in the room was too hot, too close. She was suffocating.

She slipped out of bed without bothering him and went to the window. Outside, the waxing moon was growing, just like Rylie.

Her gaze fell to the hills, and she realized with dull shock that someone was looking back from the burned ruins of the barn. She couldn’t make out any details in the night, but she knew it was Abel. Nobody else could make her feel hot and cold all at once with a single glance.

He was waiting for her.

She bit her bottom lip and glanced at Seth. He rolled onto his back, and one of his arms flopped into the space that she had vacated. His brow creased, like his sleeping mind registered that something was wrong, but it didn’t bother him enough to make him wake up.

Rylie put on a pair of oversized cowboy boots and sneaked into the hallway. The entire pack was sleeping in the house again, and there was barely enough empty floor for her to walk. Peter, Daven, and Anilizia were lined up in the hallway, head to feet, leaving only a few inches of carpet exposed. The floorboards creaked softly when she stepped past them, and one mumbled in his sleep.

There were more werewolves in the living room. Bekah was on the couch, while Crystal and Pyper occupied the space in front of the TV. A glance into the kitchen showed that Trevin and Kiara were spooning on an air mattress in front of the cabinets. Rylie felt a twinge of jealousy at the sight of it. Not at the fact that they had hooked up—she was happy for them. But she was definitely jealous over how peacefully they slept.

And because their relationship was so uncomplicated.

Rylie stepped over Pyper’s legs, opened the front door, and slipped outside.

Her boots crunched on the thin layer of snow, which had melted during the day and refrozen into a sheet of ice. Even with the grace of a werewolf, her heavy stomach unbalanced her, and she had to be careful to keep from slipping.

Abel paced outside the barn wearing a snug black tank top and jeans. It showed off his shoulder rig and dual handguns, which Bekah said he had been carrying constantly since his escape from Cain. He looked meaner than usual. Harder. Like he wasn’t going to let anyone catch him off his guard again.

The fact that he didn’t smile when he saw Rylie made her hurt a little inside.

As if they had come to some kind of silent agreement, Abel sauntered into the burned barn, and she followed him. It wasn’t any warmer in there, but at least nobody would be able to see them.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Rylie said. “Weeks.”

“I’ve been around to help Scott and Stephanie get ready for their spell, but I gotta lay low to avoid Levi. I’m trying not to punch his face in.” Abel grinned, like the idea excited him. “But he hasn’t been around for a few days, so I’m free to roam. Have you been watching the news?”

No, she hadn’t been watching any TV, but she had heard more than enough from Bekah. She didn’t want to hear it from Abel, too. “That’s what you want to talk about? The news?”

“Seth says I’m not supposed to be talking with you at all. He says…” His eyes flicked down her body and fell on her stomach. “He says I’m not supposed to ‘upset’ you.”

“But we have to talk someday. We have to talk about…everything. I mean, we’ve been at the same ranch for weeks, and we haven’t seen each other or spoken since the wedding.”

He bowed his head close to her neck and inhaled deeply. The exhale was hot enough to send shivers down her spine. “I’m not the one avoiding anything, Rylie.” His voice was a fraction deeper than before.

She folded her arms, as if they could act as armor between her and Abel. “Stephanie thinks that I might already be more than four months pregnant. She’s trying to get the hospital to let us do a scan.”

That seemed to kill a little of Abel’s confidence.

“Five months?” he asked. She could see him attempt the mental calculations. “No. That’s not right. We started mating on the night the barn burned.”

Rylie’s cheeks flushed. “You mean our wolves were mating.”

“There’s no difference between us and our wolves.”

“Except that I have no control over my behavior when I’m changed. I can’t even remember anything I’ve done. If we did…mate…then it wasn’t something I chose,” Rylie said. “Like the winter I got silver poisoning, and I murdered all of those people—”

Anger contorted Abel’s features. “You think mating with me is like murder?”

Rylie couldn’t stand that much emotion from him. She paced a few feet away to give herself room to breathe.

Being around him was a little bit like murder. She was dying on the inside, struggling to keep her heart beating, fighting a battle against herself. Every time she was around Abel, it was like her human side died a little bit more and gave the wolf that much more room to conquer.

That was the problem: as much as she loved Seth, her wolf loved Abel, too. And even worse was that her wolf felt like it needed him.

“That’s not what I’m trying to say,” Rylie said, too delayed and too feeble to sound believable. “But we don’t even know if you and I were mating.”

Abel took her arm and spun her to face him. “You want to talk? Let’s talk. Let’s lay it all out right now.” He pulled her against him, and she thought for a second that he was about to kiss her. “Cain had pictures of us mating.”

All thoughts of kissing vanished in a wave of shock.

“Pictures?”

“He took them on the night of the barn fire.” Abel’s eyes searched her face. “I dominated you. I owned you.” He bit out every word with a growl. “We mated.”

She felt like she was going to faint. Rylie was suddenly grateful for his grip on her arms, or else she might have fallen over in the snow and ash. “What do you mean by…dominated?”

“I bit you. I pinned you down, and I took you. The Alpha. Do you know what that means?”

She swallowed hard. “It means that you beat me in battle. Does that mean… Are you the Alpha now?”

“Werewolf packs have two Alphas,” he said. “A female…and a male. A mating pair.” Her face fell, and her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. Seeing her expression made Abel’s eyebrow furrow. “Is it that bad? The idea of being with me?”

Rylie shook her head and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “No, Abel. It’s not. I just…” There was no way to explain it in a way that Abel would understand. He saw them being together as inevitability. She saw it as having a choice taken from her. Just one more part of her life lost to some stupid werewolf curse.

She sagged against the wall, sank to the snow, and covered her face with her hands.

Abel flopped beside her and propped himself up on his elbow. All of his tough pretense melted away. He managed a smile, and it made him look like the guy that had been her lone friend and companion for two years while Seth was at college. “What are we going to do, Rylie?”

She sighed. “I asked Stephanie to perform a paternity test. We’ll know soon.”

“We don’t need a test,” Abel said, gentle but firm. “I already know. I can smell it on you. What are you doing out here anyhow?”

“I couldn’t sleep. It’s too hot in the house, and way too crowded.” She sighed as she flexed her fists. “And it’s been too long since I turned into a wolf. It feels like my beast might explode out of me at any minute.”

The corner of Abel’s mouth lifted in a smirk. “Let’s get out of here.” He gestured toward the fields. “Let’s just…go. Let’s run, like we used to do. You don’t have to change. We’ll go as humans.”

She stared at her feet and wiggled the toes of her boots into the snow. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’m barely in control of myself.”

Abel snagged her hand, pulled her to her feet, and led her outside. “Then funnel it into me. Give me your energy.”

“You mean…?”

He dropped his shoulder rig and guns on a piece of dry wood, then stripped his shirt off over his head. “Turn me into a wolf.”

Abel had been attacked by a werewolf long before Rylie ever met him, which left one half of his face twisted with scars that ran all the way down his chest and ribs. But some of those were thanks to a fight he had lost against Rylie, too.

She caught herself staring at him, but it wasn’t just because of the moonlight gleaming on his damaged skin. He was muscular and powerful. Seth wasn’t a lightweight, but Abel made his brother look like a boy.

Her wolf rubbed against the inside of her ribs, demanding to be released.

“Can you handle being a wolf between moons?” she asked.

Abel’s eyes glowed in the darkness. “Even if I couldn’t, I’d do it for you anyway.” His deep voice sent chills down her spine, and she had to tear herself away from his gaze.

Rylie opened her arms to the moon and let her head fall back on her shoulders as she drank in its silvery rays. When she felt the change creep over her, she channeled all of that energy into Abel instead.

Bones crunched as his face extended into a muzzle. His spine grew extra vertebrae to become a tail. His knees popped and reversed. He peeled his jeans off with hands that were shifting and shortening, and after a few minutes, he fell onto all fours at her feet.

As soon as Abel’s transformation into a massive black wolf was complete, all of Rylie’s tension vanished, as though she had just enjoyed an hour-long massage. She sagged against the wall. Abel butted his head into her hands, and Rylie couldn’t help but smile as she stroked the ruff of fur around his face.

Then he took a few steps away and bowed on his forelegs, inviting Rylie to play. She laughed.

“Okay, Abel. Let’s run.”

Seth woke up early the next morning to do chores and exercise. Rylie wasn’t in bed with him, but that was no surprise. She had spent more than one night in Gwyn’s room ever since her belly started getting big enough to take up half of the bed on its own.

He watched the news on the black and white TV in the kitchen as he ate the previous night’s leftovers. There had been another preternatural-related riot, this time much closer to home: Greenville, just four hundred miles away. Practically in their back yard. A whole house of nightmare demons had been burned to death by vigilantes.

That was much too close for comfort. Seth’s appetite vanished, so he tossed the rest of the roast beef into the trash.

By the time the sun touched the horizon, he was laboring in the snow to fix a hole in the fence near the highway. With that complete, he shed his jacket and set out for a jog around the property.

The Gresham Ranch used to be filled with cattle, long before Scott Whyte converted it into a werewolf sanctuary, so there was plenty of open space for him to exercise. Seth punched the air as he ran, working the knots out of his shoulders. It was cold, but not so cold that a good run wouldn’t warm him up.

He was down by the pond when he found the paw prints.

Seth hesitated by the shore. His gaze followed the indentations in the snow to the place they disappeared between hills.

The full moon was still a couple of days away. There shouldn’t have been any wolves to make paw prints.

Seth’s adrenaline spiked as he thought back to Yasir’s text message about Cain being in prison. Wild visions whirled through his skull. What if Cain had broken out of the Union prison, come back to the ranch, and started stalking them at night when everyone was asleep. Or worse—what if he had come back to kidnap Rylie?

His pace picked up as he followed the trail. He had left his rifle in the bedroom, but now he regretted it. If Cain was at the ranch again…

But when he found the wolf responsible for the footprints, it wasn’t the brother he had been expecting to see.

A big black wolf that Seth immediately recognized as Abel was curled underneath the trees, sleeping with his nose under his tail. Wrapped within the furry warmth of his body was a slender blond figure. Rylie’s head rested on Abel’s massive flank, and his legs encircled her protectively as they slept.

They looked restful. Content.

The sound of Seth’s approaching footsteps made Abel lift his head.

Seth punched him across his stupid furry muzzle.

It was like striking a brick wall. The shock jolted up his entire arm to his shoulder. But the wolf’s head smacked into the ground from the force of the blow, and that was satisfying enough to make up for how much it hurt.

The wolf’s surprised yelp woke Rylie instantly. “What’s going on?” she asked, rubbing her face as Abel got to his feet.

There was murder in Abel’s golden stare, but Seth didn’t give him a chance to regroup. He lunged at his brother and tackled him to the ground.

The snow softened their landing. They hit and rolled, and Seth twisted to keep Abel’s kicking legs from sinking into his stomach. Those silver claws were sharp—almost as sharp as his teeth.

Abel bit at Seth’s leg. He snapped his boot into Abel’s mouth.

“What are you guys doing?” Rylie shrieked, snow in her hair and horror on her face.

Seth closed his hands on either side of Abel’s jaw and forced it open so he couldn’t bite. “I told you—to stay—away!”

Rylie got to her knees. “Stop it!”

Abel and Seth flipped over and over. Somehow, Seth ended up on top, and he braced his knees against Abel’s ribs to pin him down. He slammed his fist into Abel’s skull again. He was a kopis, a legendary hunter, and his strength was immense…especially in the midst of a jealous rage.

But even a human hunter was nothing in comparison to the power of a werewolf.

Abel thrashed and bit Seth’s leg. It wasn’t hard enough to break skin, but the fangs pressed into his calf.

Rylie was still shouting, but all Seth knew was the fight. The anger. The hatred.

Abel’s fur began to ripple.

It was even harder to wrestle with a werewolf as he shifted back into human form. Every time Seth grabbed hold of a limb, it would change size and shape. Bones popped, fur fell to the snow, and within moments, he was punching Abel’s stupid ugly face instead of that of a wolf.

Abel shoved Seth away and stood. Rylie jumped between them, hands extended. She was shorter than both of them—barely an obstacle.

Seth stepped forward. “What were you doing to Rylie?”

“We weren’t doing anything, you insecure little prick,” Abel said.

“He was helping me,” Rylie said, shoving Seth when he tried to step around her. She was incredibly strong for her size.

Rylie’s imploring voice was the only thing that could cut through the red haze of anger. Seth stopped trying to get at his brother and looked down at her. “Helping you?”

“I have too much energy now that I can’t change,” Rylie said. “I had to put it somewhere, so Abel let me change him. And I feel so much better.”

The intended calming effect of her words was ruined when her face suddenly crumpled. She grabbed her belly and groaned.

“What is it?” Abel asked, stepping forward.

Seth shot him a venomous look as he took Rylie’s shoulders. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

She sucked in a hard gasp. “I think—I think I’m having a contraction.”

“A contraction? You mean, a labor contraction?”

“I don’t know,” she whimpered.

Abel reached for her hand, but Seth shoved him away. “Don’t even think about it,” Seth said.

Anger twisted Abel’s features. “Fine. I can see when I’m not wanted.”

He stormed away, cutting a path through the snow, bare skin steaming. “Abel—” Rylie began, but another contraction interrupted her. She doubled over. Only Seth’s grip kept her on her feet.

“We have to get you to Stephanie,” he said, scooping an arm underneath her legs to lift her from the snow. “And fast.”

SIX

The Siblings

Rylie had always assumed that turning into a werewolf would be the most painful experience of her life. As of this morning, that was still true. But contractions were pretty close competition.

Every time another one hit, her abs clenched, her vision blurred, her ears rang, and she tasted iron on her tongue. It wasn’t just her womb getting tight. Her whole body was along for the ride, and it was so much worse than she expected.

Fortunately, it also didn’t last very long. The worst of them were over by the time Seth carried her back to the house, and once she lay down, they stopped entirely.

Stephanie joined them in less than an hour.

“Where in the world did you get that?” Seth asked, staring at the cart that Stephanie wheeled into Rylie’s bedroom.

The doctor pulled it alongside the bed and plugged a power cord into the wall. “I got it from the hospital.” At Rylie’s look of confusion, she explained, “This is an ultrasound machine. I received it just yesterday.”

“I thought we were going to a clinic to do this.”

“We were, but I couldn’t arrange for a private room without an ultrasound technician present, so I told Scott to buy a used machine. Remove your jeans. I’m going to use a lot of conducting gel, and it stains fabric.”

Rylie wiggled her pants down her hips. They had already been unzipped, since she hadn’t been able to button any of her pants for weeks. “Isn’t that kind of equipment expensive?” she asked, blushing as she revealed a pair of white panties with a bow on the hem. They were her most comfortable pair, and she had only been wearing them so she could sleep without the hem digging into her stomach. She hadn’t planned on anyone seeing them.

“Immensely expensive,” Stephanie said.

“I’m surprised Scott bought one.” Rylie kicked her pants off.

“I didn’t give him a choice. He owes us a hell of a lot more than an ultrasound machine after what he did for Cain. Lay down.”

Rylie stretched out in bed again. Even when she was flat on her back, her stomach was getting big enough that she couldn’t see her toes. Seth gazed at her with a look that was somewhere between possessiveness and fear, like he wasn’t sure what he thought about her pregnancy yet.

Stephanie turned the machine on and positioned it beside the bed. “How are you feeling now?”

“I haven’t had any contractions for about twenty minutes.”

“Good. What were you doing when they started?”

Rylie glanced at Seth, but his eyes were fixed on the blank monitor. “Seth and Abel were fighting,” she said.

Stephanie made a noncommittal noise. “I checked my old medical school textbooks on obstetrics before coming over. If they were irregular, and changing positions reduced the intensity, then they were almost certainly Braxton-Hicks. They’re practice contractions to help your body prepare for the real thing.”

“They felt awfully convincing for practice contractions.”

“Hmm. Well, let’s take a look. We might be able to make out the baby’s gender today.” She squirted cold gel onto Rylie’s stomach. “This is an old machine, so detail won’t be very good. You won’t be picking out Uncle Bob’s nose just yet.”

“Or Grandma Eleanor’s crazy eyes,” Seth muttered. It wasn’t really funny, but Rylie still giggled nervously. “Do we have the blood work back yet?”

“Most of it, and everything looks normal. But I had to send the vial for paternity testing to a special lab, and the results have been delayed. Let’s see what else I can find.”

Stephanie pressed the wand to Rylie’s stomach and slid it across her skin, eyes focused on the monitor. The screen was turned so that only the doctor could look at it.

Rylie held still, unsure if she was allowed to breathe or move during the scan. Seth’s hand squeezed hers tightly, and she didn’t shake him off. She was too scared to be angry.

The silence stretched long.

“Hmm,” Stephanie said.

“That’s a good ‘hmm,’ right?” Seth asked, squeezing Rylie’s hand harder.

“Not quite.”

Oh God, Rylie was going to pass out. “What’s wrong? Is it furry? Does it have four legs?” She was speaking too fast, and her words tumbled over each other.

“Actually, yes,” Stephanie said, and Seth paled. “I do see four legs. I also don’t see much other detail, but that’s because you’re not as far along as I expected. Let me show you what I mean.”

She rotated the monitor. Rylie couldn’t make any sense of the blurry image on the screen. It looked like a big gray cloud, with two black circles in the middle.

“What is that?” she asked.

“This is a placenta,” Stephanie said, pressing a button to make the image freeze. She pointed at a thin line. “That’s a spine. This dot is a heartbeat. We should be able to hear that, too.” She unfroze the image, repositioned the wand in a way that made the image swirl and blur, and turned a dial.

A steady thumping filled the room. It was way too fast, like a humming bird heart.

She moved the wand again. The thumping faded and then returned.

“I’m finding the heartbeat in two places,” Stephanie said. “I think I also see a second placenta, and a second spine. So…yes, definitely four legs, four hands, two skulls…”

Rylie stared at her blankly, but Seth sucked in a hard breath.

“What? What does that mean? Is it a mutant?” she asked.

“No,” Seth said. “It means that we’re having twins.”

Levi returned while Rylie and Gwyn were looking at the printouts from the ultrasound. Rylie heard his car pull up outside the kitchen window, but his voice was too soft for Rylie to understand what he was saying to Pyper. She didn’t care anyway. Even the sound of Levi’s approach couldn’t make her feel any worse than she already did.

Stephanie had managed to capture a great picture of both babies. They looked kind of like gummy bears.

“Twins,” Gwyn said, all but trembling with excitement.

“Twins,” Rylie repeated, dropping her head onto the table. Her forehead thunked against the wood.

There was coffee brewing even though neither of them drank it anymore. Stephanie had officially banned all caffeine in the wake of the contractions, and it wouldn’t do much good for a zombie, either. But the smell should have been comforting.

It wasn’t.

“Oh, pumpkin.” Aunt Gwyn rubbed her arm. “It’s not going to be that bad.”

“It is going to be that bad,” she said into the table. “I’ve never even babysat for an infant before. And now I’m going to have two of them, and they’re going to be werewolves, and I am in so far over my head.”

“But look at them.” Gwyn’s voice was filled with warmth. “They’re all cozy in there. Your daddy would—”

“I don’t care what my daddy would think. He’s not here to help me!” Rylie snapped, glaring at her aunt.

Gwyn’s hand stilled. “Don’t use that tone with me. Being scared is no reason to disrespect his memory.”

“Scared? I am so much more than scared, Aunt Gwyn. What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to deal with it,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I’m not going to listen to melodramatic whining on the subject. You’re allowed to be intimidated. That’s normal. But there’s a lot of terrible things in this world, many of which we’ve seen firsthand, and two wonderful little babies are not among those terrible things. You hear me?”

“Easy for you to say,” Rylie muttered.

Gwyn grabbed a mug of coffee, warming her hands on the outside without drinking. “You won’t have to deal with this alone, babe. I’m with you every step of the way.”

Seth had said something like that, too. It hadn’t been comforting then, and it wasn’t comforting now.

Levi pushed through the back door, stomping mud and slush on Gwyn’s clean linoleum. Rylie was glad for the distraction. She flipped the ultrasound pictures face-down on the table.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“I was picking up the new werewolf from the airport.” Levi peeled off his boots. “Abel was probably too busy getting drunk to do it himself.”

He ambled toward the living room, and Rylie sniffed the air as he passed. “Why do you smell like Tate’s aftershave?”

“So Bekah told you.”

“She didn’t tell me anything.” Rylie turned in her chair to face him. “How did you run into Tate while going to the airport?”

“Why do you care? You ate his mom.”

Rylie shoved her chair back to stand, but before she could speak, Stephanie elbowed past Levi to enter the room. “What’s going on here?” she asked.

“Werewolf pissing contest,” Gwyn said.

Levi glared. “I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

He moved to leave, but Stephanie grabbed his arm. She was a tall woman, so she could look him straight in the eye. “I don’t care about werewolf pack Alpha nonsense,” she said. “You’re not allowed to get into fights with Rylie anymore. This is a health issue. You have to set aside your pettiness for the sake of her babies.”

His eyes widened. “Babies?”

“Whatever issues you have, they can wait,” Stephanie went on, ignoring his question. “She needs to rest.”

“Then it sounds like she’s not in good enough shape to be Alpha anymore, does it?” Levi asked, shooting a look at Rylie before storming out of the room.

Rylie moved to follow him, but Stephanie blocked her. “Get out of my way,” Rylie said. “He’s challenging my dominance!”

“And you’re hardly in a position to fight back. As your doctor, I forbid it.” Stephanie washed her hands at the sink, dried them on a towel, and grabbed her jacket off the back of a chair. “You’re officially off Alpha duty. If that means letting Levi have the pack, then let him have it.”

“But—”

“No buts. I’m serious.” Stephanie jerked her jacket closed, gave Rylie a stern look, and marched out the back door.

“No,” Rylie said, even though there was nobody left for her to argue with. “He can’t have my pack.”

“Stephanie’s right, babe. This isn’t the time to be fighting with anyone.” Aunt Gwyn lifted the mug to her lips without drinking, as if relishing the smell. “But there’s an Alpha male wandering around who can.”

Rylie bit her lip and flipped over the scans again. Stephanie had taken several pictures, including one that was meant to show the babies’ faces. They were too blurry to tell if either of them actually had noses and mouths, much less whether they resembled Seth or Abel.

Gwyn was right. Abel would be happy to fight Levi.

“I think he’s gone,” Rylie said. “He got in a fight with Seth this morning.”

“Then you know what you have to do if you want to keep your pack.” Her aunt stood and emptied her coffee into the sink. “Get him back.”

Rylie found Seth near the gate at the bottom of the hill. She opened her mouth to call for him, but stopped when she realized that he was deep in conversation with a stranger.

She approached them cautiously, one hand on her stomach as if she could protect her babies by touching them. This stranger was tall and muscular with eyes like shards of sapphire and hair to his shoulders. His skin was the kind of tan that came from spending long hours in the sun. He was almost as big as Abel, and looked like a cross between a biker and a bodybuilder.

He also smelled like wolf.

Her hackles lifted at the sight of him. She let out a growl before she could stop herself.

The sound made both men look over at her. “So this is Rylie, I take it,” said the new werewolf. He had a deep, rolling Southern accent that sounded like melted chocolate. She barely heard him. There was something extremely dominant about the new wolf, and her inner Alpha was rising to the challenge.

“This is Rylie,” Seth confirmed. The new man lowered his eyes, hunched his shoulders, and slowly dropped to one knee. It was a submissive posture, meant to appease her. It worked. Her fists relaxed, and Seth took her hand. “His name’s Brody. I told you he was going to join us a few weeks ago. Remember?”

She took several deep, calming breaths before responding. Her fingernails ached, which was a bad sign. Those were usually the first things to go when she wolfed out. “I forgot about that. Is he…safe?”

“There are no odd tattoos.”

Brody glanced up at Seth without standing. “I’ve got more than a few tats.” Rylie’s gaze dropped to his hands. Sleeves covered his arms, but she could see tribal patterns all the way onto his knuckles.

“But nothing bloody,” Seth said, referring to the bleeding apple tattoos that all of Cain’s followers wore.

Rylie nodded and checked her fingernails. They were secure. “It’s good you got here safely,” she said, forcing herself to smile. Gwyn would smack her upside the head if she didn’t display appropriate manners to a guest. “Especially considering how everything’s been since the senator got assassinated. What were you two talking about down here?”

“We were making arrangements,” Seth said. “Brody has special skills we can use.”

“Special skills?”

It was Brody who responded. “My background is in personal security. Bodyguardin’, to be precise. I’ve been asked to keep you safe, ma’am.”

She was torn between shock at the idea of a bodyguard and confusion at having someone ten years her senior calling her “ma’am.” Seth caught her confused expression and gave her a gentle hug. “I can’t always be here to protect you, Rylie. As long as we’re dealing with all of this unrest, I’d feel a lot better knowing there’s someone to watch your back.”

“A bodyguard? But I don’t want a bodyguard.”

Brody stood slowly—no sudden movements. “I assure you, I am very discreet.”

“Seth? Can we talk?” Her voice was a full octave higher than usual.

They stepped a few feet away, and Brody politely turned his back. It was more for show than anything else. Werewolves had great hearing, and they would have had to be on opposite sides of the property in order to really speak privately.

“What’s wrong?” Seth asked.

“I wouldn’t need a bodyguard if you’d just let Abel protect me,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I don’t want some strange guy following me around!”

“Rylie—”

She jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “I want you, and I want Abel. That’s it. And I’m really going to need Abel if I want to stop Levi’s new megalomaniac streak. Abel has to take over as Alpha.”

“But Abel left.”

“Because you attacked him!”

“Can you blame me? I’ve been putting up with him for years.”

“You’ll have to deal with a few more months,” Rylie said. “Fix this. Go find your brother and bring him back. Now.” She glanced at Brody over Seth’s shoulder and saw that he was still facing the other way. “And I am not taking a bodyguard!”

She whirled and stomped up the snowy path to the house without waiting to see if Seth obeyed.

SEVEN

Come Back to Me

Abel got all the way into town before he really thought about what he was doing. He had walked away from Seth and Rylie blinded by rage and the urge to protect Rylie from his brother, which didn’t even make any sense. She wasn’t in danger from Seth.

He just didn’t want to share her anymore.

Abel had dressed in clothes that he kept in the trunk of the Chevelle—a loose t-shirt, jeans, and steel-toed boots—and immediately gone into town. He was still fuming after the twenty minute drive. And it was only then that he realized he had left Rylie behind while she was having contractions, and probably needed him.

“Hell,” he muttered, pulling the Chevelle into the grocery store parking lot. He didn’t want to buy anything; it just happened to be the easiest place to get out of traffic. Abel had no idea where to go after that.

Part of him wanted to turn around and check on Rylie. But an equally large part of him was much too angry at Seth.

“He’ll take care of her,” he growled under his breath, hands clenched tight on the steering wheel.

That felt wrong—letting someone else take care of his mate.

Even if Rylie did happen to be Seth’s fiancée.

A girl walking out of the grocery store caught his eye. Crystal was plump in all of the right places, and wearing the same tiny denim shorts that she always wore, even though it was freezing outside. She had swapped out her high-tops for Ugg boots and put on a scarf, but there was still more bare skin than cloth.

Her gaze landed on the Chevelle. She headed over, grocery bag in hand, and Abel rolled down the window.

Crystal bent over to brace her elbows on the door, which gave him a really good view of all that cleavage. “You aren’t looking for me, are you?” she asked. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

A couple years ago, before he knew Rylie, Abel probably would have been looking for someone just like her. But now, all he said was, “How did you get into town?”

She smirked. “I ran. It was refreshing.” Crystal somehow managed to make that sound like a very dirty suggestion. “I sure would like a ride back.”

Abel gave a small laugh. He wasn’t exactly an educated man, but he also wasn’t stupid. He knew when someone was trying to flirt with him. But as much as he appreciated Crystal’s insane curves and her fondness for showing them off, she wasn’t his type, and she didn’t seem to get that at all.

He couldn’t exactly leave a member of the pack to walk home in tiny shorts, though. He leaned over to unlock the passenger side door. “Get in.”

She climbed in and leaned around to set her grocery bag on the backseat, which pressed the long, warm line of her body against his arm. Glass clinked as her purchase settled. “I bought some Kahlua,” she explained. “Stephanie’s been doing all the grocery shopping, and she ignores me whenever I put alcohol on the refrigerator list.”

“I know. She refuses to buy beer, too.”

Crystal twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “You look like you’re having the kind of day where you could use a beer. Want to get a drink?”

It was the best idea he had heard in days. “Now you’re talking.”

The town only had one bar, but it was good enough for Abel’s purposes. The lights were dim, so he couldn’t see who he was drinking with, and there was plenty of whiskey. Christmas lights were strung over the mirror behind the bartender, but unplugged, and he realized with a jolt that the holidays had already passed. He hadn’t even noticed. Something about the Office of Preternatural Affairs had done a heck of a job killing the Christmas spirit.

Abel ordered a round of shots to share with Crystal, and then they found a table in the back corner. The waitress that brought their shots back to them was at least fifty years old, although she dressed a lot like Crystal, and her cherry red dye job failed to hide her graying roots. She set the drinks down, took Abel’s tip, and vanished without smiling.

“What are we drinking to?” Crystal asked, lifting a shot glass.

He picked up one of his shots and searched for a good reason to drink. He couldn’t think of any. Rylie was the only person he liked being around, and she was all but kept in a kennel by Seth. His other brother was a maniac. Gwyneth Gresham, who had given him work and a home, was the walking dead. The existence of werewolves had gone public.

“My mom,” he finally said. “May the bitch rest in pieces.”

Crystal lifted her shot, gave a small nod, and drank it. He had to give it to her: the girl took her whiskey about as well as he did. Her eyes didn’t even water.

“So what’s bothering you?” she asked, scooting her chair closer.

“Not to sound like my little brother, but…everything.”

“Say no more.” She lifted another glass. “This one’s for Cain, right?”

They drank.

One by one, the shots disappeared. They didn’t talk much. Abel didn’t have much to say to her, and Crystal seemed perfectly happy to wiggle close to his side and pet his arm. Once they were out of whiskey, they switched to tequila, and the two probably emptied an entire bottle before Abel started to feel the buzz.

The day stretched on, and the bar began to fill. A handful of people sat at the bar. Three men took the table beside theirs. The volume on the music increased, and folks started talking louder as the alcohol flowed. There were two big topics of conversation: the patrons’ shitty jobs, and the new Office of Preternatural affairs.

“I wish I could just keep drinking until the OPA disappeared,” Crystal whispered, shooting filthy looks at the neighboring table.

“You’d get alcohol poisoning first,” he said. The waitress passed, and he lifted his hand for more.

“Did you hear what they added to that awful bill? They’re trying to make it illegal for ‘preternaturals’ to have kids. Like, if a single mom starts dating a demon, protective services can take her kids away for reckless endangerment. Isn’t that jacked up?”

“It won’t pass.”

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully, tracing her finger around the rim of a shot glass before sucking it into her mouth. “There’s a lot of support.”

“But it won’t pass,” Abel insisted, even though he couldn’t think of a particular reason why, aside from the fact that he didn’t want it to pass. If they considered children being around werewolves to be reckless endangerment, then it was not good news for Rylie.

Someone approached their table. Abel pulled his wallet out to pay for his drinks—but it wasn’t the waitress.

Seth stood over him, arms folded. He wore a leather jacket and a look of severe disapproval. “You wake up with Rylie and run off to drink with another woman. Some loyalty.”

Abel kicked his feet up on the table. “Who should I be loyal to? Rylie’s not my fiancée.”

“But you’re in love with her.”

Crystal petted Abel’s shoulder. “You got a problem, Seth? We were having a nice time until you showed up.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Seth said. “Stay out of it.”

She turned to Abel, as if looking for him to back her up, but he only shrugged.

