Page 62

It’s night by the time I get home. Maren's porch lights are on. The shop's dark. Her house is quiet.

Too quiet.

I'm halfway across my yard when my wolf comes up so fast it hurts.

Threat. Here. Now.

Then the scent lands. Smoke. Rot. Blood that isn't hers.

The side gate stands open. She locked it. I watched her lock it.

Something moves at the back of her garden. Low. Long. Faster than anything with that many joints has a right to be.

I don't reach for control.

I let go of it.

The shift takes me before I hit the grass. Bone folds. Fire runs the length of my spine. Then four paws under me and the world blooms open in scent, and my wolf and I are the same hunting thing.

The creature breaks from the shrubs and goes straight for her back door.

I hit it midair.

My teeth close on smoke and something solid buried inside it. It shrieks, a sound like wet metal tearing, and I rip. Black blood sprays across the dead grass, hot and foul on my tongue.

Then the thing folds in on itself and is gone. Not dead. Gone. Smoke where a body should be.

I land hard, chest heaving, blood in my teeth.

And Maren screams.

I spin.

She's on the patio. Barefoot on the cold stone. A fireplace poker shaking in both hands. Sid a black cutout at her ankle, every hair on end.

Her eyes are huge.

She looks at the black blood steaming on her lawn. Then at me.

Mate, my wolf breathes, and every part of me that's still a man wants to sink into the ground and never come up.

This is the thing I hid for six months. Not that magic is real. Not that she's a witch. This. The size of what I turn into, standing in her yard with something's blood on its mouth.

I take one step toward her.

The poker comes up.

"Don't."

I stop. My wolf drops his head low and slow, the way you gentle a spooked animal, and it's the wrong instinct and the only one I've got.

She stares into my eyes.

Gray.

I watch it arrive on her face. The mirror.

THE WOLF LIES. ASK HIM WHAT YOU ARE TO HIM.