By the time we hit the interstate, dawn is rising over the mountains in the distance and casting the desert in shades of amber and purple. I’m not wearing a watch, though it’s not like that’s ever stopped me. I can tell it’s that purple time of day where late night is bleeding into early morning, and the birdsong answering somewhere in the distance only cements my certainty.Once we reach empty road, we open the throttle and fly. We make it three miles before I start to breathe easier—five miles before I look in my rearview mirror and assure myself no one followed us. Maybe they were all knocked out or they were just too terrified to chase us when they woke up, I don’t know. But they let us go.Which is what a person should do when they’re facing a threat they don’t understand. Like Kian said, something that could eat them. Historically, humans didn’t make the best decisions.I cling to the handlebars with adrenaline still pumping through my veins. As far as I know, we don’t have a pl
I hover on the edge of unconsciousness. There’s nothing but darkness around me, and the distinct feeling that I’ve detached from my body completely. Tires screech nearby, though I think the sound should be louder. It’s like it’s coming from the end of a long tunnel that I can’t access. Then, the muffled sound of pounding footsteps and raised voices.“She’s got a pulse,” someone says faintly. It almost sounds like Kian, but there’s no way he’d ever have that much concern in his voice over me.“Broken rib,” Frost says. “Her arm’s injured as well. Possibly a concussion.”Malix snarls. “Yes, thank you, captain obvious. I’m a little more concerned about the total body road rash.”Now I know I’m not imagining the worry in his tone.I claw my way back to consciousness, even though doing so tugs away the muted, muffled distortion of my senses. All the agony rolls right back over me, and sound returns much louder than it should be.I blink up at the circle of three faces hovering above me.“M
Kian’s declaration snaps me out of my daze—both the lingering arousal and the fuzziness in my head from the crash. The poison pain has faded again, but that attack did feel stronger and more intense than the first. It didn’t last as long, but it felt like I was dying.That alone makes me fear that Kian may be right.“Potion isn’t going to do us any good if it shattered during the crash,” I point out, a sick feeling settling in my stomach.Kian’s brow arches. “Come again?”“The potion. It was in my trunk. And that was…” I wave a hand, indicating the road and the crash. “That was a big boom.”“Fuck,” he growls, then stalks away from us back toward my bike.While Frost was coaching me through shifting, Kian must have walked down the road and retrieved my Ducati. It sits on the embankment behind their bikes, upright and with a working kickstand, but absolutely savaged by the wreck.Kian rips open the internal trunk with a bit more force than necessary, then digs around in my things before
We park at the back of the house next to one of those ridiculous wooden patios that has open beams instead of a damn roof. The kind of dumb rich person purchase that always makes me wonder if they’ve got brains at all. When I’m on a patio, I’d like to have some actual shade and some actual protection from the elements. How the hell are you supposed to drink a beer in the rain if it’s pouring right through the beams?Frost cuts the engine, then climbs off first and offers me a helping hand.I ignore it. No use letting the whole touchy-feely thing drag out.Kian walks up to the back door. It’s a verandah door—no deadbolt, just one of those curly handles that can be ripped right off by a shifter. Which is what he does, breaking the handle away from the doorframe, then shoving it open.“Guy left for work,” he says gruffly. “Suit and tie, probably heading for a nine-to-five somewhere. We’ll eat, get some rest, then keep moving before he gets home.”I limp into the living room, glancing aro
I wake up several hours later, groggy and disoriented from a daytime nap in a strange place.Sometime while I slept, the cat disappeared, and I must have looked cold because someone tossed a soft white blanket over me. I stretch beneath the cloud-like fabric, testing out all the aches and pains I fell asleep with. I’m sore—and probably will be for a few days—but I’m able to function.Not a bad thing, considering that if I were human, I’d probably be bound for the hospital. Possibly in a body bag.I swing my legs off the couch and rub the sleep from my eyes. By the look of the sunlight outside the bank of windows behind the couch, it’s early afternoon. There’s no immediate sign that my companions are around, and I have a brief moment of fear that they’ve left me. That they’ve set me up to lie here and sleep until the homeowner returns and catches me.But when I focus on listening to the quiet house, I hear low voices filtering into the room from down the hall. Shoving aside the blanket
Kian lifts his head and levels an irritated glare at me. “You got a better idea?”“You know I don’t,” I shoot back.He bares his teeth at me. “That’s what I thought.”And just like that, the little bit of warmth I had for him after he tended my wounds fades.Fucker.Just before three, we help ourselves to some supplies from the house, then head out to get started on the questioning.It’s not my favorite plan, but like Kian so eloquently pointed out, it’s our only plan.There isn’t much to the downtown area. It’s a larger place than the nowhere-ville that Erik lived in, but it’s not as big as Oscura. We park our bikes in a small grocery store parking lot then take off on foot, but it becomes clear pretty fast that there isn’t a lot of foot traffic on the sidewalks.“If all else fails,” Kian says, “we could go into some of the shops.”Frost holds up a hand, shaking his head “Cameras. We’d get caught on record.”Kian rolls his eyes. “You think any place in this podunk town has security c