“Seth’s right.” He tossed the Chevelle’s keys at her. “See you later.”

Crystal slammed her last shot glass on the tray, shoved her chair back, and strutted out. Abel couldn’t help but watch her as she walked away. Those were ridiculously tiny shorts to wear in winter.

Seth moved to sit in the chair she had vacated, but a hard look from Abel stopped him.

“What do you want?” Abel asked.

“You have to come back to the ranch.” Saying that sounded like it was probably about as painful as extracting his own teeth, so Abel assumed that Seth must have been suckered into this shitty excuse for an apology.

“No.”

“What, do you have something better to do? Are you going to drink until you drown?”

Abel folded his arms and gave his brother a challenging look. “I was thinking I’d leave town completely.”

“You won’t do it. You’re going to come back to the ranch with me, because Rylie wants you to come back.”

“Since when do you care about that?”

“Since Levi is challenging her dominance, and Stephanie says that fighting him is dangerous for the pregnancy,” Seth said. “Rylie wants me to make up with you. She says that we need to get along so you can take over the pack as Alpha.”

So they wanted him back to fight. He would have laughed anyone else out of the bar, but if Rylie was the one who wanted him to fight—well, he would have faced down an army of were-rhinoceroses with his bare hands if she asked. So maybe he was the biggest sucker of all.

Abel knocked back another shot, slammed it on the table, and kicked the chair out so that it pointed toward Seth. “Sit down.”

“I shouldn’t have punched you.”

“No, that was great. I’ve been wanting an excuse to beat your ass. I’m only disappointed that I didn’t get to break all the teeth out of your head.”

“I’m trying to apologize.”

What a load of bullshit. Seth the peacemaker, always trying to make nice. “I don’t want to hear it.” He pushed one of the shot glasses toward Seth. “Drink.”

“One of us has to drive back to the ranch,” Seth said.

“You heard me. Drink.”

Seth picked one up and cupped it in his hand. “Stephanie said that she thinks stress is giving Rylie contractions.” His eyes were fixed on the silver fluid. “I shouldn’t be jealous because you can help Rylie in a way that I can’t. It’s not your fault that I’m immune to werewolf bites.”

He had spoken too loudly. A few heads at the closest table turned to look at them.

The news was playing on the TV in the corner, and they were still covering the San Francisco riots. The anchor mentioned Greenville in the same breath, as well as a few other towns. Hopefully, if someone heard Seth and Abel talking, they would think it was just about the news.

“Didn’t I just say that I don’t want to hear your wussy crap?” Abel asked. “And keep your voice down.”

He drank another shot, but Seth didn’t follow suit.

“Rylie’s pregnant with twins,” Seth said, much quieter than before.

Abel’s hand froze on the shot glass he had just turned face down on the table. “And she wants me to deal with Levi for her.”

“That’s right.”

There was only one shot of tequila left. Abel finished it off and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “If I go back, are you going to let me kick his ass the way he deserves?” Seth nodded. “All right. Then I’ll go back.”

They stood to leave, but the men at the next table stood, too. The three of them were burly, and hairier than a werewolf on the full moon. “You talking werewolves?” one of them asked. He was wearing a t-shirt with a girl in a bikini draped over a muscle car. The other two were tattooed and heavy—muscular, but also fat. Probably slow. Abel would bet on himself in a fight against any one of them. But all three?

Abel opened his mouth to respond, but Seth spoke first. “We don’t want any trouble.”

He cursed his brother silently. Seth might as well have just said, Yes, we’re werewolves, what’s it to you?

The men exchanged looks. They all smelled thoroughly drunk. Must have been nice.

“I think I heard you say that there are werewolves in town,” said the second man.

The third jumped in. “I think they said they are werewolves.” He cracked his knuckles, each of which was tattooed with a separate letter. Together, his hands spelled out “hardcore.” Abel couldn’t help but smirk.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink, my brothers,” Abel said. Despite the smile, his voice was hard, and his blood started to flow hot. “You’re not thinking right. If we were werewolves, would that mean we’re the kind of men you want to make trouble with?”

“Abel,” Seth said warningly.

“We don’t want werewolves in our town,” the first one said, blasting the smell of beer in Abel’s face with a breath. “So are you a werewolf?”

Seth spoke again. “Abel…”

But Abel only grinned

“Maybe I am,” he said, shoving his face close to the man with the knuckle tattoos. “What are you boys gonna do about it?”

He didn’t even see the swinging fist coming.

Knuckles connected with the side of his head, sending him spilling over the nearest table. Glass showered on the floor. The women who were sitting at it leaped away with shouts.

Abel was back on his feet in time to see Seth catch another punch thrown by the first speaker. Brawls were Seth’s specialty; he grabbed the fist, twisted the attacker’s arm behind his back, and jerked the wrist up between the shoulder blades. The man cried out.

Seth was distracted, and didn’t see that Hardcore was drawing back for a kidney punch.

Abel launched at him, grabbing his shirt and carrying both of them into the jukebox hard enough to make it bounce against the wall. The Led Zeppelin song that had been playing cut off.

Someone jumped onto Abel’s back, trying to pry him off Hardcore. Abel threw himself onto the ground, body-slamming his assailant into the floor boards, and the shout in his ear was so damn satisfying.

Abel kicked free of his grip and ducked under another swing by Hardcore, then delivered a swift right hook into his jaw.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Seth yelled, throwing the first guy over the bar.

It was only then that Abel heard the sirens underneath the waitress’s screaming. Someone had called the cops.

Abel laughed as he grabbed Seth’s arm and dragged him out the front door.

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good day.

EIGHT

An Unearthly Visitor

Abel was relieved to see that Crystal had gotten the Chevelle safely back to the ranch. He didn’t usually let women drive it—not even Rylie—but it had been the fastest way to get rid of her, so he had made an exception. But it seemed she was pretty offended at having him get rid of her at all. That, or the alcohol hit her harder than it hit him: she had dumped his car by the mailbox and left his engine running. Last time he ever let a woman drive his baby.

He jumped out of the truck and slipped into the Chevelle. “You okay, darling?” he cooed, running his hands over the dashboard.

“Abel,” Seth said from the driver’s seat of the truck.

“Bug off, I’m checking my girl,” Abel yelled back.

“Check it later. We have visitors.”

That got his attention. He followed Seth’s gaze to the top of the hill, where he saw a group of people standing together. Even at that distance, he could recognize Gwyn, but there were two people he didn’t know—people that didn’t smell like pack. The odor on the wind was like herbs, blood, and something unfamiliar that made the hair on the back of Abel’s neck stand.

Seth drove on while Abel pulled the Chevelle off the path. By the time Abel reached the top of the hill, Seth had gone inside, leaving Gwyn alone with the visitors. In the winter sunlight, Abel could see that her lips had lost all color and her eyes were fading to gray. She still passed for living, though. She didn’t have any holes yet, like Eleanor had.

“So you’re a witch,” Gwyneth said, pushing her hat back with a knuckle to get a better look at the man. Abel could understand why she looked so dubious about him: the only way to describe the visitor was “strange.”

At first glance, Abel thought that he had to be pretty old. His hair was thick, but white, like a man in his seventies. But his face didn’t have a single wrinkle. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty years old. And he was big, too—it wasn’t often that Abel ran across someone tall enough to look him in the eye.

Abel mistrusted him instantly. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asked.

“This is the help that Stephanie mentioned getting,” Gwyn said. “He’s been invited here, so we’ll be polite, right?”

The witch offered his gloved hand to Abel. “James Faulkner.”

“Abel Wilder.” He didn’t reach out to shake. This dog didn’t do tricks.

The front door opened, and Stephanie rushed down the path to meet them by the garden, Scott limping a few feet behind her. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed. “James,” she said, embracing him tightly.

When she finally released him, Scott extended a hand. “Good to see you again.” He was falling apart faster than Gwyn, starting with the bullet hole in his forehead. Even a hat couldn’t hide the fact that his dried skin was receding to bare white skull underneath, and he was wearing a large jacket to hide the rest of his decay.

“Good to see you too, sir,” James said.

The girl standing beside him cleared her throat, and Abel looked at her for the first time.

Her brown hair was chopped in a pixie cut, her eyes were the color of moss, and she had the kind of hips that were made for dancing. Not Abel’s type, but cute. Even so, she looked pretty boring next to James.

Stephanie’s demeanor cooled as soon as she realized James had company. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Brianna.” She held out her hand. “I’m James’s new apprentice.”

The doctor arched an eyebrow at James. “New apprentice.”

“She’s from my old coven in Colorado. It’s a thing of necessity, I assure you.” He shot a look at Brianna. “And you are not my apprentice, so please stop saying that. I’m not going to tell you again.”

She looked utterly unperturbed by his response. “Two werewolves, a witch, and two critters I don’t recognize. They make me think of mausoleums.” Brianna pointed at Gwyn and Scott.

“Zombie,” James supplied.

“Great,” Stephanie said. “Just what you need. More teenage girls with special powers to corrupt.” She huffed. “Well, thanks for coming, anyway.”

“It’s my pleasure. I have to say, I’m more than a little surprised to see what condition you’re in, Scott. What can I do to help all of you?”

“We have a problem. Well, several problems, but I think you can only help us with one of them,” Stephanie said. “First of all, it turns out that my father is a necromancer.” That announcement should have surprised or confused anyone else, but James only nodded. “Scott reanimated Gwyneth while he was still alive, but he—well, he died.”

“I see that.”

“Anyway, without a resident necromancer, both of our resident zombies are starting to fall apart. Scott believes that a more powerful witch might be able to channel his necromantic abilities. We would all be very happy if we could restore Gwyn to life.” She sighed. “And my father too, I suppose.”

“Ah,” James said. That was it.

“Can you do it?” Abel asked.

The witch clapped his hands together and blew into them. “Yes,” he said after a long moment. “I suspect I can.”

Gwyn and Abel exchanged looks. For once, they were on the exact same page, and neither of them believed this guy was for real. “You sound mighty confident in yourself,” she said.

A light filled James’s eyes, brightening the already pale irises. “If I can’t do it, nobody else will be able to. You can trust me on that.” He blinked, and that strange moment ended so quickly that Abel wasn’t sure he’d even seen it in the first place. “So, shall we go inside?”

Stephanie took the new witches downstairs to the cellar to talk, and Abel decided to avoid them, since Brianna’s presence meant that he didn’t have to be Scott’s errand boy anymore. He was bent on talking with Rylie—whether Seth wanted him to or not.

He found Rylie with his brother in the orchard. They were sitting on a bench, staring out at the trees, and separated by about six inches of space and radiating awkwardness. Seth looked up when Abel approached. “Hey.”

“Don’t stop the party on my account,” Abel said, leaning on the nearest tree. “What’s with all the joy and laughter?”

Neither of them responded. Rylie looked drained and sad, and it put a dent in Abel’s usually impenetrable sense of humor.

“I’ll let you guys talk,” Seth said, and he went inside.

“Okay, what’s with that?” Abel asked as soon as he was gone.

Rylie blew out a sigh. It was cold enough that her breath billowed around her face. “Seth’s trying to talk me into using a bodyguard.”

He laughed. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. The new pack member has a background in ‘personal security,’ and Seth arranged for him to watch me.” She groaned and covered her eyes with a hand. “I don’t want to be watched. I don’t need to be protected. I am not going to have some scary biker wolf lurking everywhere I go.”

“I’m scary,” Abel said.

“Not to me.” Her hand slid off of her face, and she gave him a pathetic smile. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yeah, you sound glad.”

“I just found out that I’m going to have twins, my fiancé is trying to attach a biker security detail to me, and Levi is stomping around like he runs the ranch. Should I be in a good mood?”

“Sure,” Abel said, “because now I’m back.”

The corner of Rylie’s mouth twitched. “We need a game plan. Pyper and Daven are starting to treat Levi like he’s the Alpha, so he’s getting traction. But he won’t be able to challenge us if you start controlling the pack’s transformation on the moons. Levi can’t do that yet, so no amount of blustering is going to help if you do it first.”

“I don’t need to know how to change the wolves if I just punch Levi’s face in.”

“But you’ll also be showing that you can only lead with force. This is a lot better, trust me,” Rylie said. “I can show you how to do it. It’s easy.”

“For you.”

“And it will be for you, too.” Her voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “Once you can change yourself at will, I’ll show you how to use it on other wolves. Okay?”

“You’re awfully bossy for a fragile little flower that needs a bodyguard.”

“Shut up or I’ll bite you.”

He grinned. “Any time, Rylie. Any time.”

NINE

The Real Alpha

Weeks passed without Abel and Rylie getting a chance to speak again. Despite Brianna’s help, Scott kept Abel busy running errands, and winter started turning into spring. Moons came and went. March approached. And Rylie kept growing.

He finally caught her doing dishes one night after dinner. Her stomach was getting in the way, and there was a big wet patch where she had been leaning against the sink.

“So when are you going to teach me to change?” Abel asked.

Rylie handed him a wet plate and a dishtowel. “I don’t know. I’m always so tired. Seth and I have been going to bed early every night.”

“You can stay up just this once,” he said, running the towel over the plate and dropping it on the counter. “Unless a late bedtime is too rough on the Alpha?”

A small smile touched her lips, but it was interrupted by a yawn. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

It felt like eons until “tomorrow” arrived. It started snowing again, and it looked like a nasty storm was brewing. The air was thick with anticipant silence.

Abel met Rylie by the pond after dark. She was wearing Bekah’s puffy white jacket and snow boots. He hadn’t bothered putting anything on over his jeans, though. If he was going to be changing into a wolf, then his clothes would only get shredded.

Suppressing a shiver, he paced along the shore of the pond to keep himself warm.

“Tell me what to do, sensei,” Abel said.

Rylie considered him with her hands tucked underneath her arms and her bottom lip worried between her teeth. Her cheeks were pink with cold. She looked like a snow princess. “How does it feel before you change? Is it like the wolf gets big inside of you?”

“Uh…sometimes?”

“Do you get antsy and feverish?”

“No,” Abel said.

Rylie twisted her lips in thought. He found himself staring at her lips and thinking of kissing her again. She smelled amazing, even wearing another girl’s clothing, and it was hard to be alone with her.

“Doesn’t it ever feel like you’re on the brink of losing control?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said, voice low and gravelly.

She must have known that he wasn’t talking about the wolf. Her cheeks reddened further. “I can change on command because it always feels like I’m about to shift,” Rylie said, talking a little too fast. “It takes a lot of self-control for me to stay human, sometimes, so when I want to change, all I have to do is…let go. Maybe we just need something to pull your wolf out.”

“Like what?”

She shrugged. The snowflakes were catching in her hair, and one was stuck to her eyelashes. “It happens to me when I get angry or scared, or when I see a prey animal, like rabbits and deer. Do you get all excited about deer?”

“I only get excited about the two-legged does,” he said with a grin. He loved seeing how pink her cheeks could get.

“We have to focus, Abel.”

“I’m focused all right,” he said, reaching out to touch a snowflake over her ear. It melted at his fingertips. She gazed up at him with equal parts embarrassment and amusement, and it was amazing to him that she could meet his eyes without flinching. She was one of the only people who never seemed bothered by his scars. “I’ve never been more focused.”

“Focused on changing?” She gently pushed his hand away. “Please.”

“All right, all right.” Abel faced out into the snowy night, shut his eyes, and tried to relax.

But he didn’t know what he should “let go” of, exactly. He didn’t feel like he was hanging onto anything. Definitely not his human shape. Whatever problem Rylie had with her animal side, he didn’t share it.

After standing around with his eyes closed for a full minute, he just felt kind of stupid.

“Nothing?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay. Then try imagining yourself changing. Think about having paws and a tail.”

Abel tried not to laugh. Instead, he closed his eyes again and imagined being a wolf. But he couldn’t really remember ever being an animal. Whenever he woke up on the mornings after his transformation, it was as though he had just suffered through a long, restless sleep, filled with violent dreams he couldn’t recall.

He flexed his hands and tried to imagine the way the bones would snap as they shrunk into paws. He twisted his head on his shoulders and thought about the extension of his spine into a tail. But even all of that was hard to remember. Abel knew the transformations hurt, yet by the time the next day rolled around, it was all just a foggy, unpleasant memory.

“It’s not happening,” he said, facing her again. Her obvious disappointment chipped away at his confidence.

“There must be a way to reach your wolf without my help. That’s just what Alphas do. I can’t believe nothing gets your wolf excited.”

“Well, there is one thing,” Abel said. “My wolf obviously finds your wolf awfully exciting.”

She lowered herself onto one of the rocks by the pond. “There’s nothing exciting about me now,” she grumbled, rubbing circles on her belly. “And my wolf is out of the question.”

He sat beside her. “Then I just can’t do it. Also, it’s cold as balls out here. We’re doing this at a sunny beach next time.” Although there was no way a sunny beach could be quite as comfortable on sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Rylie. She was glowing in the dim light of evening, and he thought he had never seen her looking so beautiful.

Before he could think better of it, Abel reached out to touch her stomach. His hand covered hers.

“Do you feel them move yet?” he asked.

She bit her bottom lip, and the motion drew his gaze to her mouth. “That’s not why we’re out here, Abel.”

“But Seth gets to be there for the appointments. I don’t even get to touch you? These are my babies, Rylie. I know it.”

Rylie ducked her head. She hadn’t moved her hand from underneath his.

“They move a lot at night,” she said softly.

He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. Her face was so close to his, just inches away. Abel couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the pink curve of her lips. All he had to do was lean forward a little bit—

Something cracked, echoing through the night.

Rylie’s head whipped around so that she could stare at the silhouetted cluster of trees. It sounded like someone had stepped on a fallen branch. “What was that?” she whispered.

He stood, putting himself between her and the trees.

“I don’t know,” he said, scanning the horizon.

Between the new werewolf and the two witches, there were a lot of unfamiliar smells around the ranch these days. But the smell he was getting off the wind wasn’t a smell of wolves or witches.

It was the smell of oil and gunpowder.

There was suddenly nothing Abel wanted more than to hide Rylie away, somewhere that nobody could find her. “We need to get inside,” he said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

“Do you smell that?” she asked in a growling undertone. Her eyes were filled with gold fire, and her fingers dug into his bicep. There was blood spotting the edge of her first fingernail.

“Don’t change,” he said, steering her away from the pond without dropping his eyes from the trees. “You have to stay human.”

Her voice deepened further. “But there’s danger.”

Abel spun her around and seized her chin so that she had to focus on him. “You will not change, Rylie. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Hear me?”

Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded.

He marched her toward the house with his heart thudding. The wind picked up and blew more smells toward him. Abel pulled Rylie against his chest and muttered nonsense to her in a soothing tone, trying to remind her not to change, even as he sped his pace. Her Alpha energies swept over him, surging and receding like the tide was shaped by the moon.

A shadow stirred in the trees—a shadow shaped like a man.

Abel shoved her behind him just as the gun fired.

He wasn’t sure if he imagined the bullet whizzing over his head, or if he really felt the burn of silver passing him at impossible speeds. It struck the side of the house, and wood cracked.

The screen door whined open. Gwyn jogged outside holding her shotgun. The wind blew her hat off, dangling over her back by a string.

“Get down!” she shouted.

Abel shoved Rylie to the ground. A shotgun blast split the air.

Their attacker was too far away for spraying pellets to be effective, but Abel heard a distant, satisfying cry of shock.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking at Rylie underneath him. Her blond hair fanned over the ground. Her lips were pale, her eyes were wide, and her irises blazed with the light of the moon.

He almost missed the stain of red on the snow.

“He hit me,” she whispered, lifting her arm. There was a hole in the sleeve where the bullet had grazed her. The burning red stripe wasn’t healing as fast as it should have.

Their attacker was using silver. He was trying to kill Abel’s mate.

A surge of wolfish fury filled him. For an instant, Abel felt like he might shatter, as though his bones and muscles had become too big to be contained within his body. Skin ached, forehead throbbed, teeth loosened, fingernails itched. The heat was too much, even among the snow and cold air.

The wolf seized him, driving away his human mind.

Someone is hunting my mate.

Rylie lay beneath him, flattened to the snow, as he changed. She gazed at him with an expression that made no sense to the mind of the wolf. It had no interest in human thoughts or human feelings. All that it cared was that Rylie was his to protect, love, and care for—her and their unborn children.

He was furred and fanged within moments. He swung around to face the shooter and roared.

Abel bounded toward the trees, swifter than the wind, more powerful than a cascading waterfall, and he reached the trees in three long leaps. The shooter darted around a tree and fired blindly over his shoulder. Every single shot missed. Bullets sent bark exploding through the air, and the stinging smell of silver only fed the wolf’s fury.

His prey ran across the hill, pumping his arms and legs, but he tripped on a jutting rock. The man landed on his side, rolled, and came up with a gun in both hands. He fired off two shots. The first one buzzed over Abel’s shoulder. The second hit the snow by his rear paw.

He didn’t get a chance to fire again.

Abel plowed into him, and there was no time for him to consider that they might want to keep the man alive. He clamped his jaws on the throat of his prey and jerked back. The taste of blood filled his mouth.

He bit again as the man’s gurgling screams reached a pitch.

Then the screaming stopped entirely.

But the night wasn’t silent after he died—someone was crying.

Abel whirled, facing the house again. Rylie was crouched over someone. Her aunt?

Abandoning the body, he rushed back to her side. Gwyneth was on her knees, the shotgun forgotten, and her hands were clamped over her gut.

“Let me see,” Rylie begged. “Just let me look.”

“Babe, I don’t know if you should—”

“Please!”

Reluctantly, Gwyn opened her hands. One of the bullets that had missed Abel had drilled straight into her chest. The front didn’t look too bad; it was just a hole the size of a dime over her heart. But when Abel glimpsed the damage at the back, he lost control of his wolf.

Abel shifted back. He was human again in seconds, naked and steaming and silent with shock.

The hole in Gwyn’s back was the size of a dinner plate, and it bared her ribs and spine and everything underneath. It didn’t glisten or bleed. She had been dead too long for that. But her heart was pulverized, and her lungs…dear Lord, Abel could see her lungs, and they were shredded.

“I’m okay,” she said, taking Rylie’s hand. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Tears cascaded over Rylie’s cheeks. “But Scott can’t fix you now.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Gwyn repeated, softer than before.

Seth emerged from the house, looking groggy and confused. “What’s going on out here?” His eyes swept over the shotgun, to Abel seated beside Rylie. Gwyn turned enough to expose her back to Seth.

He couldn’t seem to respond once he saw that.

They took Gwyn to sit inside the house, then Abel, Rylie, and Seth all went to the hill to examine the shooter’s body. The snow around him was the color of hard candy, slick and red, and his skin was beginning to turn blue. Everything from chin to chest was a mess of ripped flesh.

Seth kneeled to pick up the gun, scanning the footprints and trees.

“I think he was watching us,” Abel said. “He wasn’t ready for a fight.”

“Union?” Seth asked.

“Everything he’s wearing is black. I’d definitely say so.”

“Look at this,” Rylie said, scooping a Bluetooth headset out of the snow. The light on the side was blinking blue.

Abel took it from her and placed the speaker against his ear. Voices chattered on the other side. “This is control. Come in, John. Report.” He dropped the headset on a nearby boulder, picked up a rock, and smashed it into pieces.

“How much do you think he told them?” Rylie asked, voice trembling. Abel couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or fear.

“No way to tell. We have to clean this up before someone comes looking for him. With everything the OPA has been doing…” Seth shook his head. “I’ll grab shovels.”

“I’ll put on pants and meet you back here in five,” Abel said.

He dressed and went back to the kitchen. Aunt Gwyneth was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a hole in her back. He had never seen her smoke before.

At his look, she said, “I quit fifteen years ago. Doesn’t taste as good as it used to.”

“Does it really not hurt?” he asked, zipping up his jeans.

Gwyn took a drag on the cigarette and blew it out. “It hurts like hell.”

TEN

Recruitment

Seth and Abel dug the Union hunter’s grave together, and they mostly worked in silence. It was hard to penetrate the icy ground, even for a werewolf; by the time they stood in a hole that was six feet deep, Abel was covered in sweat and had stripped down to nothing but his jeans.

“What were you doing outside with Rylie last night?” Seth asked.

They hadn’t spoken for so long that the sound of his brother’s voice surprised him. It took a second to think of a properly annoying response. “We were making hot, passionate love in the moonlight,” Abel said. Seth actually lifted his shovel a few inches, like he was going to attack. “You wanted me to come back so I could be Alpha. Rylie’s helping me figure it out.”

“And that’s all?”

“Aside from the hot sex,” Abel said. Every muscle in Seth’s body tensed, but Abel ignored him to plant his shovel in the ground. “Think this is good?”

“It’s probably deep enough that a playful werewolf shouldn’t dig up any bones.”

Abel climbed out first using the strength of his arms alone. Once he was on top of the hill again, Seth held up a hand for help, and Abel briefly considered burying his brother with the body, too. It would have solved a lot of problems. Rylie didn’t have to know where Seth had gone, after all.

But Abel gripped his brother’s wrist and hauled him onto the snowy ground.

“Grab the feet,” Seth said, oblivious to Abel’s temptations.

They had wrapped the body in several layers of bed sheets and secured it with twine. Abel grabbed the narrower end while Seth took fistfuls of cloth at the shoulders, and together, they heaved the body into the hole.

The grave was beyond the trees, where it couldn’t be seen from the main house. Hopefully, it was also a place that future landowners wouldn’t be surprised to find bones. Gwyneth had mentioned that there might be other graves in the area from the family that used to own the land anyway.

“So that’s it,” Abel said as the snow drifted on the body in the hole.

Seth sighed. “Yeah.”

They didn’t speak again while they shoveled soil back into the hole.

After another hour of hard work, Abel pushed fresh snow on top of the grave’s bulge to conceal it.

“One more good snow, and nobody will know anything’s here,” Abel said, but Seth wasn’t watching him.

“We’ve got company,” he said, dropping his shovel.

A pair of black SUVs were creeping up the driveway toward the house, one after the other. There were American flags affixed to the hood.

The Union must have been looking for their dead hunter.

Rylie emerged from the back door as Abel and Seth crested the hill, wearing a loose white dress and Bekah’s damaged jacket. “Did you guys take care of it?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yeah. And just in time.” Abel nodded toward the SUVs.

Her face paled when she spotted them. “Oh, no.”

“You have to hide, Rylie,” Seth said. “They can’t see you. If they realize that you’re pregnant…”

He didn’t have to say anything else. She nodded. “I’ll get in the cellar. Go meet them.”

“On it,” Abel said.

He jogged around the house. The SUVs had parked in front of Gwyn’s truck as if to block an attempted escape, and a crowd was forming underneath the tree. The Union’s arrival had woken up the entire pack, including Bekah and Levi, who stood in the very front like a welcoming committee. Gwyn and Scott were nowhere in sight.

A door opened on the first SUV, and a couple of men in black suits emerged first, followed by a face that Abel recognized: Secretary Gary Zettel of the Office of Preternatural Affairs. He was even uglier in person than when he was making television appearances, and much shorter. The collar of his shirt barely concealed an ugly white scar ringing his throat.

“What do you want?” Levi asked, stepping forward.

“I want to speak to the owner of the house,” Zettel said.

“No, you don’t.”

“All right. I want to talk to your Alpha.”

Abel steeled himself to speak up, but he didn’t get the chance. Levi thumped a fist on his own chest. “You’re looking at him.” His tone grated on Abel’s nerves, but if the kid wanted to claim responsibility for the pack in front of people most likely trying to kill them, Abel was not going to argue.

“So you admit that this is a werewolf enclave,” Zettel said. “Then we can get right down to business. I’m with the Office of Preternatural—”

“I know who you are,” Levi interrupted.

The black-suited men shifted, hands at the ready, like they were on the verge of tackling Levi. But Zettel was unruffled. “So you’re probably also aware that we’re about to pass comprehensive legislation regulating things like you.”

Abel bit back a remark as he paced at the back of the pack. Seth had joined him, and he didn’t look any happier.

“I know you’re trying,” Levi said.

“You should realize that we’ve been preparing for this for years. All we need is a few signatures to make it legitimate.” Zettel reached into his jacket, and the entire pack tensed. Crystal, near the front, dropped into a half-crouch. Brody growled audibly. The Secretary froze. “I’m not drawing a weapon.”

Levi nodded, and Zettel extracted a folded piece of paper. Abel had to step around the crowd to see it. A pamphlet? The white UKA logo on the front was unmistakable.

“This is a private contractor that the Office of Preternatural Affairs has hired to handle operations on the ground. The Union of Kopides and Aspides—also known as ‘the Union’—is recruiting soldiers of all species. They offer a salary, benefits, and amnesty for all members.”

Abel snorted. Amnesty.

“The Union is a security company, in a way. As an employee, you would be trained to fight and put into the field …and Union employees will be exempt from the registry taking effect later this year.” Zettel handed the pamphlet to Levi. “There are more details there.”

Abel couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “So you came here to recruit the pack.”

“I’m here to help you while there’s still time,” Zettel said.

“Bullshit.”

“Abel,” Levi snapped. “Watch yourself.”

He cracked his knuckles. He’d watch himself all right. “Then you didn’t come here looking for anyone in particular,” Abel said, addressing Zettel. “Say…a missing Union hunter.” Seth blanched.

“I don’t know,” Zettel said calmly. “Do you know of any missing Union hunters?”

They stared each other down. Something about Zettel, almost a full foot shorter than him, made Abel think that a fistfight between them would be fairer than it should have been. Zettel looked like a hard man. A guy who would fight dirty.

“No,” Abel said after too long of a pause.

It was an obvious lie, but Zettel only returned his attention to Levi. “What’s your decision, Alpha?”

Levi tore the packet in half, threw it at Zettel’s feet, and spit on the ground.

Someone gave a quiet cheer. Was that Trevin? Nobody else dared make a sound.

Zettel ignored the pieces of paper fluttering on the ground. “Once we leave your ranch, we won’t return on friendly terms. You can enlist now or deal with the consequences later.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Levi said.

He walked back into the house, and one by one, the pack split off to follow him—some with less confidence than others. Abel didn’t move. He was rooted to the ground.

“Guess you have your answer,” Abel said.

The Secretary faced his guards. “Search the property.”

Seth and Abel stepped forward at the same time, blocking the suited men. “Do you have a warrant?” Seth asked.

“We don’t need one. H.R. 2076—”

“Hasn’t passed yet. If you don’t have a warrant, we have to ask you to leave.”

“A warrant like this?” Zettel pulled another paper out of his jacket and held it up for them to examine. There was a judge’s signature at the bottom. “Just because I don’t need a warrant doesn’t mean that we didn’t come prepared.”

Seth swore under his breath as half of the guards split away to walk around the property. Abel tried to remember if they had covered all of the bloody snow. What would the OPA do if they found the grave? Did it look like a grave? Would they realize what had happened?

If any of them so much as glanced at the cellar…

“There’s a lot of land out here,” Zettel said. “It would be easy to get lost or go missing.”

“Maybe people that don’t want to ‘go missing’ shouldn’t mess with us,” Abel said.

“I’m not just talking about outsiders. I’ve heard that nobody has seen the woman who owns this property in quite some time. Months. Have you spoken to Gwyneth Gresham lately?”

“She has an apartment in the city now,” Seth said without batting an eye.

“Do you have her permission to occupy this property?”

Abel wondered if that was meant to be a trick question. If they said no, could they be kicked off for squatting? But if they said yes, then it would confirm that Gwyneth knew about werewolves.

“My brother and I maintain the fields for her,” Seth said. Good answer.

“What’s her phone number?” Zettel asked.

“Why? Want to ask her out on a date?” Abel smirked. “You’re not her type.”

The suited guards returned. One of them was holding a smart phone. “Did you find it?” Zettel asked.

“No, sir.”

