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“Sylvan talk to me.”

“Aura,” I whispered. “Something feels wrong. I can’t explain it. I’m trying to settle, but it isn’t working.”

She stood and padded over to the dresser to light a candle. Her expression of empathy became visible as the flame wavered before her face. Her eyes studied me while I fidgeted under her gaze. “Oh my gods,” she said softly. She set the candle down and approached me, one hand shifting to my face to lightly graze over the hair on my cheek. “Her,” she said. Her hand moved down to my chest, settling over my heart. She let out a broken little laugh and said, “Go to her.”

“What? Clover, I can’t. The pack⁠—”

“We’ve all heard the stories of being separated from our mates. It can drive a lycan mad. We don’t need another unstable alpha. We need you in sound mind.”

“She isn’t my mate. She …” I couldn’t say she was a hybrid, obviously. “She’s a vampire.”

“Who decides what makes a mate?” She fixed me with a steady look, and I pondered her hypothetical question. “I’ll tell the others that you were called away on urgent Ministry matters.” She grabbed my pack from the wardrobe and started to pack a shirt, trousers, and shoes into it as well as a small blanket and some bandages.

Without further questioning my instincts or Clover’s words, I stripped out of what I was wearing and slipped the straps over my arms. I pressed a kiss to the top of Clover’s head and said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Thank you.”

When I released her, she gave my cheek a firm tap and sent me on my way. I climbed out of the window, shifted into wolf form and took off at full speed, not stopping, not thinking.

I needed to move. My body and brain were screaming as my paws raced across the terrain. I made it beyond our bounds and into the forest of the Unclaimed Territory. I didn’t stop running until someone called to me from the distance. “Sylvan?”

I stopped and cocked my head at the figure rushing toward me. Long black hair billowed out behind her, violet eyes crystal clear through my wolf’s eyes.

“Sylvan,” Magdalena huffed. Had she been running for some time? Her heart was racing, fear filling the air around her. “They tried to take her. She wasn’t even scheduled to come in today but—” She had something tucked under her arm. A bag, by the looks of it, but whatever was inside made it impossible for her to properly close the flap.

As the wolf, I couldn’t respond to her of course, so I shifted in a flash, standing before her fully nude. She forced her gaze onto my face as I pulled the pack off my shoulders. “Did you say tried to take her?”

“She was arrested for killing Shan. I— I know she was getting worse but …”

My stomach tumbled as I covered my crotch with my backpack.

“Sylvan, they know she’s a hybrid. They managed to get two tranquilizer darts in her, but as they were hauling her out of the university, she somehow came to and ran. I tried to catch her. I tried … She’s too fast in wolf form. It’s the lethal combination of vampiric speed and lycan, but I don’t even remember when last I saw her fully shifted. Usually it’s just the claws and⁠—”

My heart couldn’t beat any harder than it did. “Which direction did she go?”

“South? It’s possible she changed course. I don’t know.” Tears coursed down her cheeks. “Sylvan, it’s been over a century since the last documented bloodwolf. If they catch her, they’ll experiment on her.”

“They won’t kill her?”

“No.” She gestured toward her house many paces away. “I can’t discuss this out here. Let’s just step into my house so I can also give you some supplies, because she’ll likely be injured.”

We hurried to her house, standing in the middle of the room, too tense to sit. “There has been experimentation for years on Occults that don’t fit the bill. It’s led to speculation of possible black markets selling supposed hybrid blood. I’m not sure how true it is, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that things are never as they seem. And Aura … she’s already, well, she’s our Aura.”

My heart clenched painfully.

“Factor in her personality with the Lobofebris and her uncontrollable partial-shifting, it’s a recipe for disaster. She’s accidentally killed in the past. In the early days. But she’s managed to suppress it with the gem in her arm. It’s just … It absorbs the shifts, and if she’s been having it happen more frequently … It won’t be long before that gem stops working. But that’s not what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of⁠—”

“The bloodlust.”

Magdalena’s violet eyes widened. “She told you.”

I nodded.

Magdalena fidgeted as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. She ran a shaky hand through her hair. She moved suddenly as if she’d just remembered something, stepping farther into the room and pulling out a small chest. She set it down on the small table beside the loveseat. “Aura left this in her office for us,” she said. She let her fingers run along the metal plate atop it. Without another word, she lifted her wrist to her mouth and bit down before holding it over the box.

“What—” I started to ask, but then steam rose up from the drops of blood atop the metal plate.

“Clever,” she mumbled as the box unlatched. She glanced up at me as she opened the lid fully. “In my room, there’s a pair of trousers and a blouse in my top center drawer. For Aura. You can grab shoes from my wardrobe too.”

She didn’t need to say more. I ran off to gather the clothing, and when I returned to the sitting room, Magdalena handed me a small case.