It takes three random civilians before we find someone who can tell us where to find Crazy Harry.The answer leads us to a small park on the outskirts of town. An old rusted swing set, a scorching metal slide, and a precarious-looking wooden seesaw sit just beyond the park sign. A small group of young evergreens huddle around a man-made pond, where a lone figure stands tossing bread on the ground. Two ducks and three squirrels dart around the sparse grass at his feet, snatching up pieces as soon as they hit the dirt.We approach the old guy together. The three shifters flank me as if they’re afraid to let me get too close to Crazy Harry without them there to buffer. It’s another strangely possessive gesture that makes me feel like I don’t know what twilight zone I’m living in.We stop a few feet to the old guy’s left, on the banks of the pond. He’s a grizzled old man with a giant nose covered in broken blood vessels and a beard that forms a point over his skinny, sunken chest. He’s we
He cackles and dances away, holding up both hands in supplication. The fear I saw earlier returns to his eyes, and I start to think he really must be a little unbalanced if he thinks it’s smart to play with fire like this. He knows we’re shifters, and even if he doesn’t know that the men are something even more powerful and dangerous than that, he should think twice about pissing off three wolves.“It was a joke!” he insists quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”Kian snarls and snatches at Harry’s tank top, pulling him up to his tiptoes. “You want to discuss payment? How about we let you live? Is that good enough for you?”“Kian,” I bite out, a warning in my voice. “Put the crazy man down.”He bares his teeth at me. “Not until he tells us what we need to know.”Sighing, I dig into my back pocket for my wallet and open it to take inventory of the contents. “All right, old man. I’ve got fifty bucks. Will that work?”Crazy Harry grins at me over Kian’s arm, his weight dangling from his shirt.
Fuck. Could Amora even survive what exists in the other realm? Unease prickles up my spine at how close we just came to losing her.We need to take those shadows out, I tell my brothers. As fast as we can.We’re yanked back into combat as several of Quinton’s wolves burst into our little circle, breaking up the party.I pounce on the nearest Blood Moon wolf, taking him down to the ground, while Malix and Frost tag team a shadow shifter. Picking up the wolf with my teeth, I fling him at two more advancing wolves, taking them down like pins in a bowling lane.When I glance back up, Malix and Frost are having trouble with their shadow shifter. The beast is big, and he must’ve been pumped full of more shadow magic than the rest, because he fights almost like a Berserker, wild and brutal. I leap over one of the fallen wolves and head toward them to help, only to stop cold as Amora screams my name.Kian!Whirling around, I find her darting over the uneven terrain in a mad zigzag pattern whi
KianJust like thenight when Quinton nearly executed our mate with a bullet to the head, I don’t hesitate.I’m in the air a split second after my old alpha’s paws have left the dirt. I intercept his leap and slam into him in mid-air, angling so that I hit his head with my chest. He’s so massive that it feels like a rock wall slamming into me, and I huff out a pained breath. If I were any smaller or weaker, I have no doubt his skull would have broken a few bones in my torso.Quinton flies away from me while I fall to the ground, winded. I barely manage to land on all fours as he skids away from me, kicking up dirt and stones and clumps of grass. All around me, chaos breaks loose as the Silver Crest wolves and Blood Moon pack launch into an all-out war.In the very short half second I have before Quinton stands, I glance around and consider our odds. We’re on Felicity’s turf now, and there are more of us physically than there are of them. Both will give us an advantage. Unfortunately, t
AmoraFuck. Not Quinton. Please, don’t let it be Quinton. We’re not fucking ready.I’m not sure who moves first, but within seconds of the piercing howl outside, the four of us are racing across the dark, silent cabin toward the front door.Kian reaches the door first and flings it open, launching himself out into the night with Malix and Frost right behind him. As I come even with the door and prepare to shift, I pause for a fraction of a second, mesmerized by the sight of them leaping from the small front stoop.They trail black smoke as they shift, morphing like shadows. It’s beautiful in a deadly sort of way, as if they’re more than limbs and torsos and heads, but something more metaphysical. More fluid. A macabre dance of shadows.Then they land on the dusty front lawn in full shadow wolf form and take off. I hurry to follow behind, letting my own shift take over my body in the split second after I leap off the porch stoop.Another howl lights up the night, and I put on a burst o