Abel peered at the screen of the phone. It looked like some kind of GPS. They must have been trying to zero in on the location of the Bluetooth headset.

“If you’re done, then I think it’s time for you to leave,” Seth said.

For a long, tense moment, he thought that Zettel might refuse. Abel could smell guns under their jackets. But the Secretary nodded, and everybody climbed back into the black SUVs.

He didn’t breathe until they were gone.

Rylie hadn’t expected to find anyone in the cellar at that time of morning, much less the strange witch with the white hair. They hadn’t really been introduced yet. She had only glimpsed him arriving and leaving, once a day, like he was showing up for a job at the ranch.

She froze on the steps with her hand on the cellar door.

“Do you need something?” James asked, crouched on one cardinal point of the circle with a small mortar and pestle in hand.

It took her a moment to remember how to speak. “I have to hide. The Union…”

“Close the door. Quickly.” He crossed the cellar in a few steps and mounted the stairs.

Rylie shut the doors, and James pressed his gloved hand against the latch. He muttered something that sounded like a poem, and when he drew back, Rylie tried to open the latch again. It wouldn’t budge.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Just a little something to protect the door. You’re hardly the only one who wants to hide from the Union.” He returned to the circle and picked up the mortar and pestle again.

She hesitated on the stairs, uncertain if she should enter the cellar. All of the boxes had been removed. Candles were placed around the room to provide flickering light, and her sensitive nose picked up the smell of herbs, like rosemary and dragon’s blood and lotus. Polished agates were laid out in a grid on the floor.

“You can get comfortable,” James said, resting the mortar on his knee to free up a hand for writing in a book. “I’m not doing anything sensitive yet, and I’m sure you want to sit.”

Rylie flushed and settled herself on the bottom step.

“I don’t think we were ever introduced,” she said. “I’m Rylie.”

“Nice to meet you, Rylie. My name is James.”

“Um…” She bit her bottom lip and tried to think of a nice way to phrase her next question. When she couldn’t come up with anything, she just asked, “What are you?”

“I’m a witch, much like Stephanie and Scott, although their abilities in magic are a far cry from mine.” He said it matter-of-factly, like he was stating an obvious truth rather than bragging. His irises were a very pale shade of blue, and she felt very uncomfortable when that gaze was directed on her. “What are you?”

She focused on her feet. “I’m a werewolf.”

“Oh? Then you must be the Alpha.”

That was usually the point that people started acting weird around her, or too respectful, or even scared. But James returned to drawing the circle as if being an Alpha wasn’t interesting enough to suffice as a conversation starter.

He sprinkled the herbs he had been grinding on the floor. Then he painted swirly, looping lines from one side of the cellar to the other, encircling the agates and candles. It was fascinating to watch. Rylie had been stuck in the company of witches a lot lately, but she didn’t get to watch them work very often, and what James did was completely different from the California coven’s idea of magic. He didn’t have any of those creepy pentagrams in his symbols at all. In fact, she didn’t recognize anything he drew.

When he filled one entire quadrant of the room outside the circle, he set down the brush and joined her on the stairs. He smelled weird. Like sunshine and fertile soil and clean laundry hanging on the clothesline.

She edged away from him.

“I think that’s all I can do this morning,” James said, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort. “I’m out of ink, but I’ll have to wait for the Union to leave so I can prepare more.”

“Why are you hiding from them?”

“I’m on the very long list of people that the Union doesn’t like. Frankly, I think that list is much longer than their list of allies, so it’s really nothing worth getting excited about.”

His casual tone only made Rylie more suspicious. Had he killed someone?

She inched as far to the right side of the stairs as possible without falling off.

“How do you know Stephanie?” Rylie asked, just to change the subject.

“She’s my ex-girlfriend.” That wasn’t the answer that Rylie had expected. Stephanie seemed like the kind of person who would be married to her job. James noticed her surprise and chuckled. “She’s as wonderful a person as she is a doctor. I know that’s probably hard to see. She can be hostile at times.”

“Oh, no, I know that she’s great. I couldn’t do this without her.” Rylie pressed her palm against the side of her stomach. One of the babies kicked her hand.

“When are you due?”

“Um…Stephanie says early August, but she also said that twins often come prematurely, so…I don’t know. I guess it could be just about any time this summer.”

“Twins? Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Rylie said, even though she still wasn’t one hundred percent certain that it was something she wanted to be congratulated for.

The babies started kicking harder, like they knew that people were talking about them. She could feel them tumbling around her navel. Rylie imagined them attacking each other and play-fighting like werewolves on a full moon.

They bumped around hard enough that her stomach visibly twitched. James watched intently. “May I…?”

She realized that he was asking to touch her stomach. It wasn’t an unusual request, but she eyed his gloved hands and felt the strong impulse to refuse. But the awkwardness factor of refusal beat out her unease. Reluctantly, Rylie nodded.

He pressed his palm to the curve of her belly, and his touch spread warmth from her breastbone to her knees.

The bumping moved to the opposite side of her stomach.

Pain flared in her ribs. One of them must have elbowed her. “Ouch,” she said, wincing.

James’s smile had grown to warm his entire face. “Feisty creatures.”

“You have no idea.” She gazed at him mistrustfully. He had leaned close enough that she could see white stubble on his jaw, the faint imprint of scars on one cheek, and slivers of a darker blue radiating from his pupils. He wasn’t quite so scary up close. The little flaws made him look more human. “Are you really going to be able to fix Gwyn and Scott?”

“If I can’t, nobody can,” he said, moving his hand to the other side of her stomach.

“Not much of answer.”

“I can’t make any promises. I’m sorry.” He laughed when a kick landed solidly in the middle of his palm. “I don’t think they like me.”

The cellar doors rattled.

Rylie started to stand, but he lifted a hand to stop her.

“Who’s there?” James called.

The doors shook again, and a muffled voice came from the other side. “Rylie?”

She was nearly overwhelmed with relief. “It’s Seth,” she said. “It’s okay.”

James passed his hand over the magically locked door, and Seth pulled it open from the other side. “They’re gone,” Seth said, sliding around James to grab her hand.

“What did they want?”

His jaw tightened. “They want the pack.”

ELEVEN

Hometown Visitor

The next time the full moon arrived, Rylie spent the entire day dreading it. It had been too long since she last bled her energy into Abel, so her wolf was aching to go for a run…and not on two legs. It wanted her to shift, flee into the hills with her pack, and howl all of her pain into the night.

She paced outside the back door of the kitchen, gnawing on her thumbnail as the sky darkened. Moonrise came earlier in the winter, so they were already just an hour from the change. She had to be prepared to help them. But the last couple of changes had been harrowing. When she walked among the wolves like she usually did, she had almost lost control.

How was she going to keep a grip on herself when she could barely stay human with the sun in the sky?

“Relax,” Gwyn said. She was sitting on the porch swing while Rylie paced in front of her. “You’re wound tighter than the strings on a fiddle.”

“I am relaxed. I am exactly as relaxed as it’s possible to be right now.”

Gwyn sighed. It rattled in her shredded lungs. According to Scott, the fact that she could sigh at all was part of the same necromantic magic that kept the rest of her body functioning. “Maybe you should sit this one out, babe.”

“I can’t. What if the OPA comes back tonight? Who will protect the pack?”

“He can.”

She turned to see where her aunt was pointing, and saw Abel approaching at a jog. He only wore sweatpants and a sheen of sweat. If he had worn himself out, then he must have been running for quite some time.

“You look like you’re full of sunshine,” Abel said when he drew near.

Rylie flushed and tried not to stare at his chest and abs. “I’m fine,” she said, a little sharper than she probably needed to.

She expected him to tease her, but he only looked sympathetic. “The moon?”

“The moon,” she admitted.

“You can handle the pack on your own, right?” Gwyn asked in that you better say yes kind of tone.

He grinned. “Of course.”

“That’s what I thought.” She gathered the blanket around her body and stood. “Don’t let Rylie wear herself out.”

She ducked around Aden and Trevin as they emerged from the house, and then she disappeared into the kitchen.

“See you soon,” Trevin called to Abel as he ran off.

Everyone was spreading out that night to watch for Union members, although they were under strict instructions to capture, not kill. Rylie wasn’t optimistic in how well she thought that would work. Werewolves weren’t exactly the best at self-control.

Rylie glanced up at the sky. She couldn’t see the moon through the clouds, but she could feel it. “Ten minutes.”

What was she going to do?

Abel untied the string on his jogging pants so that they hung loosely around his hips. “The old lady’s right. You need to chill.”

“But you can’t take over for me yet. You can’t control the pack’s change.”

“And you can’t shift on command, either,” Levi said, rounding the side of the house. He was one of the pack members that was completely comfortable being naked before the transformations, but the air was too cold that night, so he wore a thick bathrobe. “You’re too weak. You’ll never be an Alpha wolf, Abel.”

Abel growled, but he fell silent as soon as Rylie touched his arm. His bicep was tense beneath her fingers.

“You want to be Alpha?” Abel asked, biting out each word. “Be my guest. Walk with the pack and change them. I’ll wait.”

Levi glared at him, then tossed his bathrobe to the ground and shifted without admitting that such a thing was beyond his power.

As a wolf, Levi was hard to distinguish from his sister. They had the same shaggy, honey-colored fur. The only real difference was that he was much larger. Maybe even large enough to take Abel down.

Levi took two steps toward Abel, as if considering exactly that.

“Get out of here,” Rylie said. Her voice was deepened by the power of the moon. She didn’t often force her will on the pack, but she was sick of Levi’s crap, and her stare was enough to make him back down. For now.

Bekah flashed through the nearby orchard, having already changed on her own. Levi gave chase.

The others were still spread out in human form—not far from the grove where they buried the Union soldier.

Rylie faced Abel. “If you are the male Alpha for the pack—if you are my mate—” She stumbled on that word. “You should be able to change them. Reach out with your inner wolf. Seize control of them and draw out the spirit of the beast.”

Abel didn’t have to respond for her to see the helplessness in his eyes. He didn’t even understand what she was talking about.

How could he ever be Alpha like that?

“Okay, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just watch me tonight.”

Rylie moved down the hill and walked among the wolves. A current of energy filled the ranch, twisting in the night air like the electricity that lingered after a lightning strike.

One by one, the wolves shifted, and it was painless under her watchful eye. Every yelp and shudder could be soothed with a touch.

Her wolf wanted to change with them so very, very badly.

When the rest of the pack had transformed, she returned her attention to Abel—still human, but not for long.

“Do it,” she urged him. “Do it without me.”

He balled his hands into fists. “I can’t.”

The urge to change was too strong to wait any longer. Rylie touched his hand, released her energy, and fed it through his body. It poured out of her to fill him. His eyes grew brighter with the brilliance of the moon.

He became a wolf and ran with the pack.

Rylie failed to get any sleep that night. She stayed up to watch the wolves, terrified that Secretary Zettel would choose that night to return. But the hours passed quietly, and the sun rose on a sleepy ranch.

Once everyone was inside, she followed Gwyn into the cellar, where Scott was already waiting with James and Brianna. The witches had spent all evening trying to repair Scott’s body, but to no avail. James said that he didn’t have a big enough power source to channel the necromantic power, and nobody was hot on the idea of human sacrifice.

“We’ll figure something out. No rush. I’ve got all eternity, apparently.” Gwyn moved for the stairs again, but James stopped her.

“We should check your bandages,” he said.

“It’s not like I’m going to get an infection, son.”

“No, but you’re fragile now. One wound invites others. If we don’t protect it, you might begin…unraveling.” James didn’t look at Scott when he said that, but Rylie did. No hat could cover the deterioration on Scott’s skull now. The skin had peeled open all the way to his eyebrows, and his hair was falling out.

Gwyn dropped her coat and sat down so that James could inspect her wounded back. Rylie couldn’t stand watching it.

She fled for the surface and gasped for air.

When had everything gone so wrong? There was a body buried somewhere on the ranch. The Union wanted to take her pack away. A white-haired witch was trying to figure out how to resurrect the dead in her cellar. And Abel couldn’t seem to find his inner Alpha.

As if to remind her that things could still get harder, one of the babies gave a hard kick.

Rylie winced and headed inside.

Things were no more pleasant in the house. The pack was eating breakfast in the living room, and it seemed to have dissolved into an argument over whether or not they should join the Union.

“We might be safer that way,” Kiara said as Rylie slipped through the door. Kiara had headphones hanging around her neck with the cord vanishing into her jeans pocket, and the tinny sounds of treble whispered from the speakers. It underscored the conversation with a weirdly peppy beat. “You heard what he said. If we don’t sign up… What if we all get tagged, like wild dogs?”

Bekah moved into the center of the room. “Nobody is tagging anyone.”

“But they’re the government,” Trevin protested. “They’ve probably got our phones bugged and cameras everywhere!”

“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t mean that we should do what they say,” Bekah said. “We’ve dealt with them before. We can do it again.”

Levi had been pacing silently near the front door, but at this, he stopped and faced the pack. “We should strike first.”

Protests erupted throughout the room. Crystal’s voice was louder than the rest. “That’s suicide!”

“Better suicide than servitude,” Levi snapped.

Abel stood suddenly. Rylie hadn’t even noticed that he was on the chair by the window, but once he was standing, he was much too tall to ignore. All eyes fell on him. “We should hear what Rylie thinks,” he said.

So all eyes went to her, instead.

After more than two years leading the pack, it shouldn’t have made her nervous to have everyone looking to her for guidance. But it did.

Rylie folded her hands over her stomach and took a deep breath to brace herself.

“I’m not a dictator,” she said. “I’m also not a fortuneteller. I can’t see the future, and I don’t know what’s safest for us. Will we be okay if we band together and stand as a team? Maybe. But that might also mean that we’ll all get tagged or arrested or…I don’t know.”

Levi scoffed.

She went on. “We’re not just wolves, and we’re not just a pack. We’re humans. So I’m not going to tell you what to do. I can promise that everyone who stays will have my very best efforts to protect them, but this is big, and I can’t make any guarantees. If you think the Union can offer you something…” She shrugged.

Brody worked his mouth around, like he tasted something sour. “What is this Union, anyway? What can they do?”

“A lot. Some are witches, and some are natural born hunters—kopides, like Seth—and they all have a lot of guns. They’ve tried to exterminate us before,” she said.

“Being on the winning side doesn’t sound so bad,” Pyper said, and Kiara nodded vigorously along with her.

Levi gave Rylie a hard look. “An Alpha has the power to enforce his will over the pack. A smart Alpha could use that to protect his wolves.”

Another challenge. All it succeeded in doing was making Rylie feel acutely tired. “Then enforce your will. If you’re such an Alpha, you tell everyone what to do.”

“You’re not even going to try to fight back?”

“She doesn’t have to,” Bekah said.

The room erupted in voices—Levi yelling incoherently at his sister, Bekah attempting to soothe him, Kiara gesticulating wildly, and Aden and Trevin shouting. The muscles of Rylie’s abdomen tensed. Another contraction?

Rylie couldn’t stand to be in the room with Levi a second longer.

She limped into Gwyn’s bedroom and shut the door.

It was harder to make out the details of the argument with several walls between them, but she couldn’t tune out the voices entirely. Every time she heard Levi’s shouts, her abs tensed again.

Rylie sank to the bed and took deep breaths.

What had Stephanie said she should do if Rylie started having contractions again? Drink water? Go for a walk?

Fortunately, she had escaped the argument just in time. The cramps didn’t get any worse. But it did get the babies kicking. “I’m not happy about this, either,” she told her stomach, rubbing a slow circle over her womb. “I bet most pregnant women don’t have to deal with dominance fights.” She dropped her hand with a sigh. “I’m talking to my stomach.”

The door opened. Rylie tensed, but it was only Seth.

“You okay?” he asked. She glimpsed Brody in the hall before Seth shut the door again.

“Just trying to stay calm.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Abel’s reaming Levi right now, and the whole pack is watching. He’s doing exactly what you wanted.” Seth sat on the bed next to her and started massaging her lower back. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it. She was always so sore now. “Does that help?”

“A little,” she admitted. “Once I teach Abel to change on his own, Levi won’t be able to stand up to him at all.”

Seth’s fingers stilled. “I was talking about the rubbing.”

“Oh.” Rylie blushed, and she could tell that he was watching to gauge her reaction. “Yeah. That’s helping.”

She expected him to say something about Abel—something about how she should stay away from him—so she was surprised when Seth changed subjects. “You’re not wearing your engagement ring anymore.”

Rylie spread the fingers on her left hand out. “No,” she said, “I’m not.”

“Why?”

“My fingers get puffy sometimes. And…”

She hesitated. The truth was, she had only agreed to marry Seth in the first place because she had been certain that he was the one who had gotten her pregnant. But that was before Abel dropped the bomb and said they had been mating.

“We’re not going to get married, are we?” Seth asked.

She bit her bottom lip and looked down at her feet—what little of them she could see over the curve of her stomach. “Seth…”

He stood and left.

Rylie stared at the sliver of hallway that she could see around the bedroom door. Brody’s shadow was lurking there, just feet away. Beyond him, the werewolves were still arguing in the living room. The witches were in the cellar, and the house was filled to the brim.

But she suddenly felt so alone.

Rylie waited until Brody’s shadow disappeared from the hallway, and then sneaked through the kitchen and out of the house.

Everyone had been telling her to stay hidden. To stay safe. So it had been weeks since she got to leave the ranch. Rylie was getting awfully sick of being safe—she needed to escape.

Once she got outside, none of the cars were in sight. Rylie walked toward the gates as quickly as she could and hoped that nobody would see her by the time she hit the highway. She only made it halfway down the hill before a voice called out.

“Wait!”

Rylie stopped and shut her eyes.

The apprentice witch, Brianna, pulled up alongside her in the car James had been driving. It was a silver sedan with leather seats.

“Where are you going?” Brianna asked.

“I’m heading into town.”

“You’re walking?”

“Yes.”

Brianna gave her massive stomach a dubious look. “I’m going that way to buy some stuff for James. Can I give you a ride?”

Rylie glanced up at the house. There was still no sign of Seth or Abel, but if either of them realized that she was running off, they would stop her. She could escape much faster in a car. “Sure.”

She climbed into the passenger’s seat and buckled up. Brianna pulled onto the highway.

Mercifully, the young witch didn’t talk very much. She hummed along with the hip hop radio station and beat her fingers against the wheel, but mostly, she just focused on driving. That was exactly the way Rylie liked it. No arguing, no judgment, no warnings about needing to be safe. Just silence.

She focused on the world whizzing by the window. It had been far too long since she saw any of it.

“Do you want to know what they are?” Brianna asked about ten minutes into the drive.

Rylie blinked. “Huh?”

“The babies. Do you want to know what they are?”

“I don’t really want to know the genders,” Rylie said. “I’m going to wait to be surprised.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Brianna tapped her own nose with a fingertip. “I can tell what kind of creature everyone is, so long as I’ve come across their breed a couple times before. It’s kind of a useless trick, actually.”

“Well, it’s definitely useless here. I already know that they’re werewolves.”

“Nope.”

Rylie blinked. “What?”

Brianna waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the twins. “One of them is definitely a werewolf. I can feel that. But the other one isn’t.”

“What is it?” Rylie asked, suddenly feeling faint.

“I don’t know,” the witch said, shrugging. “I don’t recognize the signal.”

As soon as Rylie’s heart remembered how to beat, it was going way too fast. “What else could it be? Werewolves always breed more werewolves. That’s what everyone has told me.”

Brianna frowned. It was a cute, delicate kind of expression, and just as charming as her dimpled smiles. “Sorry. I don’t mean to worry you. The fact that it’s so quiet might just mean that the baby’s human—so you probably shouldn’t worry.”

Easier said than done.

They reached the edge of town. “Drop me off at the park?” Rylie asked.

“Sure. I’m going to the drugstore. Should I pick you up when I’m done?”

“No, it’s fine. I have a ride back.” Rylie was lying, of course, but she had decided that Brianna was almost as creepy as James, and she didn’t want to get back in a car with her again.

She watched until Brianna drove off, and then started wandering. Rylie hadn’t given much thought to where she would go once she escaped. Now that she was free, she had no idea what to do with herself.

The icy streets were mostly empty, as if the entire town had gone missing in the New Year. Everything else looked the same way that it had ever since Rylie moved there in high school. A couple of businesses had closed, and those buildings had new occupants, but it could have been any one of the other winters that she had spent living with Gwyn.

How many times had she walked through those streets holding hands with Seth, totally absorbed in each other, as the world around them vanished? They had spent so many long summer days sitting under the trees, talking about the future they wanted to have together.

It had been too long since they did that. Whenever he came back from college, they had been so desperate to see each other that they barely left their bedroom, much less talked about anything. And now that he had moved back to the ranch to watch Rylie, they spent more time arguing than talking about their dreams, their plans, their future together.

Rylie wasn’t even sure that she saw a future with Seth at all anymore.

Those dark thoughts carried her through the streets. She eventually found herself in the grocery store, even though she hadn’t planned on going there.

Everyone stared at her as she walked aimlessly through the aisles. She recognized a few of the faces. It was a small store owned by a local family, so almost everything was local and organic. Normally, she really appreciated the quality food and friendly family atmosphere. Unfortunately, it also meant that everyone recognized her. They whispered as she passed. It bothered her. It bothered her a lot.

She didn’t even notice when someone crept up from behind until hands covered her eyes.

“Guess who,” said a low, masculine voice.

She reacted on instinct. Rylie spun with a growl, which cut off when she saw who had grabbed her.

Tate was older, thinner, and less smelly than he used to be. But that was still Tate’s mischievous smile, transplanted onto a body that wore a nice suit. “Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “Tate!”

He swept her up in a hug that would have been tight enough to bruise her, if she had been human. “Holy crap, you’re pregnant!”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, laughing weakly as he spun her around. “It would be kind of hard to miss with this…thing…getting in my way.” Her stomach was big enough now that none of her clothes fit, including her baggiest shirts. Now she had to borrow clothing from Seth.

“You’re huge! Is it twins?”

“Actually, yeah,” Rylie said.

Tate’s grin warmed his whole face. It made him look like the guy that she used to play video games with in high school. He didn’t look anything like the suited personality giving speeches on TV.

“Bet Seth’s going crazy over this,” Tate said.

Rylie just gave a pained smile. Yeah, but not for the reason you think.

She was sick of talking about pregnancy drama. Rylie pushed him gently, playfully. “What are you doing in town? I thought you were too important to hang out with us anymore.”

He shrugged off her question. “Just…visiting some family.”

“Going to run for office while you’re here?”

Tate laughed. “Nah, I’m holding out for president.”

“That’s so weird,” Rylie said, shaking her head in disbelief. Once upon a time, Tate would have responded to the suggestion of running for office by flipping her off and rolling another joint. “You’ve changed. You really have.”

“I’m not the only one,” he said, reaching out to rub her stomach. She gritted her teeth and pretended that she didn’t mind. “This is great. I’m really happy for you. What are you doing back? You moved away so quickly during school. You didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I guess I’m visiting family, too,” she said. “I’m staying with my aunt at the Gresham Ranch.”

Tate dropped his hand. “At the ranch?” His tone was so weird that she immediately regretted saying anything.

“Yeah,” she said.

Tate stared at her. “Golden eyes,” he said, so softly that Rylie wasn’t sure that she had heard him correctly.

She frowned and reflexively reached up, like she could conceal her eyes from him, until she realized what a stupid idea that was. “What did you say?”

He blinked and shook his head. “Nothing.” But he was still staring, just not at her eyes anymore. Instead, his gaze had become fixed on her stomach. Rylie backed away from him, covering her bump protectively with both hands.

Did he realize that she was a werewolf?

The bodyguard that Seth had hired stepped around one of the aisles, seeming to appear out of nowhere.

“Hey, Rylie,” he said. “You almost done?”

Even though Brody’s tone was casual, there was something distinctly menacing about the way that he held himself—like he was thinking of violence, even though he carried a grocery bag filled with meat from the butcher shop on the corner. His shoulder-length hair was loose around his shoulders, approximating the appearance of a tattooed caveman.

Brody smelled almost as menacing as he looked. He wasn’t one of the wolves that could change on command, but the scent of fur and fang hung over him like a cloak.

“Rylie?” Brody prompted after a moment. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said weakly.

“We haven’t been introduced,” Tate said, sizing up all six feet and two hundred pounds of pure muscle that was Brody. Next to him, Tate looked like a child.

“This is my…um, this is my friend, Brody,” Rylie said all in a rush, finally catching up with the conversation. “Brody, this is—”

“Tate Peterson,” Brody said, shifting the bags onto one arm so that he could offer a handshake. “I’ve seen you on the news.” A hint of edge had entered his voice. Brody’s feelings on the OPA were obviously not any better than the rest of the pack’s.

They shook hands. Was Tate staring at Brody’s golden eyes, too? “Nice to meet you,” Tate said, glancing at Rylie. “Guess I should…”

“Yeah,” she said. “I should go, too.”

Tate backed away from them at first. When he reached the door, he stepped onto the sidewalk and pulled out his cell phone.

Brody was watching him like a wolf that had sighted prey. “Should I stop him?”

“No! God, no, Brody,” Rylie said. “He’s an old friend of mine. We were just talking.”

But she could hear Tate on the phone through the glass as he walked away. He was too far for her to make out the specifics, but he sounded tense. And the voice on the other end was just as grim.

Brody spoke, drawing his attention back to her. “Wait here while I check out.”

She was so shocked at running into Tate that she didn’t even think to leave. Once Brody was done with his groceries, he led her out to the pickup and set the groceries behind her seat. He watched the parking lot while Rylie climbed in.

“I’m going to take you home now,” Brody said, getting behind the wheel.

She nodded mutely.

“You know, you’re not the first pregnant woman I would have protected,” Brody said. “There was another one in Alabama. Rich woman. Her family told me that nobody was out to get her, but she was scared anyway. Anxieties, I guess.”

“Was anyone out to get her?”

“Yep. Ex-boyfriend. He would have killed her if I hadn’t broken his neck first.”

He sounded so calm about it. Rylie gaped. “Wow.”

“I’m not proud of it, but I did what I had to do, and I’m glad she’s safe. She’s living in Maine with her son now. They’re happy. I did that for them.” Brody’s eyes slid over to her. “I’d be happy to do that for you, too.”

In truth, having someone that she could trust at her back would be priceless, especially after the massacre at the wedding had revealed several traitors in the pack. Now the entire world was getting scarier, and it seemed like her high school best friend wasn’t trustworthy, either.

“I appreciate the offer,” she said slowly. “And you seem competent. The problem is…”

“Seth.” Brody nodded. “Like I said, my last pregnant client’s family was a problem, too. But you shouldn’t let your problems with him keep you from being safe. That’s all.”

He started the engine.

Rylie’s womb was clenching again in the faint warning of contractions to come. Tate had stressed her out and she couldn’t afford to be so afraid.

“I’d appreciate all the help you can give me, Brody,” she said finally. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

TWELVE

Haven

Rylie and her new bodyguard had just walked through the front door at the ranch house when Seth jumped on her. “Jesus, where have you been?” he asked, seizing her by the shoulders. “Are you okay? I thought the Union had gotten to you!”

She shook him off. “I’m fine, Seth. I just went for a walk.”

He stared at her, as if he couldn’t believe what she had said. “A walk?”

“Yeah. You know, moving my legs, carrying my body in a forward motion, ambulation—”

“Stop it,” he snapped. The heat of anger in his voice shocked her to silence. “I thought you and our babies might have been killed, and you come back joking about it? What’s your problem?”

Brody was standing a few feet away, unlacing his boots and pretending not to listen. But he would hear everything, of course, and so would everyone else in the house with super hearing.

“Let’s talk about this outside,” she said.

They headed out back. The cellar doors stood open, allowing a plume of blue smoke to swirl toward the clouds. Rylie could hear Brianna in conversation with James and Gwyneth as they passed.

Rylie kept walking until they reached the pond. Then Seth rounded on her.

“You can’t do that to me,” he said.

“Do what? Have a mind of my own?”

“Just run off like that. It’s a safety issue.”

“No, it’s a control issue.”

“Rylie—”

She held up her hands to silence him. “I’m the Alpha, Seth. You can’t control me. It weakens me in front of the pack. Maybe I wouldn’t be having so many problems with Levi if you would just trust me.” Rylie took a deep breath and blew it out. “I think I’m going to start sleeping in Gwyn’s room. She doesn’t use it anymore, and her bed is bigger. I’ll be more comfortable like that.”

Seth paced away from her, tension radiating in his every movement.

“Is this about Abel?”

“This is about you, Seth,” Rylie said. “You and me. I need space. That’s all.”

“You know I’m just looking out for you,” he said, softer than before. “You mean everything to me. If something happened to you, or the babies…”

“I’m not going anywhere. Okay? I just need space.” She sighed. “You’ll be happy to know that I decided to let Brody be my bodyguard after all. I think he’s someone good to have around when things are getting dangerous.”

“So you don’t want space from everyone. Just me.”

She rubbed her temples, where a headache was beginning to throb. “Maybe I do.”

Seth opened his mouth. Closed it. Paced a few more steps, and faced her again. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was so quiet that she could barely make it out over the breeze. “I’ll move your belongings into Gwyn’s room.”

He stormed away, leaving Rylie alone with the icy pond and the snow drifting from the sky.

Another moon passed. Yet another night that Rylie spent with the pack—and Abel—instead of Seth.

He felt like he was going insane.

The first hints of spring were starting to appear. Rain and snow mingled, freezing the hills one night and melting them into a muddy mess the next. Seth spent a lot of long hours in bed, awake and alone, and watching lightning illuminate the clouds. He couldn’t seem to sleep with Rylie in another room. He wanted to be able to hold her while she was asleep, and know she was safe. Having Brody guard her door at night wasn’t good enough.

When he wasn’t worrying about Rylie’s new distance, he had plenty of other things to keep him distracted. H.R. 2076 had passed the House. Now it only needed to pass the Senate and get presidential approval—and the president had already made his support clear. Which meant that laws that could destroy the whole pack were just one step away from passing.

He went out for a run the morning after the moon with a radio strapped on his arm and new sneakers laced tightly. But the radio didn’t help his mood, either. Every one of the morning shows was talking about further riots—not just in Greenville now, but in Denver, and Las Vegas, and Boise. It was getting bad everywhere.

Seth turned off his radio and ran in silence.

Once he got moving, he couldn’t seem to stop. He did a lap around the fence and then broke out onto the highway. There was nothing but him and the road beneath his feet, his breath heaving in his chest, and his fists pumping at his side.

He wasn’t sure how long he ran, but when he made it back to the house, everyone else was awake and moving, too. Rylie and Bekah were doing prenatal yoga in the living room. It was turning into a real event: Stephanie and Crystal were there, too, stretching and posing and laughing about the names of the positions.

But when Rylie saw him watching from the doorway, her smile faded.

Seth tossed his radio into the trashcan and went out again.

Levi was talking with the rest of the pack in the back yard. None of that was Seth’s business—let Abel deal with them.

He blew past them without stopping.

How was it possible to be surrounded by people and yet feel so lonely? Seth couldn’t share his thoughts with Rylie or his brother. Gwyn was still too distracted by her crumbling body. And the one person he considered to be a real friend, the guy who had been best man at his wedding, Yasir, wasn’t even responding to calls.

Seth finally stopped running when he reached a hill overlooking the house. He pulled out his phone and called Yasir for what had to be the twentieth time since the wedding.

He only got the answering machine.

“Goddamn, Yasir,” he yelled into his phone. “Where are you?”

He hung up and flung the cell phone into the snow. It didn’t matter if he had it anyway. Yasir hadn’t called him back since the wedding, and he wasn’t going to call back now.

Seth started jogging up the other side of the fence, but he stopped when he saw a girl walking toward him. It was James Faulkner’s apprentice, Brianna.

