A man was silhouetted on the back porch. As my eyes focused, I realized that I knew him. Not the man, but the boy he used to be. He’d come to our house every day to play with me. My parents had told me he’d always protect me. It was the boy who had taken my hand and fled with me into the woods to escape being killed by the bad men who had attacked our home.
That boy was now a man. My voice cracked as I said his name. “Stone.”
But that boy had a different name. He had been Castro. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten him.
I covered my face with my hands as I suddenly saw the man at the end of my dream. His words rang in my ears. He would make sure I was okay.
The face became clearer, and I slowly turned to Ty.
My heart felt as though it was shattering into a million pieces. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be fate’s design.
Something wasn’t right.
I remembered the face of the man with the bloodied hands that had reached for me and taken me far from my home.
His face was now crystal clear.
That man had been Dominic Keller.
29
TY
Watching Liza shift and follow the pull of the moon had been fascinating. Her wolf took over and fell into line with all the other shifters who lived for the full moon.
She had taken off so quickly, I’d struggled to keep up with her, and I was one of the fastest shifters in the pack. I knew every inch of these woods. She’d twisted and turned on a dime, so much so that my senses had become confused. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and only had my sight locked on Liza.
With this being her first full moon run without the desensitization of her hormone pills, I was worried she might run off into a dangerous area where shifters weren’t protected.
Soon, though, her wolf halted, and then I smelled the lavender. Liza shifted, and I followed suit, turning in circles, trying to figure out where we were.
Then it came to me.
It was the place Liza had described from her dream. We were in the old Heather Falls territory where the Wylde pack had met its end.
Fuck.
The moment I stepped into the clearing, my senses heightened, and every little thing seemed to be alive with energy. It was as if the forest had been waiting for her to arrive. The trees waved harder in the billowing breeze, and the crickets chirped louder. A frog croaked somewhere nearby, and the night birds sang.
Moonbeams bounced off her pale skin as she walked. I begged her to come back, to run home with me, back into our safe territory.
She ignored me and moved forward through the tall grass and lavender. The fucking lavender.
By the time we reached the newly constructed house, I was positive that Stone would be close by. Sure enough, there he stood, smirking on the back porch of a home I presumed he’d built for himself ... and for Liza to replace the one her family had lived in before.
I turned my attention back to Liza and watched as she fell to her knees, heavy sobs escaping her throat.
She eventually turned to face me, her eyes wild with a mixture of confusion and hurt. My heart inched up into my throat, and I swallowed hard. I was going to lose her. My soul ached.
“Did you know?” Liza’s voice was thick, hoarse, and broken from the uncontrollable sobs that shook her body.
I stood frozen like a deer in headlights. “Know what? What are you talking about?”
I played dumb, unable to read her mind or understand exactly what she’d remembered. It was another asshole move, but I held tightly to the last shred of possibility. There was an ever-so-slight chance that Liza wasn’t referring to my father or his slaughter of her family.
Liza’s hands balled into fists as she lunged for me and pounded her fists on my chest. “Did you know?” she screamed at me, tears falling down her face.
She didn’t give any more details. She didn’t have to. The anger in her voice said as much as the words she’d spoken, and it all meant that she already knew the answer to her question.