AmoraI surfacefrom a dreamless sleep to the deep, dark of night, cocooned by the warmth of the three men sleeping around me.I’m on my back, completely pinned in by them—something that, once upon a time, would have sent alarm bells clanging through my head. Instead, it’s peaceful and comforting, if a little too warm.The ceiling is barely visible in the blackness, small cracks in the paint standing out like spider webs made of ink. I take a couple of deep breaths, staring up at them as I try to figure out where I stand. How I feel.The past few weeks still weigh on my shoulders, although I imagine that’s not something that’s just going to go away. Things still aren’t good here. We lost against Quinton, and I’m not naïve enough to think he won’t retaliate. Felicity is dead, and that’s a pretty permanent problem that’s going to throw her whole pack into a state of flux for a while.On the other hand, for the first time in a while, I’m okay. Even if the external world is chaos, my inter
In this moment, it’s just me and my men.Finally, Malix lifts his head and drops a kiss to the tip of my nose. “God, I love fucking you,” he murmurs.“Good.” I chuckle. “Because I’ve got lots of plans for more of this.”He waggles his eyebrows. “Dirty girl. You really are my fated mate.”I breathe out another laugh at the idea that my dirty mind is the true proof that we’re a fated match, shaking my head and grinning at him as he draws back, his cock sliding out of me.Frost, Malix, and I all look toward Kian next.The final piece of the puzzle. My third mate.He’s kneeling on the bed beside me, and when I reach for him, he comes willingly. He settles between my legs, his cock hard and thick. But he doesn’t slide into me right away. Instead, he trails one hand down my stomach, and all four of us watch the path of his fingers as they move lower and lower. When he reaches my pussy, he dips two fingers inside. I moan at the feeling, and heat flashes in his eyes.“You look so stunning lik
His gold-rimmed eyes gleam darkly, as if he knows exactly what I’m doing—trying to get a rise out of him. But the heated possessiveness never wavers in his expression as he gives me an answer.“Because I want to look at you. I want my brothers to see what’s theirs. What’s ours.”Oh.Oh fuck.I didn’t expect his answer to turn me on so much, but after everything that just happened between us in the bathroom, every word he just spoke is loaded with meaning.So I don’t push back against his order, staying still just like he told me to and allowing the three men to stare down at me. Frost reaches down to grip his cock, and I wonder if he’s squeezing himself to get a little relief or to try to get his arousal under control. Maybe a bit of both.That thought makes me whimper softly, and although I make no move to reach for the feral shifters, I can’t resist reaching down to slide one hand between my legs.“Shit, kitty,” Malix chokes out as I use my fingertips to spread my pussy lips, giving
“Fuck prophecies,” I repeat as I swipe at the tears threatening to crest over my eyelashes. “I make my own fate. We’ll make our own fate. Together. And it won’t end in murder. Got it?” I jam my finger into Kian’s chest and cut a glare toward Frost. “We aren’t going to go down like that. Not like them. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t even stand the thought of… of hurting you or killing you. Jesus. I can’t believe I ever tried—”Suddenly, Frost’s arm snakes out and hooks around my waist. He yanks me to him, my arms crushed between us as my fingers still cling to my towel, and his lips cover mine, cutting off my rant.There’s a salty, spicy taste to his skin, and when his lips part in that tentative way of his, I’m surrounded by the familiar scent of his body. Warmth unfurls in my belly, heating my skin, and I tilt my face up to his, opening to his kiss.It’s soft at first, but then he catches my face in his hands and deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding against mine with deliberate possess
AmoraHeat risesin my eyes as I flip the water on in the shower and climb inside. I don’t even wait for the water to warm, and the shock of cold zings through me, giving me a rush of adrenaline to chase away the sheer exhaustion that’s settled over my bones. The cold quickly fades, replaced by lukewarm water. Another twist of the pipes gives me the scalding temperature I need to ease the emotional turmoil I feel.Weeks of grime slosh off my body beneath the shower head while my tears disappear into the water on my face. I dump shampoo on my hair and scrub vigorously with my fingernails, scratching harder than necessary. If I focus on the little pinpricks of pain, maybe I can get the sight of Quinton standing over Felicity’s body out of my head.If only for a moment.His mate.His mate.How could he do that?I turn, ducking my head under the water to rinse out the suds. I grab the bar of soap off the ledge beside me and lather my hands, then use my nails again to scrub at my face.How
So we travel quickly, digging deep into our energy reserves to race headlong across state lines. Micro-naps and brief pauses to eat or drink are the only breaks we allow, and surprisingly, nobody falls behind. I assume the weaker shifters are still running on pure adrenaline.Most of the adrenaline has faded by the time we cross the state line into Wyoming, but it doesn’t matter. We keep pushing anyway.When we finally reach the Silver Crest pack’s boundaries two days later, a heavy feeling falls over the group. Felicity’s shifters slow, as if dreading to bring the news of her death to those left back home.Many of the wolves limp or nurse wounds that have yet to fully heal, and it doesn’t take more than a glance to understand every one of them is completely demoralized by what happened. It’s late in the day, and although the last rays of the sun paint the buildings with a warm, glowing light, despair hangs around us like a weight in the air.When pack members begin to emerge from the