“Hi,” he said, eyes narrowing. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m looking for you, actually,” she said. “I’ve been curious to get a closer look at you, but you’re always busy with something.” Brianna tried to step close to him, but Seth stepped away before she could get within arm’s reach. “Why can’t I read you?”

Seth took another step back. “Wait, what?”

“You’re not a witch or a werewolf. I always know.” Brianna pulled her head scarf off and tucked it halfway into a pocket so that it hung near her hip. “I’m not very powerful, but that’s something I’m good at. Reading people. Well, reading creatures. You can’t really call demons people. So what are you?”

“Uh,” he said.

“You’re not an angel,” she went on, fluffing out the flat spot the scarf had left in her hair. “You’re too short anyway.”

Short? Irritation pricked at the back of his neck. “I’m taller than you.”

“Yeah, but angels are tall, like James.” She lifted a hand well over his head. She looked like a pixie from head to toe, like she might flit into the sky at any moment. “I think you must be a kopis. I’ve only ever heard about them.”

“Well, yeah,” Seth said. “I’m a hunter, but I don’t think that’s a creature—”

“So that explains it. Rylie’s babies. One of them is a werewolf, and one of them is a kopis.”

He stared. “What?”

A new voice rose behind him. “Excuse me.”

Seth turned. James Faulkner was walking up the hill to join them, wearing a long woolen pea coat and leather gloves. The contrast of his white hair against the black jacket was striking, especially with all of the new blooms popping up on the hill.

James was preceded by an unsettling feeling of wrongness. Something about him made the back of Seth’s neck itch, almost in a demonic way, but there was also an aching at his crown, a tension down his spine—a mix of sensations that Seth instinctively understood didn’t belong together.

“Hey.” Brianna shrunk into her coat. “What’s up?”

“I think I told you to watch the spell in the cellar,” James said, his voice cool as the breeze.

She shut her mouth, nodded, and hurried away.

Seth would have been grateful that the witch had driven her away, except that it meant he had to deal with James instead. Abel claimed that James wasn’t dangerous to Rylie. And if he could restore Gwyn to life, then all the better. But Seth wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s company. Especially not a total stranger’s.

“Thanks,” Seth said, and he moved to leave.

“Just a moment. I wanted to talk to you,” James said. Seth kept walking, but the witch followed, keeping pace alongside him on the muddy ground. “Am I to understand that you’re the father of Rylie’s twins?”

They hadn’t gotten the paternity test back yet, but Seth said, “Yes, I am. Why?”

“The legislation has me…concerned. Not just the registry, or the possibility of indefinite detention. The likelihood of children being removed from supernatural parents.” James stuck his hands in his pockets, gazed out at the rolling hills of the ranch, and heaved a sigh. “This is a disaster. Thinking of all the families that will be separated, families that may have only committed the crime of existing, is distressing.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“I have a way to hide you, Rylie, your children, and the entire werewolf pack. Permanently. You will all be safe from the Union, the OPA, and any other enemies that you might face.” A smile touched James’s lips. “Are you interested?”

James took Seth driving into the mountains. The witch had warned him that they would be on the road for quite some time, but when they passed the six hour mark and kept going, Seth started to worry. And he only grew tenser as they entered territory that belonged to the Union. They passed a black sign with white lettering that said they were on private property, and continued on the road anyway.

By the time James stopped the car, they were in the midst of dense trees, and night had fallen again. “Here we are,” James said, stepping out of the car. He grabbed a flashlight out of the trunk.

Seth didn’t have to look hard to see the cameras in the tree. The tiny red lights were a giveaway. “And where is ‘here’? This is Union land.”

“It used to be, yes. Don’t worry about the cameras; they have no signal. Follow me.” James led Seth farther from the road and deeper into the forest. Wet pine needles crunched under their feet. “Tell me, Seth, what do you know of Heaven and Hell?”

Seth thought back to the Bible his mother kept in their childhood home. They had never been very religious, but the book had been passed down by his great-grandparents anyway. Eleanor had a healthy fear of God, but no time to worship. Yet it had been the only book in the house, so Seth read it front to back more than once. It was how he taught himself to read. There wasn’t much mention of Hell in the Old Testament—his favorite part. It did mention a place called Sheol, which Seth understood was a general way of talking about the grave.

“I don’t think Heaven and Hell exist,” he said honestly. “They’re just metaphor.”

“You believe in werewolves and demons, but not Hell? Do you believe in God?”

“Sure,” Seth said. “I mean, I think so. But some kind of afterlife? Death could never be that simple.”

“You have at least one part of that right.” James peeled off one of his gloves with his teeth and extended his hand toward Seth, palm facing the ground. “Here. I have to walk you through the wall.”

Seth glanced around the dim forest. He saw deer droppings and the shape of an owl in the nearby tree. There weren’t any walls at all. “What are you talking about?”

“Trust me,” James said.

Reluctantly, Seth took James’s hand. The witch stepped forward. There was a soft pop in Seth’s ears, and James immediately released him and put the glove back on.

The forest looked exactly the same as it had before Seth heard that strange, quiet noise. Except now the darkness under the trees was a little bit darker, especially toward the north. “Let’s get inside,” James said, striding toward the shadows.

Inside? Inside where?

Before Seth could ask, James ducked under a tree branch and disappeared into the darkness. It took a moment for Seth to realize that it was a tunnel sloping sharply into the earth.

The tunnel was short, but so steep that Seth struggled to keep from falling. He kept one hand on the wall of dry soil at his side to help maintain his balance. They reached the bottom, and James shone his flashlight on the back of the tunnel to reveal a doorknob.

“Watch your head,” he said, pushing open the door.

There was a large cave on the other side, which seemed to have been converted into some kind of weird office space. A generator in the corner powered a row of computers. The image of a door was carved into the far wall, although there were no hinges or handle. Just an archway with swirling symbols, almost prehistoric in appearance. Caveman drawings.

“What is this place?” Seth asked. “What does this have to do with Heaven and Hell?”

“Nothing. Everything.” James closed the door behind them, sat down at one of the terminals, and began to type. “Here’s what you need to know: Hell is real. Heaven is real, too. There are at least seven levels of each that we know about, and we call them dimensions. The Union has trade routes between them.”

“You said ‘levels.’ Does that mean Hell’s below us? Like, really underneath?”

James shook his head. “No, they’re parallel dimensions.” He glanced up at Seth as he continued to type. “This is common knowledge. All kopides know this.”

“I’m a kopis, and I’ve never heard of this before.”

“I suppose you haven’t spent enough time around other kopides, then,” James said. He flipped a switch on the desk. The generator hummed and shook the floor beneath Seth’s feet. “But while most people know about Heaven and Hell, most people only know about the one mortal plane that we’re on. They don’t realize that there are others. Parallel Earths.”

The cables leading from the desk to the walls began to hum, and an instant later, the primitive symbols on the wall began to glow. Seth only realized that they were meant to depict humans when the symbols walked up the doorway to hunt blocky, pictographic animals.

He rubbed his eyes, convinced that he had to be imagining it. But when he looked again, they were still walking, still hunting.

A line of warm light appeared within the carved frame. The rock shimmered.

“What’s happening?” Seth asked.

James had to raise his voice to be heard over the humming. “You’ll see.”

Light flared, and when it faded, there was nothing on the other side but another cave, just like the one Seth was standing in, although the computers were absent. The generator’s whirring dropped to normal levels. The gold light faded. The pictographic hunters stopped mid-motion.

“Is that it?” Seth asked, creeping toward the new path between the caves. They weren’t quite a mirror image of each other. The other cave was narrower and longer, and no door blocked the path leading out on the other side.

He glanced back at James, who gave him an encouraging nod.

Taking a deep breath, Seth stepped over the threshold.

He had half-expected something weird to happen when he reached the other side, but he felt nothing weirder than when he stepped between rooms at the Gresham ranch. The air was cool and dry. It was equally quiet. After James’s talk of parallel Earths and that glowing light, he had expected something momentous—but it was just an extension of the other cave.

“That’s a long way to go for a prank,” Seth said as James typed at one of the terminals.

“Just a moment. I’m going to make sure the door stays open before I follow you.”

Seth gave a skeptical look at the pictograms. He must have imagined them moving. “Other dimensions,” he muttered. Crazy talk.

James hit a key and followed Seth to the other side. They walked up the path leading out of the cave. Seth smelled the sweet perfume of pollen, and birdsong echoed off of the slanted walls. When they got far enough along to see light, he spotted a few nests built into the nooks and crannies of the rock.

But as they got farther, the light kept getting brighter. Too bright, for the middle of the night.

They turned a corner and the late afternoon sun splashed on Seth’s face.

He shielded his eyes as he emerged from the cave. He expected to see more threatening signs and cameras—but there was nothing. Just trees and the cheery chirping of birds.

The sky was filled with puffy clouds drifting on a warm breeze. Lush grass carpeted the hillside. Even the trees were unlike those that he had left behind back home—they were deciduous trees in the full bloom of spring, not evergreens. And there was no hint of snow.

It was like stepping a few months into the future after all the ice thawed. Or, maybe, a few centuries into the past. The air smelled bizarrely fresh, there was no hint of pollution, and everything was silent. The forest spread for miles in front of him without any roads…or anything else humans used to mark their presence.

“Where are we?” Seth asked.

“This is a Haven,” James said. “It’s a mortal world without werewolves, without demons, without magic. There’s nothing here but man and beast. Even the Union hasn’t managed to explore it yet because none of their equipment works here.”

Seth sat down very, very hard on the grass. An insect leaped away from him with a buzz of wings.

“This is unreal,” he said. “I’m dreaming.”

James clapped a hand on his shoulder. “No, Seth. This isn’t unreal. This is where Rylie, your children, and the entire pack are going to be safe.”

THIRTEEN

Negotiations

The last time that Levi had hooked up with Tate, they had been celebrating Levi’s eighteenth birthday in Commissioner Peterson’s hot tub. It had been an active attempt by Tate to defile his parent’s property, and the security cameras probably caught all of it, which seemed to please Tate. Levi didn’t enjoy showing off, but he had been too horny to care at the time.

Not long after that, Tate’s mom had died. And then Levi had been forced to take the murderer—Rylie—back to his house in California so that she wouldn’t go crazy and kill anyone else.

It wasn’t just the last time that Levi had slept with Tate. It was the last time he had gotten any action.

Part of him thought that celibacy was probably better than having sex with someone supporting that bullshit legislation, but a much larger part of him was really feeling the dry spell.

So when Tate sent him a text message saying, “Meet me at the old place?”, Levi was not in a state of mind to resist.

The “old place” was by the sign in front of the former high school. The letters had been stripped off, a few of the windows on the main building were broken, and the lone tree in the courtyard looked like it was dying. The population of the town had gotten too small to support a dedicated high school. All of the kids, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, now went to a one building school six blocks away—which was considered to be on the “opposite side of town.”

Tate was lurking in the shadows behind it, just as Levi knew he would be, and he was wearing a suit that made him look all kinds of delicious. He had lost all of his baby fat and started working out. Now he had a chiseled jaw, perfect hair that had probably been maintained by the White House’s best stylists, and a guilty expression.

“I’m surprised to hear from you again,” Levi said. “I’m especially surprised to see that you detoured here when the second lap of your tour’s supposed to be going to Tampa.”

Tate just shook his head and pulled Levi behind the sign. “Shut up.”

He shoved Levi against the stucco and crushed their lips together.

There were hands all over Levi—sliding up his shirt, gripping his shoulders, cupping the back of his neck. He could barely breathe.

Tate’s hand had just slipped down Levi’s jeans when they heard someone approaching.

They froze and listened to the feet crossing on the sidewalk behind them. The smell of fear poured off of Tate, which only made him smell even more delicious to Levi’s wolf. He pressed his nose against Tate’s throat and inhaled. Delicious.

His ex-boyfriend didn’t move until the footsteps had faded, even though Levi could hear that there were more people coming.

“I can’t be seen with you,” Tate whispered.

Levi quashed a surge of anger. “You sure know how to talk dirty.”

He fisted Tate’s lapel and dragged him through the parking lot. He had a brand new BMW now—a shining silver beast that didn’t smell at all like a rolling bong. It unlocked when Tate approached, and Levi tossed him in the driver’s seat.

“You used to like being seen with me,” Levi said, climbing into his lap and slamming the door shut. There was plenty of room for the both of them in the front seat.

“That was…before,” Tate said. Levi was sure that he would have an excuse for why “before” was different from “now,” but he didn’t really care to hear it, so he plastered himself to his ex-boyfriend, tangled his fingers in his hair, and kissed him hard.

At some point, they somehow made it back to a motel—the only motel in town, actually. They also managed to get inside Tate’s room without being seen.

Tate slammed Levi’s back against the door as soon as it was shut. Buttons popped as Tate ripped his shirt open. “I thought you said something about the evils of homosexuality in your speech,” Levi said, laving his tongue down Tate’s throat and onto his chest.

Tate drew back, hands balled up in the remains of Levi’s shirt. “Do you have a problem?”

“Yeah. I have a pretty big freaking problem with hypocrites.” But even as he said it, Levi was undoing Tate’s belt, popping open the fly, and lowering the zipper.

“I’m really not gay,” Tate said.

Levi rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

That was the last time they talked for several minutes. Almost an hour, actually. Which was completely fine with Levi.

Three year dry spell? Over.

They lounged in bed for a long time after rediscovering one another with lips and hands. Levi wasn’t any less annoyed at Tate, but it was easy to forget about Tate’s speeches in the post-orgasmic haze.

Levi circled Tate’s navel with a fingertip and contemplated the beads of sweat. Tate was still wearing his tie and button-down shirt, although it hung open in the front. That was all he was wearing now. Watching his speeches was going to be a lot more fun in the future.

“So what’s up with you and this Office of Preternatural Affairs?” Levi asked, finally breaking the silence. “You’re not old enough to get into politics. And you can’t tell me that the Union has any interest in you, either. You’re as boring and human as they come.”

Tate looked offended. “Boring? Boring?”

“Yeah. Boring. You used to be fun. I only hooked up with you because you were wild and weird and totally irreverent, and I needed that.”

“I thought you hooked up with me because you wanted me to give you free weed.”

Levi shrugged. “It was a bonus. But now you’re just some government shill that’s trying to ruin my life.”

“That wasn’t a problem five minutes ago.”

“Just like it’s not a problem for you to screw a gay werewolf?”

“You’re not like the rest of them,” Tate started to say, but Levi kissed him to shut him up.

“You can keep saying that,” he murmured against Tate’s lips, “but you’re still a hypocrite.”

Tate rolled his eyes and pushed him away. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He kicked off the sheets and vanished into the bathroom, leaving Levi alone in bed. He leaned back with his arms propping up his head and watched Tate finish undressing through the crack in the door. He dropped his shirt, turned on the shower, and got in.

Levi momentarily contemplated joining him, until he heard buzzing—a cell phone.

He scooped Tate’s pants off of the floor and found the source of the buzz. There was a missed call, and a voice mail. He dragged Tate’s old password out of memory, punched in the numbers, and brought up the message.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Peterson,” said a voice that Levi didn’t recognize. “We checked out your lead. She is a werewolf. Thanks for verifying her location—she’s been on our internal registry for months, but we haven’t been able to pin her down. Our team’s planning to secure her soon. Don’t worry about it.”

Secure her?

His mind whirled with questions. Levi scrolled through the sent text messages to see if there was anything else, but there was nothing interesting; it looked like he mostly used the phone for keeping in contact with his tour team.

He climbed out of bed and went into the foggy bathroom.

“You missed a call,” Levi said.

Tate stuck his head around the curtain. “Don’t touch my phone.”

“Too late. Which werewolf did you report to the OPA? Who’s going to get ‘secured’?”

“I can’t believe you listened to my messages.”

Levi slammed the phone down on the counter. “Was it Bekah? Were you reporting my sister?”

“No,” Tate said, ducking back into the shower again. Water splashed as his silhouette went through the motions of rinsing out his hair. “I was reporting Rylie.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You know that she’s pregnant, right? And she’s a werewolf. I was just asking the OPA to send child protective services to check on her.”

“You seriously think that they’re not going to seize her? You’re a hypocrite and a moron,” Levi said.

Tate’s voice echoed in the shower. “Relax. You’re just paranoid.”

Levi stormed out of the bathroom. If the Union knew where she was, then they surely wouldn’t wait long to pick her up. And a team moving in to “secure her” could only be bad for everyone there—including Bekah.

He pulled his pants on and grabbed his shoes.

“Hey,” Tate said, bursting out of the bathroom. He was already wearing his shirt again. “Where are you going?”

“The Union was just checking out my pack. They were threatening us. And now you’ve sent them straight back there. I have to get to my wolves before something bad happens.”

“You said that you’re the Alpha, right? You’re in charge,” Tate said, pulling on his white briefs. “The best thing you can do for them—the safest thing—is to get them all to sign up with the Union.”

Levi shook his head as he laced up his shoes. “You’re crazy.”

“No, man, hear me out. This legislation’s going to blow the lid off of everything. I don’t think it’s going to be safe for werewolves like you guys to be wandering around, if you catch my drift.”

He jerked his shirt over his head. “I’ve got your drift all right.”

“The Union doesn’t want to hurt any of you. It just wants to put you somewhere safe.”

“Like a concentration camp?” Levi asked.

Tate gave a disbelieving laugh. “Why do you have to be so paranoid?”

“Because you just told the entire world that we exist!”

“It was going to happen either way,” Tate said. “At least the Union has a plan for protecting you guys during the backlash. Do you care about your pack, or what?”

Levi grabbed his jacket off the floor, but hesitated to put it back on.

Rylie had failed to protect the pack so far, but everyone still looked to her like she was some kind of great leader, which was not even remotely the truth—she was nothing more than a pathetic, scared little rich girl who couldn’t keep her legs closed.

Maybe if Levi could secure the pack’s safety once and for all…maybe they’d stop looking to the wrong people as their leader.

He slowly pulled the jacket over his shoulders as he considered. “What’s the Union’s plan?”

“They just want to give werewolves jobs,” Tate said. “Put all the anger and power to good use. That’s all. Don’t you think that’s best?”

Levi clenched his jaw. His fists trembled. He couldn’t think of an answer.

What was “best” for the wolves? Would it really be the Union?

Tate followed him to the door, but he put his hand on it before Levi could exit. “So…uh…you’re not going to tell anyone about this, right?” Tate asked. “You and me.”

Disgust welled inside of Levi, and he used his super-strength to rip the door open. He almost pulled the door straight off its hinges. “I can’t believe that I used to think I was in love with you,” Levi said, jerking his jacket closed over his chest.

“Wait! Don’t just—”

Levi lifted his hand over his head, flipped his middle finger at Tate, and then launched into a run.

Levi returned to his car and drove blindly through the streets of the town. He wanted to get back to the ranch and his sister as soon as possible, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything long enough to find the highway again.

He had known whose side Tate was on, so there was no reason to feel so betrayed. It was ridiculous. Irrational. Yet Levi had kind of believed that Tate’s text message had been precursor to getting back together…and away from the OPA.

After three laps around the town, he realized that he was wandering and going nowhere.

There was the highway. Levi turned onto it and accelerated to fifty-five.

“I have to warn Rylie,” he said aloud, tightening his hands on the wheel. There was no way around it. Whatever he thought about her, whatever he wanted to get from the pack—she didn’t deserve this.

A pair of headlights approached him, cutting through the foggy day.

He saw the SUV swerve an instant before it struck.

Levi’s head smacked into his window, and his ears erupted with a ringing noise. Metal crunched and groaned. The seat belt snapped tight over his collarbone. The view outside the cracked windshield spun wildly.

He lost all sense of gravity as the horizon flipped once, twice.

The car came to a jolting stop at the bottom of the embankment.

Levi flopped back against his chair, hands frozen on the steering wheel. His vehicle had rotated forty-five degrees to face the road, and came to a stop staring up the hill. It took all of his strength to peel his fingers off of the wheel.

“Ugh,” he groaned, cradling his head in his aching hands.

Some SUV had just hit him in the side and knocked him off the highway. Any human might have been killed by that kind of impact, but the healing fever had already begun to sweep over him. He shuddered as the heat grew until he felt like he had stepped inside a furnace. The red stripes across his fingers faded. His forehead burned, and when he touched it, the lesion on his temple had vanished, leaving behind nothing but sticky blood.

He ripped his seatbelt free and kicked the door out of his way, since it had been too dented from the impact to open on its own.

Levi stumbled onto the muddy ground. When he straightened, he looked up to see that the SUV that had hit him was poised on the side of the highway, like a lion looking over its kill.

The doors swung open. Men jumped out.

Men in black suits.

Swearing under his breath, Levi turned to run for the nearest farm.

But Cain was standing behind him.

It had been weeks since he had seen the man he first knew as Vanthe. For a short time, Levi had thought that Cain was a member of their pack—a member of their family. But now he was obviously with the Union. He wore a crisp black suit. His hair was slicked back. And he was looking at Levi with something resembling disappointment.

There was a handgun the size of a small cannon in his hand. It smelled like silver.

“What do you want with me?” Levi asked, and he could taste blood on his tongue.

Cain ignored the question and gestured toward his guards. “Get him.”

FOURTEEN

Mates

When Seth and James returned to the real world, the generator in the Union control room was silent. They climbed out the steep tunnel to the surface to find that nothing had changed. The moon was in the same position in the sky. An owl hooted softly.

Seth couldn’t believe what they had just done. It seemed too insane to be true.

Parallel Earths.

“Okay. So…what’s the catch?” Seth asked as they got back into James’s car.

“You mean, for using a Haven as your sanctuary?” He laughed. “Lord, where do I begin? You’ll be secluded from the reality you’ve known your entire life. Any witches that go with you will find their powers altered to some extent—they won’t be as powerful, and certain types of magic will be utterly impossible to perform.”

“I don’t care about any of that.”

“Of course not,” James said. “The main problem is that the rate at which time flows between dimensions is…variable. A minute at the home you know is not a minute in this Haven. It’s a day. Twenty years will elapse in this dimension while only a week passes for your loved ones at home. You can live a lifetime here in less than a month.”

“How does that work?”

James gave an elegant shrug. “Impossible to say. But this means that you need to enter the Haven with Rylie, your children, and the entire pack at the same time. Anyone who stays behind, anyone who lingers on this side—by the time they join you, everyone in Haven will have aged. If you get separated, you may as well not rejoin each other at all. Do you understand?”

Seth frowned. “Not really.”

“Give it time to sink in. You’re most likely in shock.” James pulled the car back onto the road, and Seth craned around in his seat to watch that dark patch of the forest recede behind them.

“How did you find that place?” he asked.

“I didn’t. The Union…gave it to me.” James sighed. “That is to say, they offered it to me as a refuge, and I took it from them. I’m the one who hid it behind the wall so that they couldn’t access it again.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, I planned on sending someone very special to me here so that she could be safe, just like your fiancée and her children could be.”

“That woman—the one you loved—she didn’t make it to the Haven. Did she?”

“No. She did not.”

Seth tried to comprehend the gravity of the suggestion.

Safety for the pack—and safety for his children—for the rest of their lives.

But they would never return to the real world again.

“So you think that I should take Rylie’s children away to an entirely different world to grow up,” he said.

“I can’t tell you what to do. But I will say this: whatever it takes for you to reconcile with the woman you love and the people with whom you share blood—yes, even your brother—you should do it. Alone is a terrible thing to be, Seth. Trust me. There is no Hell worse than that.”

Rylie lay in her aunt’s bed, stared up at the ceiling, and thought about having sex with Seth.

Even though she wasn’t sure that she was really Seth’s fiancée anymore—heck, she wasn’t sure that she was his girlfriend anymore—she couldn’t get him out of her head. They had been sleeping apart for weeks, and it had been a long time since she had been touched.

The size of her stomach, and the babies curled up inside, didn’t seem to have had any negative impact on her libido. In fact, she was thinking about sex a lot more than she used to. Between her swelling breasts and pent-up werewolf energy, it was hard to think of anything else at night.

Seth was just a room away. All she had to do was step over her sleeping bodyguard, sneak into his room, and climb into bed with him.

Everything could be normal again. Just like it used to be, before he went to college.

Except that she might be pregnant with his brother’s babies now.

Rylie mashed her pillow over her face to muffle the groan of frustration. She couldn’t do anything, not until she knew the truth, and she hated feeling torn.

Of course, her wolf wasn’t having a hard time making its choices.

Rylie’s mind wandered to the thought of Abel’s lips on hers, the way that the plaster cracked when he shoved her against his bedroom wall, and the heat of his hands on her body. When Abel told her that they had been having sex, he had described how he bit her and pinned her to the ground. Dominated her. Taken his position as Alpha, along with a few other things.

What would that be like when they were humans? Would he be just as rough and commanding, or would he be more like Seth, who was always so careful, so considerate, so loving? Seth was amazing in every way, but Abel had always been more of a rebel. She had a feeling that it would show in the way that he made love. He wouldn’t be so gentle with her.

Heat gathered in Rylie’s core, and she rolled over onto her side, hugged a pillow against her chest, and stared at the moon through the window.

Okay, thinking about Abel definitely wasn’t helping. Her body was hungry for attention, and she was still alone.

A dark shape moved on the opposite side of the glass, and her heart leaped into her throat until she realized that it was Abel standing outside, as if summoned by her thoughts.

She sat up in bed, hugging the sheets to her chest and blushing. There was no way he could have known that she was thinking about having sex with him. It wasn’t like he could read her mind or anything.

Abel rapped lightly on the window, and then shoved it open. “What are you doing in here?”

Fantasizing about you. “I was trying to sleep, like most sane people do at night,” Rylie said. “Gwyn’s in the cellar with Scott and the witches, so I’m using her bed to stretch out.”

He grinned. “Sleep is boring. Come outside. We can practice the change.”

“Seth doesn’t think I should go outside alone anymore, and Brody is watching my door. If I try to leave, one of them is going to stop me.”

“Seth has gone off with James, and as for Brody, you don’t have to go through the hallway,” Abel said, reaching a hand toward her.

“I can’t climb over Gwyn’s desk like this!” She gestured at her stomach.

He grabbed the edge of the desk and shoved it aside. It was an antique and must have weighed a ton, but it was nothing in comparison to werewolf strength. “What’s your excuse now?”

She was only wearing a loose white shirt and underwear. She couldn’t get out of bed half-naked, much less go outside. But she didn’t say that. She didn’t want Abel to get the idea of helping her dress, too.

Rylie flushed. “Give me a second. I need privacy.”

Abel rolled his eyes, but disappeared from the window.

She quickly shed the shirt, found a long sweater in Gwyn’s closet, and threw it on. It went all the way to her knees, and that would have to be good enough. Nothing else fit her anyway.

Rylie stuck her head out the window and looked over the hills. All of the snow had melted away, leaving the grass shiny and damp. There were distant shapes moving out by the fence. Brody had organized the pack to patrol again, and there were always at least two people keeping an eye out.

Abel appeared around the side of the house, startling her so badly that she bumped the back of her head on the window.

“Ouch!”

He laughed at her as he took her hand. “Graceful, Gresham.”

She bit back a response and let him help her climb out the window. Rylie was barefoot, and her toes sank into the moist grass. It felt nice after being cooped up inside for so many days.

Between Abel’s long legs and the babies taking up all of the space in her pelvis, it took a lot of effort to keep up as he led her down to the seclusion of the pond. They reached the shore without being spotted, and Rylie sat down on a rock, totally out of breath. Forget her pelvis being occupied—it felt like she had a foot in her lungs, too.

She tried not to notice how amused Abel looked by her slowness. “Okay, I’m out here,” Rylie said. “Now turn into a wolf.”

He rolled his eyes and flopped on the grass at her feet. It was a playful look, similar to the way he was on the moons. “I wouldn’t need you out here if it was that easy.”

“You changed into a wolf on command a few weeks ago.”

His expression turned serious. “That’s because you were in danger. I didn’t have a choice.”

“So it’s adrenaline. Maybe I need to aim a gun at you.”

Abel lifted his eyebrows. “Not adrenaline.”

“Then what?”

He raised onto his knees. With Rylie sitting on the rock, it put them at almost eye level.

“I did it for you,” he said.

Rylie didn’t think her cheeks could have grown any hotter, but they did. She ducked her head so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. “Then what am I supposed to do?” she asked her knees. “How can we get you to change at will, so that you can take over as Alpha?”

“Tell me to do it,” Abel said. His voice was low and husky.

Her eyes flicked up to his. He was staring deep into her, like he could see through her skull to the thoughts underneath.

God, she hoped he couldn’t.

Again, she found herself thinking about what he said they had done the night the barn burned. He bit her. Claimed her. Dominated her. But the mental images that followed had nothing to do with wolves, and everything to do with their very human bodies.

She stood up and walked a few feet away, just to give herself room to breathe.

“You need to be able to change on your own, without my help,” Rylie said without facing him again. “Give it a try.”

He was silent for a long minute.

“I want to,” he said finally. “I want to so badly. I can feel the wolf there…but it’s waiting for something.” Left unspoken was the truth they both knew: it was waiting for her.

Footsteps shuffled through the moist grass behind her. She could feel that Abel stopped at her back, because his heat radiated between them.

“You smell good,” he said. “What is that?”

She swallowed hard. “What do you mean?” she asked, hugging her sweater around her body. It wasn’t thick enough to protect her from the weight of Abel’s gaze. She should have put on full body armor.

Abel’s mouth and nose pressed against the side of her neck, and Rylie shut her eyes as a tremble ran through her body.

“You smell…inviting,” he murmured, lips moving against her throat as he spoke. Was his voice deeper than usual? He sounded like he was on the verge of changing.

It was hard to speak. “You’re not trying very hard to turn into a werewolf.”

He ignored her. His hands touched her elbows, then slid up to her shoulders, and down her hips again, tracing circles over her body. Abel’s fingers left a path of fire in its wake. “You have to tell me what you want me to do.”

“Do I?” she asked faintly. She had a few ideas, but none of them involved telling him to change.

She trembled when his hands dropped to the tops of her thighs, and then disappeared. Abel stepped around her. There were barely inches between their bodies.

“You’re not scared,” he said, cupping her chin. His face was still human, square-jawed, scarred. She was almost shocked to see that he didn’t have any fur. “You’re excited.”

“Abel…”

“You haven’t been sharing a room with Seth,” Abel said bluntly. “I know, because Aden’s been sleeping on the floor in there with Seth.”

“The pack needed more room,” she whispered.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. Rylie bit her lip and shook her head. “Why?”

“You didn’t bring me out here to try to change did you?”

That response didn’t satisfy him. He pulled her against him. “Why aren’t you sharing a room with Seth anymore, Rylie?”

“Because I don’t know if I can be with him,” she blurted out.

Abel’s eyes filled with new heat as a long, breathless moment hung between them.

Rylie had no idea if he made the first move, or if she did. But the next thing she knew, they were kissing, and she felt like she might never breathe again.

She could feel his wolf rise to meet hers, and the energy of the beasts clashed.

The world around them vanished. Rylie’s fingers sought skin. Her hands slipped underneath his shirt and traced his abs up to his broad chest as he gripped her hips tightly, almost hard enough to bruise. He attacked her mouth like a wolf ripping into its prey. It was graceless, more animal than human, and she wanted more.

Even with the extra weight of pregnancy, Abel had no problems lifting Rylie off of the ground. She clung to his neck as he carried her to the safety of the grove of trees. That grove had a lot of bad memories for Rylie—it was where she had found a dead farmer once, many years before, and where Seth and Abel had buried the Union soldier that attacked them.

But there was no room for bad memories within her now. All she could do was gaze up at Abel’s face as he kneeled on the soft, springy grass between the trees, and lowered her to the ground. Her wolf hated to be so helpless in his arms, but part of it recognized that he was the one in control—at least when they mated.

