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And way off in the distance…

Something answers.

It’s not Declan. Not the Declan I know. It’s bigger. Older. Something huge and dark that was asleep for years in a concrete box. I feel it lift its head, turn toward me, across the city.

And I feel the exact second it wakes up.

The hair stands up all over my body.

Oh, Eamon. You stupid, stupid man.

I open my eyes and look at the men with their rifles.

“You boys might want to go home while you still can,” I tell them. “My man is coming.”

Fifteen

Declan

We’re on the highway when she hits me. I’m in the back seat with Rian driving and Finn up front, and I’m halfway through telling Aidan on the phone which piers I want locked down by tonight, and then my wife’s fear comes down the bond like a truck.

I drop the phone.

Glass. Guns. A man’s voice yelling stay down. Hands on her. Her teeth in somebody’s skin. She’s fighting. My girl’s fucking fighting.

Declan. DECLAN. They got me!

Then nothing. Like a door slamming.

I go still.

Everything stops. Me, the wolf, the road, the whole fucking world. It goes cold and quiet and very clear, and in all that quiet, my wolf lifts his head.

Trap. Not there. HER.

“Rian.”

“Dec?”

“Turn the car around.”

He doesn’t ask. He never fucking asks. He puts three SUVs through a U-turn across four lanes of traffic without touching the brakes, and Finn’s already got his phone out.

“The cannery’s bait,” I tell them. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Six men and a phone. Eamon’s somewhere else, and he’s got Zahra, and he’s waiting for that phone to ring so he can tell me where to kneel.”

“So where is he?” Finn says.

I close my eyes.

I don’t know an address. I don’t need one.

She’s there. Faint, way down under the fear, way down under whatever they put in her. My wife’s holding onto our bond with both hands, and she’s shoving everything she can see down it. Rust. Dead fish. Hooks on rails. Broken windows up near a high ceiling. A man’s voice, warm as honey. Her hand on her belly.

Her hand on her belly.

“South,” I say. “The river.”

Rian drives. Nobody talks. My claws are out and I’m not putting them back, and the fur’s coming up my forearms, and the wolf’s pushing so hard against the inside of my ribs I can hear them creak. I let him. For the first time in four years, I don’t hold him. I put my face to the window and I breathe, and somewhere around Fourth Street, I get her.