***
They were escorted like dignitaries.
Or prisoners.
It was hard to tell.
Wolves flanked them on all sides, tense, hackles raised. Dani loathed every second of it, prickling at the eyes, trackingher hands for sparks, her heart breaking at the way Aurelia kept glancing back as if she could still run.
And she hated, more than anything, that Arthur followed at a distance, silent, stalking their steps with the focus of a predator who had finally found what he’d been hunting all his life.
Every time she stumbled, his body shifted toward her like he meant to catch her.
Every time a wolf moved too close to Aurelia, he growled.
Every time she looked back…his eyes were already on her.
It was suffocating.
And terrifying.
And familiar in a way that made her want to scream.
The town came into view, wooden rooftops dusted with snow, lanterns glowing, the sharp salt-smell of the ocean drifting on the cold air. It looked exactly the same as the day she’d run.
Her stomach rolled.
Aurelia squeezed her hand tighter. “Mom?”
Dani forced a smile she didn’t feel. “We’re okay.”
They entered the main square, the town bustling with life around them. Most were humans who didn’t spare them so much as a passing glance. There were always tourists in Skymist, adventurers wanting to try their luck at the Aurora Peak Challenge, or to venture north to the frozen glaciers.
There were plenty of shifters, however, who watched them go with careful eyes, their gazes catching on Arthur, then on Lavinia in her High Sister robes. Their expressions would turn dark. Their lips would curl.
Dani might have been scared, except she had always suffered the mocking looks of shifters. And that was without Arthur at her back. However much she utterly despised him at that moment, she couldn’t deny the relief that he was with her. Something in her knew that he wouldn’t let any harm come to her or Aurelia. His heavy presence behind her burned bright as the sun.
Lavinia had said he would tear apart mountains. Dani wasn’t sure about that, but she knew enough about alpha males to know that when their emotions ran high, their humanity waned, the gaps left filled with wild instinct. Mate and cub.
Her heart lurched at the thought.
The shifters escorting them paused abruptly, looking at each other with uncertainty as a small, dark-haired woman, heavily pregnant, elbowed her way past without so much as a murmured apology.
Stranger still, the shifters let her, moving aside with something close to deference.
Dani didn’t know her.
But she recognized her.
Layla. Dominic’s mate.
The woman the coven had whispered about.
Layla took one look at Dani, then at Aurelia, then at the witches behind her. Her face softened, and she extended her hand.
“You must be Dani,” she said, voice warm.
Dani blinked. “I…yes.”