The wind blew around them as he kissed her again, even harder than before, and she wrapped her fingers around his shoulders to lock him in place. Rylie was almost as strong as he was. When he tried to pull back for air, she just dragged him down again.

One of his hands found its way underneath her sweater dress. He lifted her leg to the side of his hip and crushed his hips against hers, though he was careful to keep most of his weight suspended on his arms.

“Mine,” he growled into her lips, his fingers digging into her thigh.

The Alpha in her wanted to argue. She wasn’t his—he belonged to her. But Rylie felt a distinct shortage of oxygen, coupled with a total inability to think rationally, and she would have agreed that the sky was green if it meant he would never let her go.

Abel reared back and pushed her wrists down when she tried to hang onto him.

He was framed by the trees and the stars at his back, and it was so dark that she could barely make out his features. Was he still a man, or had he begun to change to a beast? His golden eyes shimmered. His smell was rich and overwhelming, musky and masculine, and she wanted to roll in it.

He shoved her knees apart and trailed his hands up the insides of her legs. His fingernails felt too sharp, almost claw-like. “Tell me to do it,” he said, his eyes burning with heat.

Rylie couldn’t breathe, much less speak. She wetted her lips and shut her eyes.

They were in the fields outside the ranch. Any of the werewolves could decide to go for a late-night walk and discover them. Or worse, the Union could have been watching.

And what about Seth?

There was a hard squeeze of pain in her abdomen. Rylie gasped, and this time, it wasn’t from excitement.

Abel’s hands stilled the moment that her expression changed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, voice sharpening.

The tension rapidly increased. It was breathtakingly painful, as though a massive fist had closed over her midsection and was pressing down, squeezing the twins lower. She arched her back with a cry. “The babies—”

“Oh, shit,” he said.

Bekah had been helping her practice breathing, counting, and other ways to make the contractions pass faster. But Rylie suddenly couldn’t think of any of them. The contraction intensified until it felt like her eyes might pop out of her head.

An instant later, everything relaxed. Rylie went limp on the ground.

Abel had gotten to his knees at some point, and he looked like he was on the verge of fleeing. “Are you okay?”

Rylie nodded, trying to get onto all fours. “It was just—unexpected.”

“You need to see Stephanie,” Abel said, pulling her to her feet. She only made it a few steps out of the grove before the next contraction hit.

Rylie whimpered and lost her footing. Mud squelched as she sank to her knees.

Abel backed away. “I’ll find the doctor.”

“Wait,” she whispered.

But he was already running for the house.

“How are you feeling now?” Stephanie asked, bringing a cup of tea to Rylie at the kitchen table. She was sitting right next to Gwyn for comfort, even though the smell of death and decay was starting to become more stressful than soothing.

“I’m okay,” Rylie said, and it was mostly true.

She had spent over an hour pacing up and down the driveway in front of the house with Stephanie, breathing when she was told to breathe, drinking lots of water, and trying to rest between contractions. Rylie had been certain that she was going into labor, even though Stephanie insisted the contractions were too irregular.

She wasn’t in pain anymore. She didn’t feel anything more than an occasional, gentle squeezing in her abdomen.

But she definitely was not okay.

She turned the mug around in her hands and watched the tea swirl. “Where did Abel go?”

“I think he was scared of the idea that you might go into labor.” The doctor sounded far too amused by the idea. “He’s probably hiding out in the fields, if he’s like most nervous fathers-to-be. Men.”

“What were you doing that triggered contractions this time?” Gwyn asked.

Rylie blushed as she thought about Abel’s hand between her legs, and the way that their beasts had lunged for each other, like they were starving after months without contact. All Rylie could manage to squeak out was a few babbling, incoherent words, and then she spared herself from having to speak by taking a sip of her tea.

“Rylie,” Stephanie said in a stern, you better not lie to me kind of voice.

She swallowed hard. Her entire face must have been red. “I was helping Abel try to transform into a wolf.” Rylie took another sip.

“Did you have sex with him?”

She sprayed her mouthful of tea across the table.

Gwyn grabbed a towel and mopped it up. Her motions were slower than they used to be, and much jerkier, like she had to think hard to move at all. She couldn’t pass for living anymore.

Rylie wiped off her chin before replying. “No.” But at Stephanie’s hard look, she added, “We might have been getting a little…physical.”

Gwyn gave a rattling sighed. “Oh, pumpkin.”

“I’ll need to take a look at your cervix,” Stephanie decided. “If it seems like you’re dilated too far, I’m going to have to forbid all sexual activity until you give birth. That includes orgasms, for the record.”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

“Merely by virtue of having twins, you’re much more likely to go into preterm labor,” Stephanie went on, ignoring her. “I’m not sure that you understand the gravity of the situation, so I’m going to spell this out very clearly for you: it is very likely that you will not be able to sustain this pregnancy for a full nine months. Our goal is to get you to seven months, or thirty-two weeks. A pregnancy becomes potentially viable sooner than that, but we’ll consider that the safe point. You cannot do anything—anything—that puts you at risk until that time.”

Rylie swallowed hard. “What’s going to happen if I have them preterm?”

“Normally, I would tell you to expect a lengthy stay in the neonatal intensive care unit. But since your children are unlikely to be human, I suspect they’ll be stronger than that.” She spread her hands wide. “I’ve never heard of a werewolf newborn before. Your guess is as good as mine. Regardless, we don’t know anything, and we have to be careful. You’re officially on bed rest.”

“Bed rest?”

“You can’t do anything for the pack on the next moon. I mean it, Rylie. You’ve been calming all of the wolves’ transformations for the past few weeks despite my admonitions, so I think you might be deaf, but you have to hear me now. Stay away from the pack. The strain of it is too much for you.”

“But…”

“Babe,” Gwyn said softly. “She’s right.”

Rylie dropped her head into her hands.

No sex. No taking care of her pack. No physical activity at all.

Being pregnant was definitely much, much worse than being a werewolf.

She suddenly remembered what Brianna had told her on the way to town. “Is there a chance that only one of the twins might not be a werewolf?”

Stephanie thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose it’s possible that one of them could be human. Seth is a kopis—a legendary hunter of demons. That’s hereditary. And kopides are immune to the werewolf curse. They can’t contract lycanthropy any more than they can contract hepatitis.”

“How do you know that?” Rylie asked.

“Seth isn’t the first kopis I’ve been around, trust me,” she said. “In fact, James is an aspis, bound to a kopis. He would be able to tell you even more, if you’re curious, but…it doesn’t really matter, in this case.” Stephanie dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. “My point is, if the fetuses were fathered by Seth—”

“Babies,” Rylie said.

The doctor didn’t even miss a beat. “If the babies were fathered by Seth, and one of them is male, it will be very likely to be like him: a kopis. Which means that you may not be pregnant with a litter of puppies after all.”

“I’m going to bite the next person who makes a dog joke.”

Stephanie gave a pinched smile as she stood. “Then good luck finding someone else willing to perform supernatural obstetrics. More tea?”

Rylie held up her mug, and the doctor poured hot water into it from the teapot.

“When will we know?” Gwyn asked.

“About the paternity? Soon. I had to send additional blood samples from Seth and Abel. They’re having a challenging time differentiating between them.”

No matter how soon the test results came, it wouldn’t be soon enough.

Rylie heard the front door open and shut. A moment later, Seth and James entered the room.

“Where have you been?” Stephanie asked, her voice sharpening.

James took one look at the doctor sitting with Rylie and said, “We’ll have to talk about it later, I think.”

Seth dropped to his knees beside Rylie and put a hand on her knee. She still had a little mud smeared down her shin.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

She stared at the table. “I think I should go back to bed.”

Nobody spoke as Rylie dumped the rest of her tea in the sink, set the mug on the counter, and headed down the hall. Brody was next to the bathroom door, but he wasn’t sleeping. His eyes reflected the dim light from the kitchen as he tracked her motion across the room.

“Rylie, wait.”

She stopped with her hand on Gwyn’s door. Seth had followed her into the hall. “What?” Rylie asked, keeping her voice down so that she wouldn’t wake anyone up.

“I think James and I have a way to protect you,” Seth said. “You, the babies, the pack—everyone.”

Seth probably wouldn’t hide from me when I go into labor, she thought, and then she immediately felt guilty for it. “That’s great.”

Seth stepped over Brody and took her hand. The familiar smell of leather and gunpowder followed him, even though she knew that he wasn’t armed at the moment. He searched her face, and she wondered if he could see the guilt etched in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Rylie,” Seth said. “I’m sorry for everything.”

She bit her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, too. Can we…can we talk?”

He nodded and followed her into Gwyn’s room. Rylie eyed the bed with its rumpled red sheets and couldn’t bring herself to sit down. Stephanie had ordered bed rest. She suspected that meant she was going to be sick of sitting down very soon.

“Today, James took me to this place called a Haven,” he began, but she grabbed his hand to stop him.

“I kissed Abel again.”

That cut him off quickly. A look of hurt flashed over his features. “Why?”

“Because the wolves wanted it,” she said, but it felt like a lie, and she shook her head as soon as she spoke. “No…because I wanted it.”

Seth looked like he had been gutted.

“Oh.”

Now that Rylie had started talking, she couldn’t stop. “I don’t think the things that I want can be separated from the things the wolf wants. I love you, and I…” She took a deep breath. “I think I love Abel, too, in a totally different way.”

He captured her face between his hands. “I told you that I’m not going to let werewolf urges get between us. And I also told you that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you. I still mean that.” It still made her heart give a little jump to hear him talk like that. “I know that Abel might be the father, and I don’t care. Not as long as you still want to be with me.”

“I do, Seth,” she whispered, and her vision blurred. “I do want to be with you. But…”

“You don’t want to make the tough decisions,” Seth said. “I get that.” He released her and stepped back. “As long as you want me, I’m going to be here. But only as long as you want me.” He gave a pointed look to her hand—the hand that wasn’t wearing a ring. “Don’t hide behind the babies as an excuse not to make your own choices, Rylie.”

The tears that had been threatening to escape finally spilled down her cheeks, drawing hot lines to her chin.

Seth wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I can’t believe you kissed him again,” he said, so softly that she wasn’t sure she was meant to hear it. He raised his voice. “We’ll talk about Haven in the morning.”

He left.

Rylie sank to the bed, buried her face in Gwyn’s pillow, and cried.

FIFTEEN

Missing in Action

The next morning, Seth called together the entire pack so that he could tell them about the Haven. Once everyone was collected in the living room, they filled the sofas and half of the floor.

He kept his explanation short, and he didn’t mention the warnings about magic or time. “But we can be safe there,” Seth concluded, standing in front of the fireplace so everyone could see him. “Nobody can reach us. Not the Union, or the Office of Preternatural Affairs, or…anyone else.”

He scanned the pack’s watching faces. There were a lot of mixed emotions, but mostly disbelief.

Seth caught Rylie glancing over at Abel again. They were sitting on opposite sides of the room, but he kept seeing them look at each other, as if they were having a silent conversation. Knowing that they had been kissing the night before made Seth want to choke his brother out, but he restrained himself. He wouldn’t do it—not while Rylie was in the room, anyway.

“So? What do you all think?” he prompted.

“Another Earth,” Trevin said, picking at his half-eaten burrito. “That’s…crazy. It’s crazy talk.”

Kiara stood, making the pillow in her lap tumble to the floor. “It’s not just crazy; it’s a straight-up lie. You expect us to believe this?”

Seth wasn’t surprised that someone accused him of that, but he was surprised that it wasn’t Levi. Where was that guy, anyway? Bekah was by the window with Gwyn and Brianna, but her brother was nowhere in sight.

He raked a hand through his hair, trying to think of a way that he could convince the skeptics. “James showed it to me yesterday. I’ve been there.”

“I have, too,” Brianna said, lifting her hand as if asking permission to speak in a classroom. “It’s everything Seth says, and more. Safe, quiet, beautiful. And there’s no moon.”

“No moon?” Rylie asked, eyes wide.

The pack whispered among themselves, too quietly for Seth to hear.

One by one, everyone fell silent and turned to Rylie.

It took her a moment to look away from Abel long enough to realize that the pack expected guidance. “I guess this is on me, huh?” she asked, twisting her hands together. “Scott once told me that werewolves weren’t meant to live in this world. He said we were made in a time when the wilderness was bigger and civilization was smaller. If we could go somewhere like that…”

“Yeah, well, you see how much we can trust Scott,” Kiara said.

“But in this case, he’s right. This Haven sounds like it would be perfect for werewolves. It won’t just keep us safe from the Union—it will keep the world safe from us. We could be free.” Her whole face was glowing with the idea of it. “I want to go. Who would come with me?”

“I’d go,” Bekah said softly.

Trevin took a big bite of his burrito and spoke with his cheek pouched by carne asada and beans. “Me too. Sounds cool.”

Abel’s voice rose from the back of the room. His eyes had never left Rylie. “I go wherever you go.” Seth couldn’t think of the last time he had heard his brother speak so seriously. He considered punching Abel again, but only briefly.

“Sounds perfect, babe,” Gwyn said. “When can we go?”

Brianna lifted her hand awkwardly again. “We’ll have to finish the spell to resurrect you first. Magic doesn’t work right in the Haven. But as soon as that’s done, there’s no reason to wait around.”

Seth nodded. “The sooner, the better. Everything with the OPA’s just going to keep getting worse. But we will need to pack supplies. There are cities in the Haven, but it’s a long walk. We should be prepared to be walking for at least a few days.”

“That’s going to be a hell of a mess,” Abel said with a lopsided grin. “Let’s do it.”

Seth caught up with Bekah after everyone dispersed. She walked fast, so she was already halfway to the gate before he managed to catch her attention. “Where’s Levi?” he asked when she turned.

He hadn’t even realized that Abel was following him until he circled around the other side of Bekah, as if to prevent her from escaping. “I haven’t seen him in days,” Bekah said, glancing uneasily between the brothers. “He told me that he was going to go for a drive, but he never came back.”

Abel snorted. “He probably ran away.”

“I thought he might have gone back to Greenville, or wherever Tate’s tour went this time. Levi’s been really hung up on him lately. They’ve even been texting each other again.”

“Sick,” Abel said.

Seth didn’t disagree, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. “Wait, go back. Greenville?”

“Levi met him there a few weeks back. The whole promotional tour’s been crossing the country off and on for months to build support for H.R. 2076. They’re on the second leg of it now, I think.”

The last time Seth had heard about Greenville, it hadn’t been in reference to any promotional tours. It had been because of a supernatural riot. That was awfully coincidental—a little too coincidental. “Has it been to San Francisco?” Bekah nodded. “Where else?”

“I don’t know. I’m not following it as closely as Levi.”

“What about Boise?” Seth asked. He had heard about riots there, too.

She shook her head helplessly, so he pulled out his phone and started running a search. “What are you thinking?” she asked, twisting a honey-colored curl around her finger.

Abel had already caught on. “Boise. San Francisco. Greenville.”

There was a list of tour locations. Seth scrolled through it, and those three cities were there—and more. Bekah peeked over his shoulder. “So the tour is following the riots?”

“No,” he said. “The riots are following the tour.”

And Tate’s tour was going to stop in the nearby town in just over two weeks.

Seth turned off his phone and squeezed it in his fist. If Tate’s tour was coming, then so would the OPA—and if his gut instinct was correct, an incident would follow. There weren’t any demon clubs in town. There wasn’t anything supernatural at all. Nothing except the werewolf ranch, which would be perfect for a high-profile raid.

They had to be in the Haven before that happened.

“What are we going to do about this?” Bekah asked.

“Nothing,” Abel said. “Why should we do anything? We’re hightailing it out of this entire freaking dimension as soon as possible. I don’t give two flying shits if there’s a government conspiracy.”

Seth had to agree—very reluctantly. “Our priority is getting the pack to safety. Now, we have a deadline.” He touched Bekah’s shoulder. “We don’t need to panic about Levi yet. He probably got distracted by Tate and lost track of the time.”

“Probably.” She didn’t sound very convinced. “I was just planning to ask around town. It’s not a big place. If he’s around, someone will have seen him, and I want to bring him back before the next moon.” She patted Seth’s hand. “Be careful here.”

Bekah broke into a run again. Like most werewolves, she could easily run fifty miles in a day. She didn’t need a car to get around.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Abel said, “I bet you twenty bucks that Levi’s dead.”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining.”

Seth kept his mouth closed. If he tried to speak, something he would regret was sure to escape. Something that would lead to more fistfights.

He started back for the house, and his brother followed him.

“This Haven thing’s a good move,” Abel said without a hint of sarcasm. “You done good, bro.”

Seth glanced at him. “Really?”

But Abel wasn’t listening. He strolled alongside Seth with his eyes fixed on the orchard. “Whenever shit’s getting real, you’re the guy with the plan. You got the bodyguard for Rylie and you hooked us up with the Haven. If the pack survives, it won’t be ‘cause of me.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You wouldn’t run off when she’s going into labor.”

“I’m always going to protect Rylie.”

“Guess you probably deserve her. I know she deserves you.” Abel shook his head as if to clear it. “I’ve got stuff to do. Don’t get yourself killed while I’m not watching your ass, okay?”

Seth watched him walk away feeling stunned. After Rylie admitted that she had been getting too close to Abel, that wasn’t the way he had expected their next conversation to develop at all. He had been expecting—even anticipating—to get into a fight. An ugly, messy fight. But something had changed with Abel. Something big.

And Seth had no idea what it meant.

Time passed, although Levi wasn’t sure how much. He suspected that days and nights were slipping past him, because every time he opened his eyes, he saw something different: sometimes a medical facility, with his arms strapped to the bed; at other times, he saw the inside of an ambulance, or silver bars, or a blank ceiling. He thought he heard Tate’s voice fade in and out of his periphery. The moments of consciousness never lasted long.

Levi finally woke up in a cage.

It wasn’t a cage intended for wild animals. It was the kind of cage that humans used on other humans, with a one-way mirror and a camera in the corner. He was stretched out on the cold, bare floor, and he could feel himself being watched.

He got to his feet with a groan. He had long since healed all of his injuries from the car crash, but he still had a heavy, sticky feeling in his throat. They must have drugged him.

Levi’s head was clear enough now that he could study the room and the smells contained within. The protective mesh over the camera was clearly silver. Everything else smelled like Lemon Pledge. The room had been scrubbed down recently—but not since Cain had last been inside.

Cain. His stench was everywhere. So much for the Union putting that bastard in prison.

The door opened, and Levi wasn’t surprised to see Tate slip inside. “You’re awake,” his ex-boyfriend said, looking relieved.

Levi bared his teeth and growled. “Traitor.”

Tate backed up at the sight of his glower. “What are you talking about? The Union’s been taking care of you since you had that car crash and went comatose.”

“If they’re taking care of me, then why am I in an interrogation room? You surrendered me to the pack’s greatest enemy!”

“Who?”

“Cain!”

Tate laughed and shook his head. “He’s not your enemy. He’s just on my security team. This has to be a misunderstanding.”

It was only then that Levi saw a tattoo on Tate’s arm. It was mostly concealed by his formal shirt, and he wouldn’t have noticed it at all if not for the scent of fresh ink. Levi crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Tate’s wrist, and pushed the sleeve back.

It was a bleeding apple.

How the hell had Levi missed that tattoo? They’d had sex, for God’s sake, and he hadn’t seen so much as a spot of ink on Tate’s skin. Of course, he had kept his shirt on—and Levi wasn’t exactly paying much attention to Tate’s arms. “Why did you join with Cain?” Levi asked.

“I’m not with Cain,” Tate said. “This mark’s just an organization symbol. Kind of like a secret fraternity.”

“Cain’s secret fraternity.”

“No, this is for the Apple. It’s so much bigger than one guy.”

But Scott had said that the bleeding apple tattoo was the mark of Cain. If it wasn’t his symbol, then why had all the Union traitors been wearing it? And where did Scott get it done? Why would he lie?

The questions whirled through Levi’s mind, but none of them were as pressing as the immediate problem: the fact that he was held by the Union. And Cain.

The door opened, and Cain appeared, as if summoned by his name. “Levi,” he greeted. “Hope you’re comfortable.”

Levi dropped Tate and lunged at him, hands outstretched. Cain backhanded him with a fist. “Hey!” Tate protested as Levi hit the ground at his feet.

It took Levi a moment to catch his breath from the impact. “You’re supposed to be in prison. Yasir arrested you.”

“Yasir made a deal with the wrong people. Union HQ wasn’t happy that he negotiated with a werewolf pack, and he ended up in prison instead.” Cain grinned. “Fortunately, I’m too much of an asset to lock away.” He faced Tate. “Who let you in here?”

“I just asked the guards—”

“Never mind, I don’t care. Get out. We need to talk.”

Tate folded his arms and didn’t move to leave. “Yeah, I’d sure as hell say that we do. Why’s Levi in an interview room when I was told that he was being held for medical care?”

“He’s a criminal werewolf and our prisoner.”

“Nobody mentioned prisoners when I agreed to work with the Union. And they definitely didn’t mention beatings. What are you playing at here? Why do you even want Levi?”

Cain already looked impatient with the line of discussion. “Captive breeding program. Werewolves birth better, more powerful werewolves. Levi’s a good candidate for fathering a few pups.” He glanced at his watch. “And we’re about to make a move to get the rest of his pack, too, so we better get moving. You have a speech to give in your hometown.”

Shock made Tate’s face go slack. Understanding crept over his features. “You’ve been using my speeches as distractions?”

“What did you think they’re for? It’s not because we care what the public thinks.” Cain clapped a hand down on Tate’s collar and moved to drag him out of the room.

“Wait—wait!” Tate shouted, but Cain was too strong.

“I’ll be back for you later,” Cain told Levi.

Then the door was closed, and all hope was gone with it.

SIXTEEN

The Shower

When Rylie emerged from the house on the next full moon, she was surprised to find James waiting for her. He had left the woolen pea coat somewhere now that it was warming up, and instead wore a white button-down shirt, charcoal gray slacks, and black leather gloves.

She sat next to him on the porch swing, and Brody hung back against the wall, picking dirt from underneath his fingernails with a switchblade. He was just as quiet and unassuming as usual, but he stayed close—close enough that he could break James’s neck if he made a move toward Rylie.

“Lovely night, isn’t it?” James asked.

It really was. A warm, misty drizzle had been falling on the ranch all day, but ended once night fell; now there was nothing but a low fog and pleasantly humid air. Fresh blossoms swayed with the long grass, filling the air with the sweet perfume of pollen.

She took a deep breath and sighed. She was probably imagining it, but she thought that she could smell the moon hiding behind the clouds.

“What’s the news?” Rylie asked, stretching her legs out to give her stomach more room. She could barely breathe with the babies crammed under her ribs.

“Brianna and I finished designing the spells that I’ll need to resurrect Gwyneth and Scott. It was more of a challenge than I expected. Kind of refreshing, actually. I haven’t had this much fun with magic in years.”

Her eyes widened. “So you can fix them now?”

“No,” James said.

Rylie’s moment of hope immediately vanished, and her face crumpled. He patted her on the back. The gesture was probably meant to be consoling, but it made her skin crawl.

He went on. “I can’t fix them yet. It’s an issue of power generation. I can’t find anything that will supply enough energy for the spell short of death.”

“So you’re saying that we would have to commit human sacrifice after all.”

“I’m saying that if Seth is right, and we’re going to be raided in two weeks, we’re out of time. We shouldn’t rule out any possibilities if we hope to resurrect Gwyn and Scott before everyone moves to the Haven.”

Rylie shook her head. “That’s not a possibility. We can’t just kill someone.”

“One life in exchange for two.” He shrugged. “The sacrifice wouldn’t necessarily need to be human. A powerful demon, or any angel, would work as well. We all have enemies. I’m sure you can think of at least one person whose life you don’t value as highly as your aunt’s.”

“I can’t believe we’re even talking about this!”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it,” James said, although he didn’t sound very sorry at all.

She stepped away from the swing. Her rising anxiety had triggered the wolf, and getting upset was too risky on the night of the moon. “You should leave. It’s going to be dangerous out here tonight.”

“I’ll be unobtrusive.”

“She told you to leave,” Brody said. He flipped his knife closed, pocketed it, and cracked his knuckles. James arched an eyebrow. He didn’t have to speak to show how unimpressed he was by the threat of two werewolves.

Abel stepped out the back door, followed closely by Trevin, Daven, and Bekah. It broke the tension immediately. Or maybe Rylie was just too distracted by Abel to be tense. “How long?” he asked without looking at her. He had barely spoken to her since their night by the pond, and his silent rejection stung.

She tilted her face toward the sky. “Twenty minutes, maybe.” Rylie noticed Bekah hanging back from the others, looking troubled. “Did you ever reach Levi?”

It was Trevin who responded. “He joined the Union.”

“No way,” Rylie said.

“He texted me this morning.” Bekah’s words were thick with tears, and her lip trembled. “He said that he was tired of putting up with Scott and…you, Rylie. So he joined the Union.”

“Kiara followed as soon as we heard,” Pyper added.

That meant that they were two wolves short that night. Fewer members of the pack meant that Rylie had to expend less energy to control their changes, which should have been good news—especially since it meant that the two biggest troublemakers were gone. But they had abandoned the pack for the Union. That couldn’t be anything but bad news.

Rylie realized that everyone was watching her, and she tried to compose herself. “Okay. That’s fine. If that’s what they want to do, then I hope they’re happy. But we still have to get through this moon.”

The entire pack gathered at the bottom of the hill, and Rylie followed, leaving James and his eerily blue eyes behind. She studied the remaining werewolves. Ten of them, and all great people—even Crystal. They needed her.

“Five minutes,” she said, and the less shy members of the group started to strip.

It wasn’t long before the moon rose. Rylie moved among them as they shifted, drawing their pain away and loosing it into the coolness of the night.

One by one, they changed. After a few minutes, only Abel remained.

He stood just out of arm’s reach and watched Rylie with a hunger in his eyes that made something clench deep within her body. “Can you do it?” she asked softly, and Abel shook his head.

She cupped his cheeks between her hands and released her own energy into him. It was a relief to unleash the wolf. But instead of traveling through her own bones, muscles, and skin, it leaped into him. He fell to his knees with a grunt. Rylie heard a muffled pop.

“Sorry,” she said. She couldn’t keep it from hurting him. Not when she had so much to release.

The energy poured from her, and kept pouring. The alpine smell of evergreen trees and frozen rivers flooded her. For a moment, she could almost see the trees towering over them, and the sparkling stars watching Gray Mountain, and hear the rushing of icy water.

When Abel gave a second, louder cry, she blinked hard to clear her eyes.

His spine arched as his bones cracked and rearranged. His skull crunched, and his jaw extended into a muzzle, stretching his facial scars until it looked like they might tear. His ears slid up either side of his head. Claws erupted from his fingertips, and new teeth grew in his gums.

She threw back her head and let the rest of the power rush out with a sound that was too bestial to be anything but a howl.

Fur erupted from Abel. Blood splattered on the snow.

All of the energy drained out of Rylie, and she dropped to her knees beside him.

A warm tongue lapped up her arm from wrist to elbow. She ran her fingers over Abel’s fur, just like she had on every other night, and a smile found its way to her lips. It didn’t last long. As soon as he confirmed that she was okay, he whirled and bounded away into the night with everyone else. Only Brody remained, a copper-furred wolf dense with muscle.

He offered his flank to her, and Rylie leaned on him to stand.

James was watching a few feet away.

“Perfect,” he breathed. “I know how we can resurrect your aunt.”

The cellar was sheltered from the world outside by magic and several feet of earth, but even those protections weren’t enough to block out the sound of the howling pack. Rylie felt strange and disconnected from them. She should have been outside, running and howling and playing. Instead, she sat on a crate next to her aunt, who smelled like decay.

Everyone who wasn’t furry was in attendance: Rylie, Gwyn, Seth, Brianna, Stephanie, and Scott. The cellar was packed and claustrophobic, and Rylie wasn’t even afraid of small spaces.

“What do you mean, you’ll be able to repair us in two weeks?” Scott asked. He was wearing a baggy sweater now that the damage was creeping down his neck, and the hands protruding from the sleeves were skeletal.

“As I said, we’ll need a source of immense power to resurrect you two,” James said. “Fortunately, I’ve discovered that we have access to a power greater than that supplied by ritual death.” He gestured to Rylie. “She’ll do well.”

“Not a chance,” Seth said.

Rylie rolled her eyes. She was getting so sick of people trying to protect her. “What are you talking about, James?”

“Do you understand what makes a human into a werewolf?” he asked.

Seth responded before she could. “It’s a curse.”

“No, the gods gave it to us as a gift,” Rylie said. She had spoken to those gods herself on top of Gray Mountain. She didn’t actually remember the specifics of the conversation, but she knew that they had made her the Alpha that night, too.

“Both of you are wrong,” James said. “It’s most similar to demonic possession. There are primal spirits that wander the earth. Spirits of animals and the elements. With the proper method of transmission—such as a bite—it’s fairly easy to transfer these spirits to humans. All werewolves share in a single animal spirit. The Alpha is the core of the power. The head of the beast, if you will. Fewer surviving werewolves leaves you with a greater portion of that power.”

It was hard to argue with someone who spoke with such conviction. She stared at her shoes as she nudged a bit of dirt with her toe. “Let’s say I believe you. What would that mean for the ritual?”

“I can use you as a funnel to access the power of that primal animal spirit. On the night of the full moon, its energy will be at its peak. If you permit me to do so, I will draw the entire pack’s energy through you, and use it to resurrect Scott and Gwyneth.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Gwyn said.

Rylie considered the suggestion, massaging a hand over her navel. The pressure of her growing stomach had made it pop out in a tiny nub. “Will it hurt me?”

James pulled off his reading glasses. “Probably.”

“Will it hurt them?” she asked, patting her stomach.

“No. That won’t be a problem.”

“Then I think we should do it.”

“Babe, you don’t—” Gwyn began, but Rylie cut her off.

“It’s not going to kill me or my passengers, and I’m willing to go through a little pain to bring you back.” Her aunt opened her mouth again, but Rylie held up her hands to silence the protests. “This is my life, my pack, and my choice. That’s final.”

Gwyn’s mouth clapped shut. It seemed to take physical effort to remain silent, but she eventually nodded.

“Very well,” James said. “We only have two weeks until the next moon. We should prepare.”

Seth joined Rylie while she was trying to get comfortable in bed—an impossible task, between the wolves howling outside and the pressure on her bladder.

“You’re not seriously considering James’s ‘solution,’ are you?” he asked, hanging in the doorway of Gwyn’s bedroom. Seth was dressed for bed in nothing but a necklace of shells and a pair of gray sweatpants. He had really filled out in the last couple of years, and Stephanie’s order to avoid sex lingered in the back of her mind.

Rylie sighed and adjusted her millions of pillows. Looking at Seth’s cut abs and biceps made her feel impossibly fat. “I’ll do whatever I have to in order to save Gwyn.”

“She’s already dead, Rylie.”

“So you want me to just give up on her?”

He didn’t respond to her anger in kind. He moved to the side of the bed and sat down. “I want you to think about the babies first,” he said, fluffing up a pillow and sticking it behind her lower back. “Gwyn agrees with me.”

“This isn’t up to Gwyn.”

Seth moved a few more pillows, and somehow, he put her in just the right position that her hips didn’t hurt. Rylie sank into the bed with a sigh. When he turned to prop up her feet, she spotted the tattoo of a paw print and a moon on his back. He had gotten that inked indelibly into his skin for her.

She stroked a finger down the line of the moon. Seth closed his eyes.

“Rylie…” She moved to touch his chest, and he stopped her with a hand on hers. With her fingers trapped against his chest, she could feel his heart beating. His brow knitted. “You’re killing me. I’m going to sleep outside your room tonight. Brody’s furry and four-legged, so he can’t watch you. But…” Seth stood and clenched his fists at his side. “I’m not going to watch you sacrifice yourself. I won’t have anything to do with this ritual.”

Seth stepped into the hall and shut the door. She heard him rustling against the other side as he got comfortable.

Outside, the wolves continued to howl.

The next two weeks were filled with the rush of preparation. Moving to a whole different dimension was no small feat, especially when everyone had to be prepared to survive for a week without civilization.

The werewolves would all be able to hunt for themselves, so they only needed to take enough food for the humans. That meant almost everything else at the ranch got donated or taken to the dump—furniture, old clothes, kitchenware—and whatever remained had to be packed into as small of a space as possible.

Rylie didn’t need much. She packed a couple of outfits, a diary that she hadn’t written in for over a year, and her box of Seth’s letters. She couldn’t help but smile as she put everything into the duffel bag Seth and Abel shared. When you could only take the essentials, it really made you think about what mattered the most.

When she was done, she gazed into the open duffel bag. Abel’s belongings were on one side. There was a gun, of course. Seth’s was on the opposite side. And between them, creating a narrow border, were Rylie’s three outfits.

A hard lump formed in her throat. How was it possible to care so much about two men who were so different? Rylie’s love for Seth was an intense, teenage crush that had grown up into something warm and comfortable. But Abel was a slow burn, like a forest fire hidden in the depths of the wilderness.

Her fingers trailed from Abel’s gun to Seth’s old fang earring, which he hadn’t worn in years. Which one was more real? Which path was she meant to follow? And why did it have to be so damn hard?

She felt something hard among Seth’s belongings, and on impulse, she pulled it out.

Rylie recognized the brown cover instantly. It was marked with a gash, like a claw mark, and the pages curled at the edges.

She thought that the diary she had used at Camp Silver Brook had gone missing long ago. But here it was, among all of the things that Seth considered to be most important. He must have had it all along. It still smelled like Rylie had when she was a human, and like the oils on Seth’s hands. He must have held it frequently.

Sinking to the edge of the bed, she opened it to a page at the end.

Tonight’s the night. It’s my only chance to save myself. I have to be strong, like Seth said, but I don’t know how. I’m scared.

He might be right. If I do change, I’m probably better off dead. I won’t be able to go home. I won’t even have a home anymore. Going back to the city of school is out of the question, especially since even my friends think I’m a freak by now.

I’m not the same person anymore. I don’t want to die, diary, but I feel like I’ve reached the end of days anyway.

I wish Seth was here.

Rylie stared at the page, feeling numb. She didn’t often think about when she had first become a werewolf. It had been an awful time. Life was so much better now, in every way. And it was entirely because of Seth and Abel.

But she was going to have to break someone’s heart.

Closing the diary with trembling hands, Rylie stuck it back into the duffel bag, and zipped it shut.

Rylie stepped into the living room on the morning before the next moon to find yellow balloons covering the floor, banners hanging from the ceiling, and a lot of people in party hats.

“Surprise!” they shouted.

She froze in the doorway, staring at them like a deer that had just spotted a werewolf.

Almost all of the furniture and wall hangings were gone now, leaving plenty of room for pictures of cartoon babies. They were on the balloons and banners, the plates and napkins, and even on the confetti that had been scattered across the floor. All the women were there, including James’s apprentice, Brianna. Even Brody lurked in the corner, apart from the festivities.

“Uh,” Rylie said. She was still wearing her pajamas.

Bekah took her hand and led her to the lone chair. “It seemed like it was time to lighten the mood, so we thought we would throw you a baby shower. Are you surprised?”

“That’s a word for it,” she said faintly.

It hadn’t occurred to her that people might want to throw a baby shower. She had been so caught up with moving that she hadn’t thought about the babies much at all. And now there were babies everywhere.

“We got presents for you,” Pyper said.

“But not much,” Stephanie interjected. “You’ll have to travel light when you reach the Haven, but all of the essentials should be covered.”

Brody helped Bekah carry all of the presents to Rylie’s chair. The bags and wrapping paper were just as cutesy as everything else. She stared at a stork carrying a baby with a single curly hair on the side of one present.

“You okay?” Gwyn asked when Rylie didn’t move to open anything.

She shook her head to clear it. “Yeah, sorry. I’m still waking up.”

Rylie pulled the stuffing out of the bags, and then lifted a piece of cloth out of it. It was a tiny unitard that would have barely fit a doll.

“I got that for you,” Brianna said. “It’s called a onesie. They have buttons at the bottom so that it’s easy to change diapers. See?” She popped it open and showed Rylie the flaps. “There are a few in there with ladybug print, and a few with baseballs. You can mix it up between the twins.”

Stephanie pushed a large box forward. “And speaking of diapers…”

Inside were cloth diapers in a dozen different gender-neutral colors. “Cloth diapers?” Rylie asked, trying to imagine how cleaning those worked. The idea was horrifying.

“We don’t know what access to disposable diapers will be like over there,” Gwyn said. She picked up one of the diapers to examine it. There were buttons on the front, and no diaper pins in sight. “These things have gotten a lot better since I babysat in high school. Used to be that you had to put kids in rubber pants, and the rashes…”

Diapers. Onesies. Rashes.

All this time, being pregnant hadn’t seemed real. Her growing stomach was some nightmarish medical problem that she just needed to ignore until it went away in August, when she was due.

But it was already the very end of May. Rylie was going to have babies soon.

Tiny werewolves that relied on her for survival.

Her vision blurred, and tears began rolling down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if it was from fear, worry, or something else entirely.

Gwyn put a papery hand on Rylie’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, babe.”

Rylie rested her head on her aunt’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and let herself cry.

SEVENTEEN

Resurrection

By the time James put the finishing touches on his spell, there was no standing room left in the cellar. Almost every inch of the floor was covered in James’s magic circle, and he had lined the stairs with his books, leaving only a narrow path to walk down.

“Where did all of these come from?” Rylie asked, grabbing the wall so that she could step over a particularly tall stack without unbalancing.

Brianna shrugged. She was squeezed in one corner, using a stack of text books as a makeshift chair. “Beats me. We didn’t bring them with us.”

“Of course not. That would be impractical. I conjured them from an office in Colorado.” James gestured at the circle of power. There were a couple of cushions in the middle. “Kneel in the center, Rylie.” Rylie settled down and tried to get comfortable, but her hips ached at the motion.

James began lighting candles around the room. He held a piece of paper in one hand and snapped the fingers on his other hand repeatedly, until tiny flames appeared on the wick of a dozen candles.

“So you said this might hurt, right?” she asked.

James tucked the paper in his pocket. “Very likely.”

She set her jaw. “I’m ready for it.” What could hurt worse than getting mauled by a werewolf? Or even worse, turning into a monster twice every month? Rylie had already been through the worst pain that any human could endure.

Even so, she felt kind of faint as she watched James anoint a dagger with oils.

“This is only a ritual focus,” he said when he noticed her expression. “It’s called an athame. I won’t use it on you.”

She forced her fidgeting hands to stillness in her lap. “Okay. So what do I do?”

“For now? Relax. But please let me know when moonrise is coming.”

“We still have at least a half an hour,” she said.

“Excellent.”

James continued to prepare the ritual space. She didn’t like seeing all of those bowls getting laid out and knowing that it had something to do with impending pain. It was like watching the dentist prepare the tools for a root canal.

Still, James was pretty interesting to watch. His movements were smooth and graceful, almost like every gesture was choreographed. He occasionally told Brianna to hand him something—a poultice, another book, a satchel—but mostly, his apprentice stayed out of the way.

Once he seemed to be done with her, Brianna pulled a giant roll of yarn and a half-knitted blanket out of the bag at her feet. “What do you think of the colors?” the young witch asked, lifting the blanket to show Rylie. It was pale blue striped with gold. “I was going for a moon look.”

It was just some stupid blanket, and Rylie was about to have witchcraft cast on her. What was she supposed to think about it?

“Looks nice,” she said. The sound of her voice made the babies kick her in the pelvis. She grimaced and rubbed the underside of her stomach.

James stood back with his arms folded to look over the room. He must have seen something that Rylie didn’t because he fidgeted with the positioning of a few candles before giving a satisfied nod. “How much time until moonrise now?”

Rylie reached out to her pack. They felt scattered and unfocused on their surface, probably worried without their Alpha to help them. “About ten minutes.”

He did a few stretches, like he expected to exercise rather than cast a spell. He stretched his arms over his head, twisted his torso, and cracked his knuckles. Then he sat on the cushion in front of Rylie. The way he moved just didn’t match the gray hair at all.

“How old are you, anyway?” she asked.

“Old. But I was born in nineteen seventy.”

Rylie did the mental math, ticking decades off on her fingers. “So…forty two?”

“No, I’m much older than that,” James said. He left her puzzling over how that was possible while he dragged a lap desk covered in small bowls to his side. “Brianna, please bring down our zombie friends.”

His apprentice set her knitting aside and went upstairs.

“How will this work?” Rylie asked.

“You should behave as you would on any normal moon, and exert your power over the pack from afar. I’ll take care of everything else.” He took one of her hands and dotted anointing oil over her knuckles. “I’m sure I know the answer to this, but whose survival is more important to you, Gwyneth’s or Scott’s?”

She blinked. “My aunt. Gwyn.”

“Very well.”

“Five minutes,” she said, and he nodded.

Brianna returned a moment later with Gwyn and Scott. The scent of crumbling skin, soil, and something like damp leaves filled the cellar. It made Rylie’s nose itch. She sneezed twice.

“We’ll start with Scott,” James said, pointing at the third cushion. Scott sat, and Gwyn joined Brianna in the corner.

Rylie opened her mouth to protest, until she realized why James had asked who she cared about more. He must not have been very confident in the spell after all. Better to test it on the traitor, right? It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Energy built, sweeping down Rylie’s flesh, and it wasn’t magic. It was moonrise.

“It’s starting,” she said, reaching out to her pack again. She found Abel without having to try very hard. He was just outside the doors to the cellar, probably trying to listen in on the ritual.

James closed the circle of power with a line of salt. “Give me your hand again.”

Rylie hesitated an instant before resting her fingers in his. He was wearing gloves even though it was comfortably warm in the cellar. Had she ever seen him without the gloves on?

With his free hand, James touched Scott’s shoulder, but his focus remained on Rylie. The moon poured through her, and Rylie reached for her shifting pack so that she could ease the transformation. It was a lot harder at a distance, and required a lot more focus, but felt good—familiar. It soothed her nerves to be embraced by that energy.

But only for an instant.

“Deep breaths,” James said.

The moon’s energy shifted inside of her.

Her heart stopped beating. Rylie sucked in a gasp.

It felt like a metal spike had been driven into her heart, and somehow, it forced all of the power of the moon and the wolves away from her pack. It directed the energy down her arm and into James’s body. His pale irises brightened, reflecting the glow of the moon.

Rylie gritted her teeth as the intensity increased, pouring through her crown and ripping out her breast. Her wolf rocked against the inside of her ribs. She tried to pull her hands free, but she wasn’t strong enough.

She was nothing but a conduit, and it hurt.

None of the wolves were changing. James had taken all of the power of the beast and shoved it into the nearest zombie.

Scott fell back with a cry, gripping his chest. His back arched. His feet kicked helplessly against the circle. And still James didn’t let go of his hand, or Rylie’s. The power grew and grew, and Rylie felt like she was going to shake apart from the inside.

The pack waited outside, worried and confused and human. Rylie was barely aware of them anymore. All she knew was the pain.

Scott suddenly went limp.

“Damn,” Gwyn said.

But the moon’s energy wasn’t done flowing through the circle of power. James turned his gaze to the dead man.

As Rylie watched, color returned to Scott’s flesh, filling his cheeks with a pink glow. A line of blood trickled from the forehead wound, and the edges began knitting together to seal the hole in his skull. His eye sockets became fuller. His skin plumped.

With her sensitive hearing, Rylie heard a thump—the beating of a tired, dusty heart that hadn’t moved in a long time. It was followed by a second beat, and a third, before it found rhythm.

Within minutes, the forehead wound was gone, and his chest was rising and falling with breaths that his lungs hadn’t drawn in weeks.

Scott’s eyes opened, and he sat up.

James released Rylie’s hand, and the energy vanished instantly. It was all she could do to stay on her cushion when she wanted to fall over and sleep for a few days.

The older witch blinked and looked around the room in the confusion, as if he had been asleep for a long time. “What’s going on?” Scott asked. “Where’s Stephanie?”

James peered closely at his face. “She’s in town with Seth to watch Tate’s tour arrive and make sure they don’t get into trouble. How do you feel?”

“I feel…human.” He felt his smooth forehead, his cheeks, his chest. Everything looked to be intact. “I’m alive. And—and I can feel magic again!”

“Which you won’t be using anytime soon,” James said sharply.

Scott was too happy to care about the anger. He got to his feet and ran his hands over his arms, like he couldn’t stop touching his new, soft flesh. “It’s just like I was before…” He trailed off and shot a look at Gwyn.

The pain of having the moon’s energy forced the wrong way through Rylie was over, but the moon was still high in the sky, and the wolves should have been changing on the surface. Rylie clenched her hands into fists. “Can we finish this?” she asked tightly.

Gwyn stepped toward the circle.

But there was something wrong outside the cellar. Rylie could feel her pack running, even though they were still human. Abel was leading them away. The only one that remained was Brody, just outside her door.

Why?

She rose from the cushion unsteadily. “What are you doing?” James asked.

“Something’s wrong,” Rylie said, stepping over the edge of the circle and mounting the stairs.

Muffled gunshots rang out through the door.

“The Union,” Scott said.

The cellar door flung open. Brody stood on the other side wearing a pair of tattered jeans and a grim expression. “We’ve got black SUVs heading this way.”

“But we’re not done yet,” Rylie protested. He grabbed her arm.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Brody hauled her out of the cellar. The night was cool and wet with the warm promise of impending summer, and Rylie could smell gunpowder on the wind. But she couldn’t see the pack anywhere—even as humans, they could run at ridiculous speeds.

Spotlights rolled over the hills, mounted on top of black SUVs. Two of them headed east, probably chasing the pack. They were the ones shooting.

But the three other vehicles were heading straight for Rylie.

The windows beside her exploded, and gunshots echoed belatedly through the night. The Union had opened fire. Glass showered over them as Brody shielded her with his body. “Run!” he shouted, pushing her ahead of him.

“But Gwyn—”

“Run!”

Brody spun to face the SUV bearing down on them. He got into a half-crouch with his feet braced and hands extended.

The vehicle struck.

The back wheels of the SUV lifted at the impact, the hood crumpled, and Brody roared as the bumper bent under his hands. The force of it made him slide a few inches through the mud, but he kept his footing.

On top of the SUV, the spotlights swung wildly. For an instant, a face on the other side of the windshield was illuminated. He had a broad jaw, cocoa skin, dark eyes, and coarse yellow hair.

Cain. He had come for her.

He leaned out the driver’s side window and aimed a handgun at Brody, but she didn’t wait to see what happened. Her bodyguard had just grabbed a car like it was nothing. She doubted he was in serious danger of getting shot.

Rylie broke into a run, sprinting as quickly as she could with a thirty pound stomach. There were gunshots behind her.

An engine roared. One of the other SUVs was chasing.

She leaped over a pile of rocks and rushed toward the pond. Water fed into it from a narrow creek that was squeezed between hills, where the massive Union vehicles would never fit. She could escape through the valley.

But Rylie didn’t make it that far. Her foot caught on a branch, and she slid to her knees.

The SUV bore down on her. She flung a hand up to shield her eyes from the blinding headlights—

Which turned away at the last moment.

Something heavy impacted metal, and the vehicle rolled. One of her wolves had launched himself into the side of the SUV like a lion taking down a gazelle.

Not just any wolf. Abel.

He rode the door of the SUV until it flipped onto its side, and then he punched an arm through the glass and grabbed the driver by the throat. More gunfire, and holes appeared in the door as an acrid tang filled the air.

“Abel!” she cried, scrambling to her feet. She had to help him.

But a hand seized her arm.

She spun with her teeth bared, but it was only James, looking muddy and annoyed. “Keep going. Abel can take care of that on his own.”

Ignoring her protests, the witch pulled her down to the pond. They splashed through the creek and ran for the edge of the property.

The gunfire and shouting grew more distant, but Rylie could still hear engine noises. She looked up to see one of the SUVs pacing them on the hill above. “James, look!”

“Keep running,” he said, pulling a notebook out of his pocket.

When they emerged from the creek’s valley, they were almost to the fence, and the SUV was just a few meters behind them.

James shoved Rylie over the split rail.

“Get to the rendezvous point,” he said. The pack had agreed on a place that they could meet in an emergency, but it was a good ten miles away. The idea of having to run longer made Rylie want to cry.

The spotlights fell on them, illuminating James’s hair and skin with a white glow.

She climbed over the fence to the neighboring property and kept running.

Rylie wasn’t sure how long she kept moving, or how far she went. Her sense of the pack faded as the ranch disappeared behind her. There was nothing but open federal land ahead. Wilderness for miles.

Trees started to dot the landscape as she approached the foothills. She finally slowed, stretching her arms over her head to open her ribcage and catch her breath. The world was dark and empty. She couldn’t hear or smell anyone—not her pack, not the Union, and definitely not Cain.

Where had he come from? Wasn’t he supposed to be in prison?

A man appeared out of the darkness that smelled like herbs and oils. James. He had survived. Somehow, Rylie wasn’t surprised.

He drew her deeper into the trees and pushed her to the ground between two boulders. The area was sheltered by thick underbrush. It smelled like flowers and rabbit droppings. “They’re not far behind me,” James said, crouching at her side. “I disabled the vehicle, so they’re on foot now, but we must be silent. They’re heavily armed.”

Rylie stretched out her hearing. There were bodies moving through the forest, just a few hundred yards away.

“How did you disable the SUV?” she whispered, and he held up his notebook. It was palm-sized with spiral rings at the top, just like any notebook you could buy at an office store. “What is that?”

He shushed her.

Rylie sat back and took deep breaths, trying to calm her pounding heart now that she wasn’t running. But the beating of her heart only got worse, not better. A moment later, she understood why.

The contraction knocked the breath from her lungs and sucked the energy out of her muscles. She could feel it all the way from her throat to her pelvis. She grabbed her stomach. The muscles were rock-hard.

James gestured for her to be quiet, but the pain was too intense. A gasp escaped her throat.

The footsteps paused. When they picked up again, they were moving faster—and coming closer to her thicket.

The witch started ripping pages out of his notebook and spreading them around him, touching them one at a time. They turned to ash at his fingertips. Magic? Rylie had no way of knowing what he was doing, or why.

The contraction faded, but it was soon replaced by another. They were right on top of each other.

Was she going into labor?

She panted, unable to help herself. James put a hand over her mouth and kept his head lifted, scanning the trees surrounding them. “Be quiet,” he whispered again, so softly that she almost couldn’t hear him.

“Over here,” barked a loud, deep voice. Cain.

That only made the pain worse, not better. Rylie clenched her fists and fought not to cry out.

“Damn,” James breathed, setting aside his notebook. He took her hand in his, and the memory of the last time he had touched her—and all the pain that came with it—made her shake her head vigorously.

“I think I heard something,” said another voice, this one unfamiliar.

They were moving in, and Rylie couldn’t suppress a groan of pain.

James finally spread his palm over her stomach. “Be at peace,” he said softly, addressing her stomach directly. “Not right now.”

Warmth rippled over her stomach, radiating from the place his palm was against her. Each of her muscles relaxed, one by one, until she felt like jelly. The babies kicked around for a moment, like they were trying to find a comfortable position, and then they settled down, too.

Her eyes widened. The contractions were gone completely, and nothing hurt.

James kept watching her for a moment, as if to make sure that it was over. Footsteps circled the thicket. “Do you smell anything?” asked one of the voices.

Touching one of the last pieces of paper, James pulverized it.

“No,” Cain said. He sounded so frustrated. “I don’t smell a goddamn thing.” He was just feet away. Rylie’s heart sped.

“Control says that they’ve got a couple of the wolves back at the ranch.”

“Men? Women?”

“One male, two female.”

There was a rustle, a crack, a groan—it sounded like Cain had snapped one of the nearby trees in half. “Damn it! Okay. Turn back.”

The men retreated. Voices faded.

After several long, breathless minutes, Rylie and James were alone.

EIGHTEEN

Leaving

They used Rylie’s sense of smell to track down the pack at the rendezvous point. It was in the depths of wild, federal-owned land, and the mud was tangled with weeds. The actual landmark they had chosen to meet at was a large, ancient tree with twisted branches and a hollow under the roots, and Brianna stepped around the trunk when they approached.

“Thank the gods, you made it.” She had somehow gotten mud smeared on the side of her face, and it made her bangs stick straight up.

Rylie swept her eyes over the pack, taking inventory of them in the moonlight. Gwyn was seated against the trunk of the tree next to Scott, who had a black eye—a good sign, since that meant that he was still alive. Most of the pack stuck close to Gwyn, like she was the only one who could protect them, but Abel stood aloof, a good fifty feet away with his head tilted toward the moon.

Trevin was there, and so were Crystal and Daven. But Aden was gone. So was Kiara—no, wait, she had already left to join the Union. But Analizia was nowhere in sight, and neither was Bekah. They had lost three members of their already dwindling pack to the Union.

“What happened tonight?” James asked.

Crystal spit into the mud. “Cain. Seems like he thought he’d sneak up on us when we were changing and let the Union grab us. Hijo de puta!”

“But the speech isn’t until tomorrow,” Rylie said. “I thought that the attacks happened after Tate’s rallies.”

“Why did Cain even come for us? Cain’s supposed to be gone! And isn’t the Union on our side?” Trevin asked.

Gwyn shook her head. It made Rylie’s heart ache to see her slow, jerky motions. She was already in better shape than she had been at the beginning of the night, but not because she had been resurrected; Scott held a small animal skull in one hand, and he had obviously been casting spells to repair Gwyn’s still-dead body.

“We’re out of time,” Gwyn said. “We’ve gotta get to the Haven, and we’ve gotta do it now.”

The pack nodded along with her, but Rylie didn’t agree. “James can’t do a resurrection in the Haven.”

“Someone’s coming,” Trevin interrupted.

They all stood at once to face the approaching vehicle. Rylie took a sniff of the air, but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction to make anything out. It looked like some kind of sedan, not an SUV.

Gwyn stepped forward. She’d brought her shotgun with her. “Who is it, babe?” she asked, putting the gun to her shoulder.

Rylie squinted. “It looks like a… Is that a Lexus?”

Relief flooded her as Stephanie’s car pulled up, and the doctor stepped out. Seth wasn’t the only one with her—Brody emerged from the backseat. After seeing her bodyguard getting hit by a car, she was surprised to see him upright. He didn’t look fazed by his confrontation with the bumper of an SUV at all.

He gave Rylie a small nod. “Ma’am.”

He had saved her life, and that was all he could say? Rylie flung her arms around his neck and squeezed tight. “I am so happy to see you’re okay,” she said, planting a peck on his cheek.

Brody gave a small smile and patted her on the back. “Just doin’ my job.”

When she was done with him, Seth swept Rylie up in a hug. “Brody came and got us immediately when he realized he couldn’t find you,” Seth said into her hair, arms locked tight around her back. “When I saw him without you…”

“It’s okay. James helped me escape.”

“Then I owe him, don’t I?” Seth asked with a lopsided smile.

James and Scott had been talking to Stephanie by the Lexus, but at the sound of his name, James approached Rylie. He acknowledged Seth with a respectful nod. “It’s time for me to leave,” he said. “I need to stay a step ahead of the Union. They’re not an immediate threat to me, but they do have a way of becoming a nuisance, and I can’t afford to deal with them. I hope you understand.”

“But…” Rylie felt like her heart was breaking into fragments. “But you didn’t heal Gwyn yet. You said that you would help her.”

“Don’t worry about it, babe,” Gwyn said. She was still holding her shotgun cradled in the crook of one arm. “I kind of like it better this way. I’ll get to watch your kids become adults. They’ll have the exact same Gwyneth Gresham that you have.”

“But you’re dead.”

Gwyn’s smile was wistful. “There’s worse things than that.”

James shook Seth’s hand, gave Rylie a brief hug, and waved to the pack. Then he said, “Brianna?”

His apprentice seemed reluctant to join him, but James started walking away without waiting for her. She gave a helpless shrug. “Nice getting to know you guys. I hope you don’t all die.”

And then they were gone.

Seth had explained that they all needed to enter the Haven together, so they couldn’t leave until they had recovered their missing pack mates. “But that doesn’t mean we have to put everyone in danger,” he said with a pointed look at Rylie. “Abel and I can take the pack to town tomorrow and lead the attack.”

“To town? Why town?” Pyper asked.

“We don’t know where the Union has taken everyone. Tate is giving a speech tomorrow at the old high school, and since the OPA is working with the Union, I think we can track them back from there.”

But Rylie was still stuck on the part where he said that the pack would be led by “Abel and I.” Where was Abel, anyway?

It took her a minute to spot him beyond the tree. He was kicking a rock around the field with his hands jammed in his pockets and his head drooping. If Rylie hadn’t known any better, she would have thought that he was brooding, but Abel didn’t brood like that. When he got upset, it usually led to fist fights, not quiet introspection.

She returned her attention to Seth. “Where am I going to be when this attack happens?”

“Waiting at the Haven door with Gwyn and Scott,” Seth said. The two of them had already gone back for the truck filled with supplies and headed to the cave to prepare. “Brody will be with you the entire time. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

And away from her pack.

Rylie bit her lip and stared down at her feet. She couldn’t exactly protest—just trying to escape from Cain had nearly put her in labor that night—but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

She glanced up at Abel again. He had wandered a few more yards from the tree, and she had the strange feeling that he was slipping away from her.

When nobody spoke up, Seth clapped his hands together. “Great. Let’s get some sleep. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.”

The pack settled down on dry patches of ground to rest for a couple of hours. They had lost most of the night to the ritual and the running, but they needed at least a little sleep before trying to attack the Union.

While everyone stretched out, Stephanie took Rylie aside. The doctor beckoned her over to the Lexus, and they climbed inside for some privacy. It wouldn’t be enough to prevent a determined werewolf from listening in, but at least it was warm and quiet.

From the instant that Stephanie touched her arm and asked to speak privately, to the instant that the car doors shut, Rylie felt like she was going to be sick with nerves. There was only one reason that the doctor would have stuck around to talk to her, since Stephanie had made it clear days ago that she had no plans of following her father into the Haven. It took a lot of self-control to stay quiet until they were in the car.

“I received the results of the paternity test today,” Stephanie said.

Rylie clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling. “Who is it?”

“The test was difficult because Seth and Abel are so similar genetically. They had to run the work multiple times in order to reduce the margin of error. If we’d had the equipment to perform an amniocentesis, I suspect it would have been a lot clearer, but—”

“Who is it?” she interrupted. Nothing else mattered.

“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” Stephanie said. “They were only capable of determining the father with seventy five percent certainty.”

Rylie thought she might have forgotten how to breathe.

Finally, the doctor sighed.

“Abel was right. He is most likely the father.”

Rylie gripped the car door. Emotions surged through her—euphoria, fear, regret, and an overwhelming sadness.

Was that it, then? Did that mean she had to choose Abel?

She watched his silhouette continue to pace beyond the tree. Seth was with him now, and even at that distance, even in the dark, it was easy to tell them apart. Abel was taller, broader, and brooding. Seth’s posture was more open, with his arms akimbo. He looked like he was probably talking at Abel.

Her boyfriend beside the father of her babies.

She felt dizzy.

As if the babies could sense her emotions, they gave a hard tumble. She smoothed her hand over the bulging skin. “Have you told anyone?” Rylie asked, voice thick with unshed tears.

“You’re the first.”

“So let’s keep it that way,” she said. Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “Just…please don’t tell anybody for now.”

“Very well.” She put her keys in the ignition. “I’m going to go back to California. The coven’s still trying to recover from Cain’s last attack, and they’ll need a leader now that my father is gone. I hope that you have a wonderful life with those twins of yours.”

“Thank you.”

Rylie got out of the car and waited until Stephanie’s Lexus vanished before she turned to face Seth and Abel.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to talk to them.

Seth kept an eye on Rylie as she got into Stephanie’s Lexus. He didn’t think that Rylie would try to run away; she had been more enthusiastic about the idea of the Haven than anyone else. But after his momentary panic earlier, when Brody had shown up in town alone, he wasn’t prepared to let Rylie out of his sight again so soon.

“Your eyes are going to fall out of your head,” Abel said.

He returned his attention to his brother. Jokes aside, he still looked miserable. “What’s the problem?” Seth asked.

“You said that you had Cain under control. That your Union friend was going to put him behind bars permanently. I wasn’t expecting him to team up with the Union and attack us again.”

“Something must have happened to Yasir. I haven’t heard from him in months.”

“Yeah, because that helps us now,” Abel said, rolling his eyes. “What is it with our family? Mom didn’t stay dead. Cain didn’t stay arrested.”

Seth could only manage a faint smile. It really wasn’t funny. “We have stubborn genetics. But you’re not this upset because of Cain. Something’s been bothering you for days.”

Abel paced for a few more minutes without speaking, although it looked like he wanted to. It was easier to read his expressions now that his scars were half-healed; he could actually move the eyebrow and jaw muscles on the damaged side again. Maybe after two more years of super werewolf healing, he wouldn’t have any scars at all.

When he finally spoke, it was in a low whisper. Quiet enough that the pack wouldn’t be able to hear him. “I couldn’t change tonight. The pack was in trouble, we lost people, and I couldn’t change.” His golden eyes burned with anger. “If I was Alpha, I could change on my own. But I can’t. I’m not Rylie’s mate, I’m not the Alpha, and I can’t…”

Abel grabbed a rock and whipped it over the field. It bounced and disappeared into the tall grass.

“Most werewolves can’t control the change, man,” Seth said. “It doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

“You know what? You’re good, Seth. You’re better than me. I’ve thought about doing things to you—awful things. You know, trying to get you out of the picture, so I could keep Rylie for myself.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, unable to meet Seth’s eyes. “You goddamn goody two-shoes punk.”

“Abel…”

His brother stepped away, shaking his head. “I never should have said what I did at the wedding in the first place. I’m a selfish asshole.”

“Yeah,” Seth said with a shrug. “How’s that different from the first twenty years of our lives? I’ve been pissed at you for a long time, Abel, and I’m not going to argue with anything you’ve said. But don’t beat yourself up for what happened tonight. It’s not your fault.”

“I don’t care about ‘what happened tonight.’ I only care about her.” Abel jabbed a finger toward the Lexus. “And I’m not good enough.” He curled his hand into a fist. “I can’t watch you have a happy family with Rylie. Like I said, I’m too goddamn selfish. I’m not going to the Haven. All right? I’ll help you rescue the pack tomorrow, and that’s it. We’re done.”

Seth thought that announcement probably should have made him happy. His brother, the asshole that had tried to steal his girlfriend while he was away at college, had just flashed the white flag. Called it quits.

No more competition. No more heartache.

But he thought of the way that Rylie watched Abel from across the room, and the way that Abel watched her back. If he was going to be honest with himself, he never saw Rylie happier than when she was with his brother. She definitely didn’t smile for Seth like that anymore.

And Rylie made Abel happy, too. She made him want to be a better person.

What was that if it wasn’t love?

Seth was pretty sure that the competition had already been over for months—and not in his favor. It was an ugly thought. He had been trying not to contemplate it for a while. But as much as it killed him, he couldn’t let his brother leave. Not when Abel was the only one who made Rylie smile.

James had been right: there was nothing worse than being alone. Seth couldn’t let that happen to his brother.

“Look, Abel…” Seth began.

“Hey, guys.”

They both turned at the same time. Somehow, Rylie had crept up on them. She was still graceful and silent, even while swollen with pregnancy, and Seth’s heart ached to see her. Every day she carried those babies made her even more beautiful. It was like she held the light of the moon within her skin.

All Seth could manage to say was, “Hi.” But Abel walked away without as much as a word. He had long legs. Within moments, he started to disappear into the night.

Rylie stared after him, looking sick and heartbroken. “Where’s he going?”

“I think he’s just getting some air.”

“We’ve been outside for hours. How could he need more air?” She gripped Seth’s arm, fingers digging into his bicep. “You’re not telling me something. Where is Abel going? What did he say?”

He couldn’t lie to Rylie when she looked like that. “He’s not going anywhere for now. He said he would help save Bekah and Levi tomorrow. But…he also said that he’s not coming with us to the Haven.”

Rylie’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Seth said, and he was surprised to mean it. Watching Rylie well up with tears was too painful, so he quickly changed subjects. “What did Stephanie want?”

She swallowed hard. “Nothing. She was just saying goodbye.”

NINETEEN

The Rescue

Rylie and Brody left for the Haven the next morning, before the sun had even risen. He had run into town overnight and gotten a car somewhere—Rylie wasn’t sure that she wanted to know where, exactly—and they took to the road without saying goodbye to the pack.

“No point in saying goodbye when we’ll be back together tonight,” Seth said, holding Rylie’s hand as she climbed into the car. She was reluctant to leave without talking to Abel, but he was nowhere in sight. Maybe he didn’t want to see her anymore.

Seth bent toward her. Rylie lifted her face to kiss him, but he only brushed his lips over her cheek.

An hour later, the trees began to thicken as they entered the mountains, and she found herself touching the place that Seth had kissed.

Why had he turned aside at the last moment?

“Do you need a pit stop, ma’am?” Brody asked. He should have been exhausted after getting struck by an SUV, running into town twice, and going without sleep for at least a day, but his golden eyes were clear and bright.

“I’m fine,” she said, forcing herself to stop touching her cheek. “And you don’t have to call me ‘ma’am.’ I’m only nineteen.”

“It’s a sign of respect. Age isn’t a factor in that.”

Rylie glared at the trees flying past them. The sun was beginning to peek through the branches, and it cast dappled light on the car. “I don’t think I’ve done anything worth respecting.”

“Maybe not. I haven’t known you long. But how many nineteen year old girls can lead a pack of werewolves? How many teenage girls even survive the bite in the first place? The number’s few, I’d guess.” Brody’s hands tightened on the wheel, making the leather creek. “I almost didn’t survive. I was twenty-seven, and I spent my entire life thinking that I was tough as hell…until those first three months of the change.”

She tilted her head to the side to watch him. She had been thinking so much about Seth and Abel’s weird behavior that she hadn’t even considered where her bodyguard might have come from. “Do you mind if I ask how you got bitten? There aren’t many werewolves left.”

“It was my sister. She got it from somewhere else—on a trip to Turkey. Brought it back with her.”

“Where is she now?” Rylie asked.

He glanced sideways at her. “She didn’t survive the first three months.”

“Oh.” She twisted her hands together, staring down at her stomach as the babies bumped gently from side to side with the motion of the car. She wished she hadn’t asked. “I’m sorry about your girlfriend.”

Brody reached out to turn on the radio. “No need to be sorry. That’s life for you. Now, what kind of—shit!”

Rylie looked up to see what had made him shout, and all of the blood rushed out of her head at once.

Two black SUVs blocked both lanes of the highway, and they were moving in fast.

“Hang onto something!” Brody shouted.

She clung to the handhold over the door as he yanked the emergency brake, twisted the wheel, and sent the car spinning one hundred and eighty degrees. The smell of burned rubber filled her nostrils as the tires squealed.

He straightened them out facing the other direction and stomped the gas. They tore down the highway with Rylie’s back plastered to the seat and her knuckles white on the dashboard.

But they didn’t get far.

They crested a hill that they had passed only moments earlier to see two more Union vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. Which of them was Cain riding in? Or had he only sent his army this time?

“Brody,” she said in a low, warning voice.

“I see them. Seat belt?”

She double checked the buckle. “I’m good.”

“This is going to be bumpy, ma’am,” Brody said. “I apologize.” Always the gentleman.

They flew off the shoulder and into the trees.

Brody cut straight through the forest and angled for the denser trees higher on the mountain. Rylie shut her eyes, gritted her teeth, and hung tight as the car jittered over the uneven ground. It was an old Taurus, and not meant to go off-road, but Brody navigated them through the trees without getting caught on anything.

Unfortunately, the SUVs were better prepared for rough terrain. The first one appeared in Rylie’s side mirror. It was gaining quickly.

“Look behind your seat,” Brody said.

Rylie craned around to see a shoebox on the floor. She pulled it into her lap and was about to open the lid when the car glanced off of a tree trunk. Her shoulder banged against the door.

An SUV plowed toward their side. Brody almost spun out trying to get away.

As soon as they were clear, he rolled down his window.

She finally flung the lid of the shoebox aside and found a gun. It was black, small, and fit her hand well. Brody held out a hand. She gave it to him.

Keeping a knee braced against the steering wheel, he leaned out of the window of the car, fired off three shots, and then dropped back into his seat.

Rylie watched the SUV just behind them swerve, stop, and then vanish as Brody steered them higher onto the mountain. “Holy crap,” she said. She had thought that he couldn’t do anything more impressive than catching an SUV with his bare hands, but James Bond-style shooting was getting close. “What did you say that you used to do for a living?”

He winked at her. “Odd jobs. Can you shoot?”

Her last close encounter with a gun had been when she thought she couldn’t stand being a werewolf anymore and contemplated suicide. She had stolen one of the guns and learned all of the parts—the safety, the trigger, the business end—and thought that she could operate one. She never tested the theory. Abel had figured out what she was doing and taken it from her.

Firing was one thing. Aiming, on the other hand…?

“Yes?” she said in a tiny voice.

He handed her the gun. “Good time to practice.” His voice sharpened. “Duck.”

Rylie folded over as much as she could. A second later, the rear passenger window shattered. Bullets whizzed overhead and punched through the other side.

Her heart pounded in the back of her throat. She kept taking deep breaths, Lamaze breathing, just like she had practiced with Bekah and Stephanie. She couldn’t risk panic.

“You’re good,” Brody said. “There’s a vehicle at your four o’clock.”

Rylie knew that term from playing video games with Tate. She twisted to the right, like she was in the center of a clock, and looked at where the four would be. An SUV bore down on them from above.

She wrapped her arm around the headrest to aim out the place the back window used to be. Deep breaths.

Rylie pulled the trigger.

The explosion of a gunshot was so much louder when she held the gun. It bucked in her hand, hurt her wrist, and made her fingers hot. She also didn’t hit anything. “Nice try,” Brody said, even though he wasn’t watching. He was glaring at the trees and swerving like crazy to avoid them.

Rylie popped off two more shots. One of them even hit the windshield in the top left corner.

The SUV kept coming.

Before she could try again, Brody swore loudly, and the car came to a jolting stop. She slid into the dashboard.

The engine ticked and hissed. The wheels whirred.

They weren’t going anywhere.

Three Union SUVs circled around them, and the panic that Rylie had been fighting so hard since she first spotted them began to choke her. “Gun,” Brody said, and she handed it back to him just in time. Her stomach clenched hard as soon as she released the grip.

Not now!

“Brody,” she panted, holding her stomach. “I can’t—”

“Get ready to run. I’ll cover you.” He leaned back, kicked his door open, and jumped out of the car. “Go!”

She didn’t have any other choice. Rylie spilled out of the car behind him and tried to run, even though she could feel the contraction in the small of her back and down her thighs and she could barely breathe, much less see.

The SUVs had them surrounded, but Brody fired calmly, one shot at a time, and every bullet hit something. Men shouted. Glass shattered.

She kept her arms over her head and didn’t look where she was going. All she focused on was taking one more step, getting deeper into the forest, escaping the sounds of gunfire.

Rylie stumbled through the trees. She heard a deep scream behind her—Brody?

She didn’t stop to look.

The forest was a tangled mess of branches and fallen logs and rocks. Ever since she first changed, Rylie had been comfortable in the wild, like she was a part of it. But her wolfish instincts had abandoned her among the stress and pain. She tripped and had to fight to haul herself up the rocks.

And the contractions swept over her, one after another, with barely a break in between.

Somehow, she reached the top of a nearby ridge, and nobody had found her. She rested on all fours to try to catch her breath.

She could see the SUVs below, all four of them. The one that Brody disabled was near the road. The other three were still where she had left them behind. Rylie had climbed higher than she expected; all of the black-clad men were tiny beneath her.

One of the men wasn’t wearing black. He wore jeans and a t-shirt, and he was being forced face-down onto the ground.

They had Brody. She had to save him.

But another contraction swept over her, making her eyes blur and ears ring. How could she expect to save someone else when the chances of saving herself weren’t very good?

The Haven. She had to get to the Haven—and she had to do it before the babies came.

Rylie kept running.

Abel and Seth prowled along the roof of the old high school while waiting for Tate’s speech. It looked like the entire town had turned out to listen, which wasn’t saying much; there were maybe three hundred people milling around the lawn.

The stage was empty, and Tate wasn’t scheduled to talk for another ten minutes. The remaining members of the pack were spread throughout the crowd, watching for the Union, and Seth had his favorite rifle hanging from his shoulder and a pistol at the small of his back. If Cain showed his face, they would be ready for him.

Abel sat on the edge of the roof, feet dangling over the side. “How was Rylie this morning?” he asked.

Seth tightened the strap on his rifle and checked the safety. He didn’t need to do either. He was just fidgeting so that he wouldn’t have to meet his brother’s eyes. “She seemed good. I think she was hurt that you weren’t there.”

Abel grunted.

Pacing along the edge of the roof, Seth glanced at the tour buses again—still there—and went back to Abel.

“You have to come to the Haven with us,” Seth said.

Abel remained silent.

The crowd below stirred. Seth braced his elbows on the roof, propped his rifle up, and lowered his eye to the hunting scope.

The door to the American flag-covered bus opened, and Tate stepped out.

Seth tracked Tate’s progress across the lawn. He was smiling and waving to the crowd, but even the makeup caked to his skin couldn’t hide his pallor. He didn’t look good. “Rylie told me what you guys did the other night,” Seth said. He felt rather than saw Abel turn to face him, but still, he didn’t speak. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. More than I should.”

The silence between them was underscored with the crowd’s rising murmur. Tate mounted the stage, and Seth used his scope to search for Cain. He wasn’t among the entourage, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

He spotted Crystal and Pyper near the back of the crowd. They were alert and sniffing the air. Not exactly sneaky.

Tate talked for a while, but Seth had already heard it all on the news a hundred times, so he didn’t pay any attention.

“It pisses me off to think that you’d be macking on the girl I was going to marry just a few months ago. I mean, we’re not just brothers. We’re all that remains of our family, aside from Cain, and I like you at least a little bit better than him.”

Abel was motionless, but Seth knew that he was listening.

The bus doors remained open. Seth scanned the crowd nearby as he went on.

“Who wants to be in a relationship where the girl’s always thinking about someone else? I mean, yeah, I could probably talk Rylie into staying with me. She’s loyal and all, and dear God, do I love her. But if making her stay means that I’m going to lose my best friend—”

“I smell him,” Abel interrupted.

Seth lifted his head. “What?”

“Cain. I smell him on the wind.”

Okay, so they still weren’t talking about Rylie. That was fine. At least they could be productive in the meantime.

He stood, shouldered his rifle, and drew a pistol instead. “Take point.”

Abel led him to the back of the building, and they dropped down one at a time. He sniffed the air and headed toward the back of the school complex. Tate had started giving his speech, so his voice echoed around them. Something about faith and patriotism and national security. Seth might have been imagining it, but he didn’t sound like he had his usual conviction.

They looped toward the buses, and even though Seth kept the black handgun close to his leg so that it wouldn’t be as obvious, his finger didn’t move far from the trigger.

“I never would have started dating Rylie if I had known she would be a problem between us,” Seth went on in a low voice.

Abel rolled his eyes. “Seriously? You’re going to keep on with this bros before hos bullshit?”

“Is it bullshit? Really?”

“Yes, it is.” He jerked his chin toward the buses. “I think he’s inside the one on the other side.”

They circled around the members of Tate’s security team. There were only two of them remaining by the buses; judging by the black polo shirts, they were a Union detail. It was easy to avoid their notice. Almost too easy. Did Cain want to be found?

The door on the opposite bus was closed. Seth peered through the window, but it was too dark to see anything. “I just think you should reconsider coming to Haven. There’s got to be a way we can resolve this whole Rylie thing that doesn’t involve breaking apart our family. The babies are going to need us—all of us.”

“Don’t you want to get rid of me?” Abel asked, exasperated.

“No. I want you to be happy. I want Rylie to be happy. And I don’t want any of us to be alone.”

His brother scoffed. “What are you trying to say? That we should share?”

“I’m saying that I think she’s happier with you, and I’m prepared to be the bigger man and get out of the way, if that’s what it takes for us to be a family.”

“You mean…”

“Don’t make me say it out loud,” Seth said. “On the count of three?”

Abel nodded and drew his own handgun. They didn’t need to hide their weapons anymore; they were sheltered between the buses, and nobody could see them.

Seth counted down on his fingers. Three. Two. One.

He leaned back and kicked in the door of the tour bus.

They jumped in. Abel took the driver’s compartment on the left, and Seth went right, aiming his gun down the length of the bus. “Cain!” Seth shouted, but nobody responded.

He threw open the bathroom door. It was empty inside, but a fan had been positioned near the window with a pile of clothing in front of it. Abel stepped in, grabbed the shirt, and sniffed it.

“This is what I smelled,” Abel said. “Cain’s dirty laundry.” Disgusted, he flung the clothes to the floor.

Seth lowered his gun. “He wanted to lure us onto the buses. Why?”

“I think he just wanted you to be distracted,” said a man near the entrance. The brothers aimed in an instant. It was Tate—free of his entourage, looking sickly, and closing the door quietly behind him.

“What’s going on?” Abel growled, grabbing his collar.

Tate’s eyes widened at the sight of his scars. “Who are you?”

“I’m Abel,” he said. When there was no recognition in his eyes, he said, “Seth’s brother.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh shit, you’re a werewolf.” Tate lifted his hands to try to loosen Abel’s grip, and that was when a tattoo peeking out of Tate’s sleeve caught Seth’s eye. It was just above the joint of his left arm, about the size of a quarter, and shaped like an apple. He couldn’t see the entire thing, but Seth had the sinking suspicion that it would be bleeding.

Seth ripped Tate’s sleeve open as Abel watched. It was definitely the Apple. The mark of Cain.

Tate tried to pull away, but Abel’s grip was crushingly tight on his wrist. “What is this?” he asked as he lifted Tate’s arm.

The younger man struggled, but couldn’t break free. “It’s a tattoo.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “You think I’m stupid? Of course I know it’s a tattoo. What the hell is it doing on your arm?”

“I can explain everything, but not right now. You guys have to help me. Cain has Levi.”

“Wait. You know where Cain’s holding Levi?” Seth asked.

“Yeah, it’s this temporary base the Union contractors built outside Tandy, to the southwest. And he’s probably back there by now—he’s usually with my tour, but he left to get Rylie. He said that he was going to capture the whole pack.” Tate swallowed hard. He looked sickly, like he hadn’t slept in days. “I had no idea what he had planned. I’m sorry.”

Cold fear penetrated Seth’s heart. Cain had left to get Rylie? From where? Did he know that she was moving to the Haven?

“Keep holding him,” he told Abel, who looked more than happy to comply. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed for Scott, who picked up in two rings. “Are Rylie and Brody there yet?”

“We haven’t seen anyone at all since we secured the cave,” Scott said. “But we’re ready to go whenever all of you get here.”

Seth swore under his breath. Rylie and Brody had left eight hours ago, before the sun had risen. If they hadn’t gotten there, then something must have gotten to them first. “Keep an eye out, and be careful,” Seth said, and he hung up.

“Can you guys help me?” Tate asked as Abel finally released him. “We have to get Levi away from the Union.”

Seth closed his eyes and counted to ten. Once he was capable of speaking calmly, he said, “Okay. The plan hasn’t changed. The only difference is that Tate can show us how to find the base, and now Rylie’s going to be there, too.”

Abel’s eyes blazed with heat. “Cain wouldn’t take her back there. He’s got something else planned.”

“Where else could she be?” Seth asked.

“I don’t know.” His voice deepened to a growl. “But I’m gonna find her.”

TWENTY

Special Delivery

Rylie staggered through the forest. The mud squelched between her toes and sucked her heels into the mire with every step. She wasn’t sure how long she had been running anymore—all she could think was that she needed to stay on her feet, keep moving, and put as much distance between her and Cain as possible.

Another contraction hit. It was like being squeezed from her head to her toes. She gasped and braced herself against a tree as her vision blurred.

Time passed, and it felt like hours, though she knew it had to have been only seconds. Stephanie had said that the contractions would never last longer than ninety seconds at a time. Of course, Stephanie had also said that her body wouldn’t give her more pain than she could handle, and that was obviously a huge lie.

With the few seconds of rest between contractions, she sagged against the tree, cheek to bark, and dug her fingers in to hold herself. Have to keep moving. Have to find the pack…

The wind picked up, and she could smell Cain on the breeze. His smell was so much like Seth and Abel’s. It was musky, masculine, dangerous. Would Rylie’s babies smell like that, too? Like Eleanor’s spawn? It was a ridiculous worry to have when she was lost in the forest, but she couldn’t help but be fixated on the idea.

Another contraction. Between the pain and Cain’s smell, Rylie found herself lost in vivid memory: being locked in a silver cage with Eleanor pacing outside; finding Abel bleeding out from a stab wound his mother had inflicted; watching as Pagan shattered Seth’s hand at Eleanor’s orders.

It was Eleanor’s blood in her womb, and Rylie knew that was why the contractions were so merciless. The pregnancy had been damned from the start.

Distant motion. The sound of voices, footsteps.

Don’t stop.

Her vision cleared long enough for her to climb down a valley filled with rocks. A tiny waterfall trickled from a brook above, making the stones slick with moss and moisture. It was so cold that it instantly numbed her fingers.

There was a shadowy place at the bottom of the rocks, and that was where she rode out the next contraction, fighting not to make a sound. Each one was longer and more intense than the last. She tried to breathe and relax and get the contractions to slow. Stephanie must have taught her a hundred coping techniques. Rylie could wait it out.

Something warm gushed between her legs. She looked down to see the dirt splashed with thick, clear fluid. It wasn’t from the brook. Her water had broken.

There wasn’t enough relaxing or breathing in the world to stop the contractions now.

Rylie was alone in the wilderness with hunters on her trail, and she was about to give birth two months early.

It was surprisingly easy to hijack a tour bus with the help of the tour’s headliner. Abel left to hunt for Rylie, convinced that Cain wouldn’t have taken her back to Tandy, and Seth quietly gathered the pack. Tate sent his entourage on some ridiculous errand—something about how he wanted a sandwich from his favorite bistro before they left town again.

They were gone the instant Tate’s staff turned their backs.

“Which way?” Crystal asked, jiggling the gearshift. It turned out that she had a commercial driver’s license, and despite the tiny shorts, she looked totally at home behind the massive wheel of the bus.

Tate turned on the GPS and plugged in a town a few miles away. “Follow this for now.”

It was only a half hour drive. That wasn’t long to prepare at all. “Do you have any weapons in here?” Seth asked, checking the magazines on his guns again, just to be sure.

“Why would we have guns on a tour bus?” Tate asked.

“I don’t know. Because your tour’s being run by the Union?”

“Well, there aren’t any weapons that I know about. Not unless you count six different hair dryers and a really sharp straight razor.” Tate rubbed his jaw. “It’s not All American to have stubble.”

The motion of his arm drew Seth’s attention to the bleeding apple tattoo again. He glanced at Crystal. He didn’t want to have to talk about anything sensitive in front of her, but at least she definitely wasn’t a member of the Apple. Seth couldn’t be sure about the rest of the pack.

He shut the door to the passenger compartment so that the three of them were alone in front. “What’s the deal with that?” Seth asked, gesturing at the tattoo. “You said it’s not Cain’s mark, so what is it, and what does it have to do with the Union? And how the hell did you end up with those guys, anyway?”

Tate raked a hand through his gelled hair. “The OPA found me after my grandpa died. They asked me if I wanted to prevent more people from dying like he did, so of course I said yes. Some guys from the Union were assigned to my security team—Cain, most importantly. And what he had to tell me really opened my eyes.” Tate leaned forward, fixing an intense gaze on Seth. “I wasn’t bullshitting in my speeches when I said that I found God.”

Crystal snorted, but Seth ignored her. “I’m not following you,” he said.

“We live in God’s country, Seth, yet the Office of Preternatural Affairs is an unholy abomination.” Tate said it without a hint of drama in his voice. It was so weird seeing the pothead Seth had known in high school looking that serious. “They’re only pretending to be on the side of the Lord so that they can gain political traction. Same with the Union. Cain told me that the Apple was infiltrating the department to bring about a revolution of those loyal to God.” Tate pointed to his tattoo. “The people of the Apple.”

Seth frowned. “You’re telling me that Cain’s with a cult?”

“It’s not a cult. More like a church that’s been building quietly for hundreds of years.”

He sat back and gazed at the road thoughtfully. It would make a lot more sense for Scott to be a member of a church than a follower of Cain. “But where does Cain fit into the Apple?” Seth asked.

Tate shrugged. “He just said he’s trying to bring the Apple together after being stagnant for too long. He sounded legit, and I believe in the cause, so I joined. But that was before I knew what kind of person he was. Did you know that he’s got the idea of some werewolf breeding program in his head?”

“He might have mentioned it before,” Seth said grimly. Rylie’s pregnancy was the only reason that Cain had spared her life when he could have killed her months ago.

So Cain was using some scattered church as his personal army while he tried to build a new breed of werewolves. Seth wasn’t sure if that was good news, or bad. On one hand, it meant that Cain didn’t have as much power as Seth had feared. On the other hand, if the Apple was really trying to incite a revolution, then the problems could be even bigger than Cain.

But first things first.

“What are we going to find at the compound?” Seth asked.

“Lots of scattered buildings. Armed guards. A couple dozen men. They should let us through the fence, since we have the tour bus.”

“Sounds like suicide,” Crystal said.

Tate grinned. “No way. I already know how we can get in to grab Levi.”

They didn’t have long to hash out a plan. When they got close to Tandy, Tate directed Crystal to leave the main road and head east. Seth went in back to prepare Trevin, Pyper, and Daven for the attack.

Nobody breathed as they passed through the fence of the temporary base, but the guard barely looked before waving them in. Crystal guided the bus between two rows of trailers, which were being hitched to semi trucks. The base looked like it was preparing to move. And Tate had been right about the armed guards—Seth spotted at least a half a dozen men with semiautomatic weapons milling around.

“Which one is Levi in?” he asked.

Tate pointed to a trailer near the back, where the fence had already been removed. There was a guard outside the door. “He’s in there. I think that’s where they’ve been keeping all of the prisoners.”

Crystal parked and joined them in the back. “Ready for some fun?”

“I was born ready,” Tate said with a grin that flashed a lot of perfect white teeth. He put the back of his hand to his forehead and gave an exaggerated swoon. “I’m ready for my close up, Mr. Demille. That’s how it goes, right?”

Seth pulled the lever to open the bus door. “Just get out there.”

Tate descended, and Seth shut the door behind him. The appearance of Tate without his entourage attracted attention immediately. The pack watched through decal-covered windows as two armed men approached Tate, along with one woman in a skirt suit.

“Get ready by the back door,” Trevin whispered to the girls, and they slipped through the kitchenette to wait.

Seth barely breathed as they watched Tate work his magic for the Union. His hearing wasn’t super-powered, like that of the werewolves, so he couldn’t tell what Tate was saying. But he could imagine.

Tate was spinning a tale of disaster. They were attacked in the last town, he would say, and they seized control of the other bus. It was a violent protest, an uprising, something that the Union needed to take care of immediately. The story was kind of stupid, and there was no way it would stand up to any real thinking—the Union would only have to turn on the news to see that the speech had gone fine.

They didn’t need to believe Tate. They only needed to listen long enough for Seth to get to Levi’s trailer.

A few more Union hunters came out to listen to Tate. Everyone else was still working to get the trailers hitched so that the entire base could move. Seth peeked out a back window to make sure that nobody was watching the bus. “Let’s go,” he said. “Fast and quiet.”

Nobody did “fast and quiet” like werewolves. He had to hurry to keep up with the pack as they slipped through the trailers, ducked around a couple of half-disassembled tents, and made their way to Levi’s trailer. It was conveniently placed at the edge of the compound. As soon as Seth got everyone out, all they would have to do is sprint to Tandy, just five miles south. And hopefully, they wouldn’t get shot along the way.

A guard was still by the door. He hadn’t been lured away by Tate.

Seth moved to sneak up behind him, but Crystal put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head. He stayed back as she strolled around the corner of the trailer.

She tugged the neck of her tank top down to bare her cleavage, which Seth had to admit was pretty incredible, and then pulled the hem of her shirt up. Two little gestures that bared a lot of smooth skin.

The sound of Crystal’s approach attracted the guard’s attention, and he turned. “Hey, lover boy,” she said in a deep, sultry voice.

His eyes went straight to her chest. “Where did you come from?” he asked her breasts as he brought his rifle in front of him.

As far as distractions went, the whole “look at my boobs” maneuver wasn’t the most sophisticated. It only slowed his reaction time by a few seconds. But it was more than Crystal really needed.

She grabbed the side of his head and slammed it into the wall of the trailer. He went boneless at her feet.

“Come on,” Crystal told the pack as she tried to open the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn.

“I’ve got this one,” Seth said, stepping in front of the door. He never left home without his lock pick set. Kneeling on the steps put him right at eye level with Crystal’s impressive assets, and he focused hard on the lock. “Be careful. You could start a war with those things.”

She leaned her elbow on the wall of the trailer and gave him a smile with heavily-lidded eyes. “You have no idea, Seth.”

The lock wasn’t sophisticated. It only took a moment for Seth to open it. But he could hear voices rising near the bus even as he got the tumblers to fall into place, and he knew that they were running out of time.

Seth shoved the door open.

It was dark in the trailer, and not very big. One half was separated from the other by a window, through which he could see the gathered pack. He felt an instant of relief as he realized that Levi wasn’t alone—Bekah was with him, and so were Aden and Analizia.

But no Rylie.

Seth quickly opened the door to the containment cell. Levi reached the door first. “I’m going to kill them,” he growled, golden eyes flashing. “You know how long I’ve been stuck in here?”

“Escape first, kill later. We have to run.” Seth helped Bekah off the floor.

“We saw Cain,” she said.

“I know. He’s with the Union.”

She shook her head. “That’s not all. I heard him talking. He said that he knows where Rylie is, and he’s going to take her to Union HQ to have the babies—and once they’re out, he’s going to kill her.”

Rylie had no idea how long she labored in the space beneath the rocks. At some point, the clouds had opened and started to pour rain, which sluiced down the rocks and drummed on the earth. The trickle coming from the creek had turned into a real waterfall. She was soaked, exhausted, and focused on surviving each contraction.

So focused that she didn’t notice when someone crept up on her until he was already there.

Squelching footsteps approached, just on the other side of the rocks. Rylie slipped when she tried to stand. She pressed her forehead against the stone and closed her eyes, certain that Cain had come to kill her, but beyond the point of caring.

“Rylie,” said a familiar voice as the man rounded the rocks.

It was Abel.

She would have been relieved if she hadn’t been so tired. He helped her stand. “I’ve got you,” he said, pulling her against his chest. “You’re okay.”

“How did you find me?”

Abel was even wetter than Rylie, since he would have had to walk through the rain for hours to get to her hideaway in the forest. Water beaded on his dark skin. His shirt clung to his chest. “I will always be able to find you, Rylie.”

She could feel another contraction coming. She clung to his chest. “I’m going to have the babies.” She dug her fingers into his shoulders and forced him to focus on her. “I’m going to have them now.”

His intense stare turned to a look of panic. “But we’re not—Stephanie—Seth—”

Rylie groaned. Why couldn’t it have been Seth that found her? He was the calm, self-assured one who had gone to college for pre-med. At least he would have kept his wits.

But it was Abel. The father of the babies. He was all she had, and they had to get through it together—whether he liked it or not.

The contraction struck, and she was so exhausted that she couldn’t even brace herself for it anymore. She lost herself in the pain as Abel stood back and looked helpless. She was taken by instinct, mindless and powerful.

When she slumped against the rocks again, he crouched beside her.

“Stephanie prepared Seth to deliver the babies, not me. What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “I don’t know what—I just—maybe you should lay down.”

“I don’t want to fucking lay down!” she growled, and he took a step back.

“Okay, Jesus,” Abel said. “You don’t have to lay down.”

Her body was telling her to move. She thought of the way that her mother’s dogs had birthed—pacing, growling, hunched over. Rylie felt much more animal than human.

She paced between the rocks, cradling her stomach with her eyes closed.

An epidural sure would have been nice.

She felt another contraction building. Abel grabbed her and hung on through the entire contraction, but she was barely aware of it. All she could feel was her stomach, the babies, the urge to bear down.

Rylie needed to push.

“I think they’re coming,” Rylie said, and she could hear Abel’s heart pounding beside her.

He might have responded, but she didn’t hear any of it. She could only hear the rush of blood through her own body, the white roar of an icy river in her ears, and smell the pine trees on Gray Mountain. She seized his hand and squeezed so tightly that the bones creaked.

The weight between her legs was incredible, unimaginable, immense. Rylie lost sense of her skin and bones.

The pressure shifted, a scream ripped from her throat, and suddenly, there was a lot less weight between her legs.

Rylie flopped on her side against the ground, gasping and panting. She felt weak, useless. She almost didn’t hear Abel speaking under the drumming of rain on leaves.

“It’s—it’s a girl,” he said, and he gave a disbelieving laugh. “It’s a girl, Rylie.”

She lifted her head enough to see him holding something small, which was covered in creamy white fluid and blood. A baby. Her baby. But only the first of them.

Abel’s face had changed. All the worry was wiped clean, replaced by a look of wonder as he lifted the baby in front of him, one hand supporting her neck and the other under her back. She was tiny, so much smaller than any baby Rylie had seen before.

There was a wet cough, a small choking sound, and then a cry. A loud, beautiful scream of protest.

“Let me see,” Rylie tried to say, but she couldn’t seem to get the words out. She was so exhausted. The thought of having one more contraction made her want to cry, though she didn’t even have the strength for that anymore.

Another contraction struck, and she rode it out, digging her hands into the ground and loosing a sob. There was no room left in her mind and body for thought after that—there was still one more baby to come, and she could feel the body descending even faster than the first. Rylie had no control over herself anymore. She was only along for the ride.

Her mind was filled with white noise. The forest blurred around her, simultaneously clear and foggy. Her heart pounded.

The next wave came almost on top of the first, and then the next. Time meant nothing. All she knew was blood, and mud, and her heaving body.

And then Abel was speaking, she felt the pressure vanish, and she knew that the twin was out, and it felt like every bone in her body had simultaneously liquefied.

Rylie puddled on the ground. It was hard to breathe.

“A boy,” he said, but that was all she heard.

One boy and one girl. Perfect.

Rylie collapsed. It was over.

Everything is over…

“Change, Rylie,” Abel said. His voice swam in and out of her head. “There’s too much blood. Something is wrong. You’ve gotta change.”

It wasn’t the full moon. How was she supposed to change?

Babies were crying. She wanted to go to them and find out why, but she couldn’t open her eyes, much less move.

She hadn’t even named them yet.

Abel’s voice grew louder. A hand touched her cheek. “Change, Rylie.” It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order.

She tried to whisper back to him. “I’m too tired.”

But the wolf was rising. Rylie hadn’t invited it to emerge, nor did it have the strength to emerge on its own. Abel’s touch was drawing it from her. He called to it, and his voice resonated deep within her in a way that it never had before.

The power of the moon crested and splashed over her.

“Change,” Abel said, and she had no choice but to obey.

Rylie released her flesh. She exploded into the night and the moonlight. Fur erupted from her with a howl, her spine snapped, and the wolf devoured her body in a single gulp.

And then all she knew was darkness.

TWENTY-ONE

Safety

Rylie woke up warm and dry with something heavy on her chest. She peeled her eyes open, lifted her head, and came face-to-face with two small, wrinkly babies resting stomach-down on her bare breasts. A blanket cocooned Rylie and the infants together.

She stared, shocked to stillness. The babies’ eyes were closed with miniature fists pressed to their cheeks. They were wiped clean, soft, and so very smelly. Their skin was a few shades darker than hers.

Belatedly, she realized that these were her babies. The ones that she had been carrying in her belly for the last seven months.

Rylie took a deep breath of their hair. They both had a lot of it. It was soft and black and emanated a distinctive odor that was nothing like anything she had smelled before.

They didn’t smell anything like Eleanor, that was for sure.

“You’re awake,” Gwyn said, walking over to sit on the floor beside her. It was only then that Rylie realized she was in a cave with a concrete floor—one that had been built by the hands of man—and that there were desks and computers nearby. She wasn’t far from a wall covered in petroglyphs.

Rylie tried to sit up, but she couldn’t without moving the babies, so she settled for resting her hands on them. Their backs rose and fell in tandem.

“Is this it?” she asked. “Are we in the Haven?”

“Not yet. We’re still waiting for Seth to come back with the pack.” The corners of Gwyn’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. She was looking much more alive than she had for weeks. Scott’s healing magic was working wonders. “He called to say that he freed everyone from the Union, so they’re on their way. We’re almost home, babe.”

Rylie craned her head around. They were alone. “How did I get here? The last thing I remember is being lost.”

“Abel carried you.” Gwyn’s smile grew. “All three of you. They’re beautiful, Rylie.”

“They’re so small.” Rylie stroked her fingers down their bodies. The one on the left squirmed, scrunched up his face, and then settled back down.

“Well, they’re premature. But my cousin had a premature baby at this age, and these darlings are sturdier. The girl just about broke my finger squeezing it when Abel first brought her in. You should be proud. I am.”

Rylie was proud. But the idea of Gwyn breaking bones worried her, too. “Where’s Scott?”

“He’s already taken the supplies to the Haven,” Gwyn said, nodding toward the wall. There was a narrow, unremarkable archway in the center of the petroglyphs, and a dark cave on the other side. “Seth said that time passes fast over there, so by the time we arrive, he should have found somewhere for us to live.”

Rylie barely heard her aunt speak. She couldn’t seem to stop staring at her babies.

She didn’t have to check to know that the one resting against her right breast was the girl. She just knew, with the same surety that she knew the girl was a werewolf. Her smell was that of lakes and woods, fur and fang, the earth and the sky and everything in between.

“Summer,” Rylie said.

“What’s that?”

“Summer.” It sounded even better the second time she said it. “I want to call her Summer.”

A tear slid down Gwyn’s cheek. “That’s perfect, pumpkin. I like it.”

Rylie buried her nose in the boy’s curls. Unlike his sister, he wasn’t a werewolf. Brianna had been right—he was one hundred percent human. Yet he wasn’t just any human. He smelled like the warm sweat that slicked Seth’s skin when he was exercising, and the fury of the hunt. He was a kopis, just like his uncle.

Rylie didn’t have any ideas for his name yet, but that was okay. She had plenty of time to choose.

Abel appeared behind Gwyn, and her eyes met his. He looked fiercely proud, as though he stood ten feet tall, and the love in his expression made it impossible to breathe. And he didn’t even know the truth yet.

“How do you feel?” he asked, crouching beside Aunt Gwyn.

“I feel really good,” Rylie said. “I’m not sore at all anymore. But how is that possible? I could have sworn that I hemorrhaged or something.”

He gave a half-smile. “I healed you. I made you change.”

The implications of that rocked Rylie to her core. If Abel had finally made her change, then that meant he had finally found the power of the Alpha within himself. He really was her mate. The yin to her yang.

She opened her mouth to tell him what Stephanie said—that they knew, with seventy-five percent certainty, that Abel was the father.

But before she could speak, he stood. “As long as you’re okay, I’m going outside to watch the forest.”

Rylie struggled to sit up. She had to rearrange the babies in order to do it, and Gwyn ended up holding Summer in the process.

By the time she was upright, Abel was gone, and the boy was squirming. He gave a tiny, pathetic cry. “Abel’s the daddy, isn’t he?” Gwyn asked, resting Summer against her shoulder. “He was right all along.”

She just nodded as she stared down at her hungry baby. Rylie had no idea what to do with it. But what else was new? She had been taking care of an entire pack for years without a clue, too.

“It’s okay,” Rylie said, running a finger down her son’s cheek. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”

Abel could smell Cain. His stink was on the wind.

Abel had been chased by that smell as he carried Rylie and the babies through the forest. More than once, the odor had been so strong that Abel feared he was about to stumble upon the Union by accident, but he had managed to avoid all of the hunters and gotten Rylie to safety.

When Scott had opened a magical wall protecting the cave to let Abel through, he had said that it would only stay open for another two hours. That should have been plenty of time for Seth and the pack to reach them. Seth had said that he was only twenty minutes away at the time. But twenty minutes had long since come and gone, and there was no sign of him or the rest of the pack.

Abel wanted to be inside, underground, with Rylie and Gwyn and those tiny babies. But with the wall still open, he had to be vigilant. He stayed outside to keep an eye on the dark, stormy forest and watch for his brother—either of them.

He checked his watch. Only an hour until the wall closed.

Where the hell was Seth?

“Hurry up,” he muttered, checking the magazine in his handgun for the sixth time. It was fully loaded, but he wasn’t actually sure it would work. Abel had fallen in the mud a couple of times while searching for Rylie.

Cain’s smell grew closer, but between the wind and the rain, it was hard to tell where it came from. He could have been anywhere. He could have been a few miles away, or up on the hill, or in the valley.

Or right behind Abel.

He heard the pine needles crunch an instant before the pain lanced through his back.

Abel roared, and a hand clapped down on his mouth to muffle the noise. It remained tight to his face as he sank onto his knees.

Another ripping pain, and another—he could taste the silver on the back of his tongue.

He twisted his arm around and fired off three blind shots behind him. The metal warmed in his fingers. Someone jerked the gun out of his hand.

The forest whirled around him as he collapsed onto his back, and he saw Cain kneeling over him with a bloody knife and satisfaction in his eyes. He flung the handgun into the trees.

He had stabbed Abel in the back. Several times.

“Hello, brother,” Cain said, and then he drove the knife in again, this time under the ribs.

Abel tried to twist away, but the pain in his back was too extreme to move. Something had been severed.

Cain leaned a hand into his throat, cutting off oxygen, and jerked the blade free. Pulling the knife out of Abel’s ribs hurt as much as having it driven in the first time. The edge was serrated, and it ripped the skin open in its wake.

“Where—what—Seth?” Abel squeezed out.

“Oh, who knows?” Cain asked, and a mischievous smile crossed his lips. “Am I my brother’s keeper? Oh, wait, wrong brother for that line. I should save it until I’m done killing you.”

All of the strength drained out of Abel’s muscles. His vision darkened.

Under the tinny whine in his ears, he heard a meaty cutting sound, but he couldn’t see it. He did see blood pool out from under his back and spread across the forest floor. And then he saw something red and meaty splatter on the leaves.

Abel realized, with distant horror, that Cain had gutted him.

He didn’t even feel it.

When Cain got to his feet and gave a satisfied smile, all Abel could think of was Rylie with two babies curled up on her chest, Gwyn’s thick gray braids framing her smile, and Seth somewhere in the forest with the pack.

“I wish we could have had more time to savor this,” Cain said. “But you’re too strong for me, and there’s no way I could get at your cute little girlfriend unless you die first.” He bent forward and braced his hands on his knees. “Go ahead and spend your last few seconds thinking about what you did to our mother. And think about what I’m doing to Rylie.” Cain patted his brother’s cheek. “Have fun.”

He drove the knife into Abel’s heart.

“Did you hear that?” Gwyn asked, holding Summer against her shoulder and swaying gently from side to side.

Rylie frowned. “Hear what?” Ever since she started nursing her son, the twins had consumed her every sense, and all she could hear was the beating hearts of her babies. She wouldn’t have been able to hear the 1812 Overture being performed six feet away.

“Someone’s out there,” her aunt said.

Gwyneth was many things—tough but loving, crafty and resourceful—and paranoid was not one of them. If she said there was someone out there, there was someone out there.

The boy had fallen asleep at Rylie’s breast. She carefully removed him and placed him into Gwyn’s free arm. “It was probably just Abel. I’ll check. Here, hold him.”

Rylie felt fine while she was sitting down, but getting up to move showed her that she was still weak from giving birth. There were some things that werewolf super-healing just couldn’t fix in a few seconds. She pulled a shirt over her head and stumbled to the mouth of the cave.

The steep path leading to the surface was empty, with no sign of Abel.

Breathing out to clear her nose, Rylie took a deep sniff of the fresh air floating down the tunnel. Still, all she could smell was the warm odor of soft baby skin. Her senses were totally shot.

Rylie faced Gwyn again. With the twins nestled in her arms, she looked more like an angel than a zombie. “I think it’s okay,” Rylie said.

Gwyn’s eyes widened. “Look out!”

Rylie spun to see that two men had jumped down the tunnel. They wore black slacks, black shirts, and black vests, which had “UKA” stamped across the chest in white letters. More members of the Union followed close behind, marching into the tunnel two at a time. Their guns were all aimed at Rylie and Gwyn, cradling twin babies in her arms.

Rylie shoved her aunt toward the door, putting herself between the babies and the guns. “Run, Gwyn!”

“But—”

“Run!”

“Freeze!” shouted one of the black-clad men, but Gwyn had already jumped through the door with the twins, and her passage made the doorway flash with gray light. When it faded, Gwyn was gone. The mirrored cave on the other side was empty.

Rylie was about to follow—but then she saw Cain.

He pushed through the ranks of the Union to stand in the center of the room, just in front of the consoles.

Cain’s hand was coated in blood. Blood that smelled like Abel.

If Cain and the Union had gotten past Abel, then that meant he couldn’t still be standing. He never would have let them get in. Not unless it was over his dead body. “No,” she whispered.

Cain lifted his hand. It looked like his skin was gloved in the glossy sheen of Abel’s blood. “Where’s the werewolf pup?”

When Rylie didn’t immediately respond, one of the Union men said, “The old woman took it through the door. There were two of them. Two infants.”

A thousand emotions flitted across Cain’s face—wonder, delight, pleasure. “Perfect,” he breathed. He jerked his head toward the doorway. “Go get them back.”

Rylie spread her arms wide in front of the door. “Don’t you even think about it,” she said in a low, deep growl. Her throat was thick with tears. “What did you do to Abel?”

“He’s dead,” Cain said.

It felt like she had fallen from the top of a building and impacted the street a hundred stories below. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.

The wolf was happy to take over.

Its hulking presence grew to fill her heart and mind. Without the smell of her babies to distract her, Rylie could instead smell pine trees, icy rivers, and the stones deep within the earth of Gray Mountain. She smelled musky fur and moonlight. “You’re lying,” Rylie said. She stumbled over the words. Her teeth were loosening in her mouth.

The Union still hadn’t moved for the door.

“I told you to go get the werewolf pups back,” Cain snapped, shoving one of his men forward.

The man moved to pass Rylie.

She lashed out with a hand that had turned to claws and ripped his throat out.

Rylie hadn’t even considered killing him—she was too busy fearing for Abel, and wanting to go find him to prove that Cain was wrong. But the wolf was satisfied to watch the Union soldier drop to her feet and gurgle out his last breaths.

She sucked in a gasp when she realized what she had done.

The cavern was completely silent aside from the rattle in the dying soldier’s chest. And then he exhaled a final time and went limp.

It had only been three years since Rylie killed Jericho, the werewolf who originally bit and turned her, in order to save Seth. At the time, she had thought that losing Seth would be the worst thing that she could ever dream of experiencing, but it had been worth it. She hadn’t wanted to have to kill again. Not after that.

But as Rylie stood in front of the doorway and faced down Cain with seven armed men at his sides, she didn’t feel a single doubt. She knew what she had to do.

Cain had killed Abel. He would take her children.

Rylie was going to kill them all.

Cain broke the silence with two short words: “Shoot her.”

She shifted into her wolf form, and it had never been so easy to surrender before. Her wolf body was larger than her human form. In the long months that she had spent as a human, unable to change, she thought that her wolf might have somehow become bigger, too. Even on all four legs, she was eye-level with the hunters.

Rylie peeled back her lips and growled. She didn’t need words to tell them that anyone who tried to pass her would die.

“Fire,” Cain said.

Rylie jumped toward them.

A half dozen guns began to fire at once.

She was faster than the wind, faster than lightning, and most of the bullets missed. She heard them strike the walls and ceiling. But a couple of them struck her, sinking into her pelt.

Silver bullets. They made her muscles burn and twitch.

Her anger was stronger than the pain.

Rylie ripped into the first man, gutting him instantly with her claws, and then threw him into the man by her side. She ripped the gun out of another man’s hands when he brought it around to fire at her and took one of his arms off in the process.

A shot went wild and struck the generator. There was a buzz, a pop, a crackle.

The walls began to shake.

“No!” Cain shouted.

The roof cracked, and a huge chunk of earth dislodged from ceiling, smashing into the desk with the workstations. The table cracked. Soil sprayed everywhere.

Rylie rolled underneath another falling rock and bit the legs of a Union soldier. The generator stopped whirring, but the rumbling continued, growing in intensity as the entire room trembled.

She was about to rip into another hunter when a piece of the ceiling fell on him.

The roof by the door began to crumble.

Panic filled her as she realized that the entrance to the Haven was starting to collapse—with Gwyn and her babies on the other side.

Two of the remaining Union hunters fled up the tunnel, leaving just one more to die under her jaws. Rylie threw him aside and then searched for Cain.

He darted around a fallen boulder and rushed toward the door.

She launched at him, snapped her jaws shut on his ankle, and flung him against the opposite wall. Rylie didn’t give him a chance to recover. She ripped into him, teeth and claws.

He changed underneath her. His body grew, popped, changed. Fur and fangs grew.

As soon as his mouth finished shifting, he bit her neck, and Rylie drew back with a yelp.

When Cain was a human, and she was a wolf, she easily had the upper hand. But once he had turned into his own wolf form, far more massive and frightening than hers, she was overpowered, outgunned, and staring down death.

He dived, they tore into each other, and Rylie surrendered to instinct.

She kept her head tucked to her chest so that he couldn’t tear open her throat, but it made it difficult to see. Rylie didn’t notice when he positioned his legs to rabbit kick her gut open.

His paws ripped through her stomach.

The flush of healing fever fixed it almost instantly—she was Alpha, and he would have to do much worse to hurt her. But it left her shuddering. Weak.

Cain rammed her into the wall and smashed her skull against rock.

They wrestled, and there was so much blood, so much pain, that Rylie couldn’t tell what parts belonged to her, and which belonged to him. It was like fighting Jericho at the top of Gray Mountain all over again. But now she had years of experience and fury on her side. She didn’t need to drop him off a cliff to kill him.

Rylie closed her jaws on Cain’s neck and bit down. Her fangs ground against bone.

She loosened her grip long enough to snap down again, tearing through even more of the meat, and she worried her head back and forth in hard shakes. There was a pop as his spine disconnected from the back of his skull. Cain lost control of his legs. They jittered under him wildly, losing grip on the earth, and her weight shoved both of them to the ground.

Rylie clamped her jaw closed on his ear and ripped his head off.

The entire roof had been threatening to collapse, and now it did. The wall crumbled on top of Cain, smashing his body into the floor. She leaped back just in time to see a boulder smash on his severed skull and pulverize the remains.

There was no way he could heal from that.

The cave continued to shake. As she shifted back in the tunnel, she watched the ceiling finish crushing the Union’s equipment, and all of the bodies inside. Her human muscles trembled from the silver bullets. Once she had fingers again, she dug the slugs out of the wounds and waited for the quaking to stop.

When everything fell silent, the cave was dark. Everything except a six foot square around the tunnel had collapsed.

She stood on shaking legs and pushed through the rocks, but there was no way to get to the door.

Haven was sealed away.

Rylie had bigger worries for the moment. She dragged herself toward the surface, toward Abel—and away from the collapsed cave that separated her from her family.

TWENTY-TWO

Unified

Rylie staggered out of the cave, limping and weak and single-minded. The iron tang of blood filled her nostrils, and her gaze fell on Abel beneath the crisscrossed branches of trees. For a moment, she couldn’t make sense of what had happened to him—there was no way that such a mess of raw meat and organ could be Abel, her Abel, but it was. She could have picked his scent out anywhere.

He lay on his back with his arms spread to either side, blood pooled under his body, and a knife in his heart. Rain dripped onto his face.

It took a lot of damage to take down a werewolf—especially an Alpha. But Cain had done his best.

Screams welled up in Rylie’s chest as she dragged herself to his side.

Her hands hovered over his gutted stomach. She could hear his heart trying to beat around the blade of the knife, but it was painfully slow. Even an Alpha’s body couldn’t do that much about silver driven through his chest.

Rylie reached for the hilt of the knife, but Abel’s hand lifted weakly and stopped her.

She gasped. “Abel!”

His eyes opened to slits. His skin was slick with moisture. “Rylie,” he said, and a tiny, weak smile flitted across his lips. “Alive.”

“That’s right. I’m alive,” she said, pressing his hand to her cheek.

“Cain?”

“Dead,” Rylie said. “I ripped his head off.”

Another half-smile. “That’s my girl.”

His face slackened as his heart skipped a beat. He was right on the edge. Just moments from death.

He tried to stop her as she grabbed the knife, but there was no chance he could heal with that in his heart. She ripped it free, hissed at the burn of silver, and flung it into the trees. Abel couldn’t fight back. He barely managed to groan.

She waited for him to start shivering with the healing fever, but it didn’t come. The silver had been in too long, and the damage was too great.

“You have to change,” Rylie said, smoothing a hand over his eyebrow. Her fingers were covered in his blood now, too, but neither of them cared. Hot tears rolled down her chin and dripped onto his cheek. “You’re going to die.”

His eyes rolled into the back of his head.

She gave a shuddering sob as she tried to push her hands against the wounds on his stomach. Cain seemed to have had fun cutting him open. It was a mess. “Change, Abel,” Rylie said, reaching into him with all of her energy so that she could pull his wolf out. But he wasn’t the only one weak and injured. She couldn’t change him the way that he had changed her.

Another shake of his head. “Can’t. Never have.”

“You forced me to change today. Do it for yourself.”

He focused bleary eyes on her. “Seth will take care of you,” Abel said, so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him.

His ragged heart gave a weak beat…and didn’t beat again.

“No,” Rylie said. Her hands moved over him, searching for the way to fix him that wasn’t there. She couldn’t change him. Couldn’t heal him. Couldn’t save him from death. “No. Abel, please—”

He whispered something. She couldn’t make it out. Rylie lowered her ear to his lips. “Love you,” Abel said with a final exhale.

And then he was still.

Rylie covered her mouth with her bloody hands, shaking her head over and over.

It was so silent in the forest. Even the rain had started to die off. It was like the whole world was mourning him. Rylie’s heart was the only heart that beat, and her lungs were the only lungs that drew breath.

But he couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. They were going to the Haven together, and they were going to be a family. “But you’re the father,” she said, voice ragged. “Abel, the babies are yours.” She dropped onto his chest, covering the wound in his unmoving chest with her cheek. Her fingers dug into his shirt. “And I’m yours, too.”

Thump.

Rylie sat up, staring at his chest. His heart had beat.

“Abel?” she asked tentatively.

His skin shivered.

The change started out slowly. Rylie watched as his knees reversed and his fingernails were replaced by claws. His head fell limply to the side as his face extended into a muzzle. But the change began to speed as his heart beat again. The pace increased to a steady drumming in his chest. Fresh blood poured out of his wounds, flushing dirt and silver from the injuries.

Fur swept down his skin, and he curled onto his side as he finished changing into the massive, hulking black wolf. Blood matted his fur. His eyes were still closed. His tail was curled over his nose.

“Abel?” she whispered.

His eyes opened and fell on her.

His head slid forward, she stretched out her hand, and his wet nose nudged her fingers.

With a cry, Rylie collapsed on his neck, hugging him close as he continued to shudder with the healing fever. One hand slid down his chest, searching for the stab wound—closed—and then she checked his stomach. He was whole. Complete.

Alive.

Rylie bowed her head to his, pressing their foreheads together. His breath was hot on her neck. “They’re yours,” she said again, hanging tight to the ruff of fur at his neck. “You were right the whole time.”

He couldn’t respond, as a wolf, but she could feel the pleasure radiating from him.

The rain began to fall harder, washing away the blood and mud to leave Rylie cold. But Abel’s fur was warm, and they sat together for a long time.

Eventually, Abel turned human again. He didn’t look like the same man that had been gutted just a few minutes earlier. Something had changed, but it took Rylie a second to realize what, exactly.

The scars were almost gone.

They had been healing for months, bit by bit, with every phase of the moon. But this final change had cleared the skin on his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his eye. Rylie had barely paid any attention to the scars before—they were just a normal part of him, some feature that was interesting and different. She wasn’t sure if she liked having them vanish.

Without thinking about it, she reached up to touch the new, smooth skin. Abel turned his cheek into her palm. “Did you mean it when you said that you were mine?” he asked, capturing her fingers in his.

After a moment of hesitation, Rylie nodded.

He kissed her then, very gently. They were both too tired for him to kiss her the way she wanted. But he was grinning when they parted.

“Let’s get to the Haven,” Abel said, getting to his feet with Rylie’s help. He looked a lot stronger, but he was still gray-skinned and shaking. Even without wounds, the strike of a silver knife was a tough thing to survive.

Rylie bit her bottom lip. “There’s only one problem with that.”

She led him down the tunnel into the half-collapsed cave. He looked just as stricken as Rylie felt as he took in the sight of the destruction.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Cain brought the Union with him,” Rylie said. “They were shooting at me, and they hit the generator. I don’t know what happened after that. It made the whole cave shake, and then the roof came down, and…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence. She clapped a hand to her mouth to muffle her cry as her eyes welled with tears.

Abel pulled her against his chest. “The twins?”

Rylie had to take a breath before she could speak again. “They’re on the other side with Scott and Gwyn. They have all the supplies, too, so everyone will be okay until they can find a town. We packed a lot of formula, so it’s not like they’ll go hungry, at least, and I know Gwyn will take good care of them, even if we can’t be with them, and…”

She was babbling. Rylie forced herself to stop speaking, but once she wasn’t talking, she was crying again. It felt like she was the one whose heart had been cut in half by a serrated silver blade.

Even though she had only been a mother for a few hours, she still felt like she was missing something huge. Rylie wanted to hold her babies again, but there was too much rubble, a closed door, and an entire dimensional rift between them. And knowing that Gwyn was gone, too, made it only hurt worse.

“We can still reach them,” Abel said. “We still have time.”

She couldn’t speak, so she just nodded.

Rylie wrapped her arms around Abel’s neck and kissed him again. For the first time, she felt no doubt, and no guilt. She only felt a powerful sense of rightness. She thought that she had been waiting for him ever since they first danced together at her high school prom, and she felt like she was finally complete.

Except that she was missing one critical thing. Two of them, actually.

Abel must have felt the same absence, because he released her too quickly, though he clenched her hand tight in his.

There was a noise in the tunnel. Rylie tensed—but it was Seth who slid down to the cave, looking out of breath and muddy.

She almost dropped Abel’s hand when she saw him, but instead, she tightened her fingers. Even with their children on the wrong side of the door, Rylie had still made her decision, and it was only fair for Seth to know.

It only took him a moment to see everything in the cave and realize what had happened. Rylie saw his eyes scan the rubble, and then drop to the place that she was joined with Abel, and understanding crashed over his face. She wasn’t sure how she expected him to react, but he didn’t look surprised.

“Cain?” Seth asked.

Rylie bit her bottom lip. “He’s dead, but—”

“Good.”

“Gwyn and the babies passed through,” Abel said.

“So they’re safe. That’s good, too.”

“Seth, I’m sorry,” Rylie said, but before she could go on, Seth cut her off.

“I know,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Rylie couldn’t stand Seth looking so sad. She reached out to him, but he only stared at her without moving. “Come on,” Abel said, and he gripped his brother’s wrist tightly in a handshake. After a moment, Seth returned it.

The three of them stood at the mouth of the cave and stared at the rubble that marked the end of an era.

Cain’s body was under the rocks, the last part of Eleanor’s nightmarish legacy laid to rest. Gwyn and the twins were in the Haven. And Abel and Rylie were together, finally together, with Seth at their side.

After a moment of grave silence, Seth stepped away. “Time is wasting. Let’s dig out this door.”

EPILOGUE

Hello

The pack arrived a few minutes after Seth did, and everyone got to work clearing the cave.

The damage was worse than they anticipated, and even with the full force of a werewolf pack behind them, it took hours to make a dent in the rubble. Every time they removed a large portion of earth, more rocks would fall in its place. It was like trying to dig their way out of the bottom of an hourglass.

Rylie tried not to count the hours and imagine all of the things she was missing in the Haven.

Had the twins already learned how to walk? Had they started to talk? What had Gwyn named Rylie’s son?

Even knowing that her aunt was experiencing those moments with the twins didn’t make it hurt less. Rylie was missing her babies’ infancies as she struggled to get back to them, and there was nothing else she could do but continue to dig.

The pack sat together under the stars on that first night, taking a few minutes to rest around a campfire.

“Are you okay?” Rylie asked Levi. He looked worst out of all of them.

His brow creased. “Tate’s still with the Union.” Levi didn’t have to say any more than that for Rylie to understand the pain he must have been feeling. He was an asshole, but she still ached for him—and Rylie hadn’t thought she had any more room for sorrow in her heart.

She reached out and took his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said, meeting Levi’s gaze.

He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, too. For everything.”

The entire pack joined hands, one by one, until everyone around the campfire was linked. Rylie was Alpha, and the wolves shared in her pain. Everyone was crying, from Bekah to Crystal and even Abel. Sharing her pain didn’t make it easier, but it did fill her with a sense of warmth: the knowledge that losing her children didn’t mean she had lost all of her family.

Rylie slept on Abel’s chest that night and thought about what twelve hours meant in the Haven. The babies would already be celebrating their second birthday. They would be learning to talk, and their first words wouldn’t be “mama” or “dada.”

“I’m coming for you,” she whispered to the stars. “I promise.”

Abel’s hand tightened on hers.

It took over a week to reach the door.

“I found it!” Abel called triumphantly, and Seth and Rylie ran down the tunnel again, leaving the pack behind on the surface. Abel had burrowed straight through to the back wall and exposed dull brown petroglyphs.

But they couldn’t expose the door, because there was no door to expose. Most of the petroglyphs had been cracked. There was no open gateway to the other side; only bare rock.

The three of them stared at the broken entrance to the Haven. “Where is it?” Rylie asked, running her hands over the empty wall. “Why isn’t it open? There should be an arch here, shouldn’t there?”

Seth and Abel exchanged looks.

“Let’s go up for air,” Abel said. His voice was heavy, and his grip on Rylie’s hand was tight.

“Wait,” she said, trying to shake him free. “We found the door. We should be able to get through now.”

“Rylie…”

“No! We have to cross over!”

“Rylie,” Abel snapped, sharper this time. He pulled her around to face him, hands clenched tight on her arms. “The door is closed. We have no way to open it. There’s nothing we can—” He cut himself off with a choked sound, and he had to swallow hard before speaking again. “We can’t do anything.”

The grief hit her all at once. She sagged against him, and he held her as she cried.

“I love you, Rylie,” he murmured, softly enough that nobody else would be able to hear him. Abel stroked the hair back from her tearful face. “The twins are going to be happy with Gwyn. And they’re safe from the Union, the OPA, and everything horrible in this world. They’re never gonna know the hell you and I have known. So whatever this is? It’s not a tragedy. We’re the only ones hurting.”

She buried her face in his chest. “But it hurts so much.”

“Yeah,” he said.

They kissed again, and their joined lips tasted like the salt of tears.

“I love you, too,” Rylie said. “I don’t think I’ve told you that yet.”

Abel didn’t respond, but his eyes warmed. He lifted an eyebrow. “You can tell me more about that later.” He dropped one more kiss on her lips. “I’m going to get the Chevelle ready.”

They climbed the ramp out of the cave, and Abel drifted off to talk to Seth, who was sitting on the hood of the car. They spoke in low voices. Rylie probably could have listened in if she wanted to, but she didn’t.

She stared up at the sunlight filtering through the trees and wrapped her arms around her body to hold her broken heart together.

Abel was right. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t a tragedy. There was nobody better in the entire world to raise her kids than her aunt. And Gwyn would be fine as long as Scott was alive—he probably wouldn’t be able to resurrect any new zombies in the Haven, but his necromantic magic should be strong enough to maintain Gwyn in her condition.

They were all together. One safe and happy family.

Rylie closed her eyes, feeling the sun warming her face. She imagined her daughter running in a wild, open world as a wolf, the wind in her fur and no hunters to attack her. She thought of paws beating against the ground. The taste of spring on the air, and the invitation of endless, twilit sky.

Summer was free.

Definitely not a tragedy. Not a tragedy at all.

Then Rylie heard something scraping in the tunnel leading out of the cave—something that sounded like human motions. But the entire pack was in the forest.

She opened her eyes, wiped the tears off her cheek, and turned to see two people clamber onto the surface.

A young man and woman emerged, both of whom looked to be about Rylie’s age. The girl had long black curls. The boy’s head was shaved bare. Their skin was dark brown…and they both had silver eyes.

The young man helped the girl to her feet, and Rylie couldn’t breathe as they stopped just a few feet away from her.

Those eyes. The girl’s chin—the boy’s nose—those features were all so familiar.

Seth and Abel noticed that people had joined them, and their conversation cut off. Rylie couldn’t speak or breathe, but she instantly knew who they were. She would have recognized her babies anywhere.

Summer pushed her hair out of her face and smiled a crooked smile that looked just like Seth and Abel’s.

“Hi, Mom,” she said.

Rylie’s mind whirled with the mental calculations. It had been over a week since they were separated. How many minutes was that? How many hours? How many years?

It didn’t matter, in the end. She opened her arms wide and her kids stepped forward to embrace her. She didn’t care that they were so tall and lanky. It felt right to hold them again. They smelled like family, like pack, and she never wanted to let them go.

Rylie’s children had come home.

THIS ISN’T THE END OF THE STORY!

That’s the end of The Cain Chronicles, but it’s not the end for the gang! My next book is going to be about how the twins got back to Rylie, and you can look forward to seeing it in March 2013.

Seth deserves a happy ending, too! Can you help me decide what lucky lady will heal his heart in a future book? Tell me what you think on my Facebook: smarturl.it/sotms

And make sure to sign up for my mailing list so you know the instant the next book is out: smarturl.it/armyofevil

Author's Note

Thanks for joining me with The Cain Chronicles. You guys have all been so wonderful helping me with this story. The support for Abel was staggering! It’s been so much fun, and I can’t wait to start on the next series about Rylie and friends.

I’m a full-time writer these days, so I really appreciate all your help spreading the word about my books. If you want to get involved, go ahead and…

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Happy reading!

Sara (SM Reine)

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