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My mind shuts him out. I am not stopping. I am not thinking.

The wolf is in control. It’s time to act.

When I hit the threshold of the castle, I shift and launch out into the night, leaving the floor in my dress shoes and landing in the snow on my paws. They feel at home in the cold, on the ground, and suddenly Mylah’s scent—which is always strong to me, in my human form—is bright and vivid around me. Unmistakable. It’s almost overpowering, but I manage to focus and ignore how it hangs in the air, sprinting around the side of the building to the place where Aurora said she might have fallen.

If Mylah is hurt, there will be hell to pay. And if she’s…

I can’t even bring myself to think the thought. My heart is breaking prematurely; the threat of how painful it would be to lose her makes my legs pump harder, my heart beat faster. I will find her. I will bring her home.

Rounding the corner of the castle, I sprint through the snow, ignoring the way it catches in my fur and whips into my eyes. It is much easier to exist in this kind of weather when you have a permanent coat.

As I run, her scent is whipped up and around by the wind. The snow blankets the ground, making it harder to catch it, even as my senses are heightened in this form.

Then I reach the spot just under Aurora’s balcony, where Mylah tried to go down using the sheets.

She’s not here. At first, I’m hit with a rush of relief—Mylah isn’t lying here in the snow, bleeding out. Hurt from the fall.

But she’s also not here. Which means she got down okay and started running from me. From safety. Anger and regret and desperation claw through me, directed at her. Directed at my sister, at the entire fucking world.

There’s a dent in the snow, though the freshly fallen layer is covering it quickly. Nose to the ground, I breathe long and hard, searching for her scent, trying to find the trail of it. To see which way she went.

“Augustus.”

I turn to find my three friends a few feet from me, breathing hard. Denvil and Brack are in their wolf forms, but Zade has shifted back, his hands on his knees, his brown hair flopping over into his face. He looks ridiculous out here in his tux, nice shoes. They’re getting ruined in the snow.

The thought dawns on me that I probably looked ridiculous, too. Running through the castle in my suit. Ignoring the party thrown in my honor.

The thought flits away just as quickly as I have it, replaced by urgency.

Because I can’t answer him in my wolf form, I just tip my head at Zade, hoping the motion communicates my urgency.

“We can—” he pauses, heaving. Brack gives him a look that says you need to work out your human form more. “Aug, we can barely catch her scent. We should split up, try to—”

Oh.

He’s not telling me that it’s a waste of time to go after her. He’s not telling me that I should just let her go. I look from Zade to Brack and Denvil, who stare back at me with unwavering expressions.

They don’t care about Mylah being my mate—they’re not going to call me weak or stupid for having a fated pairing. They’re just going to help me get her back.

I nod and turn, shoving my nose back into the snow to try and pick up her scent again.

Together, the four of us tease it out through the trees. Usually, I don’t mind the weather here—in fact, the cold is natural; it feels like home. I enjoy hearing visiting diplomats complain about the frigid temperatures and all the snow.

But now, with the snow falling fast and making it hard to keep track of Mylah’s scent, I fucking hate it.

It feels like hours pass. My frustration climbs and climbs, and my nose starts to ache from being in the snow, from breathing hard and trying to catch the scent. It’s there in wisps, present then gone in large swaths.

Together, the four of us track is through the trees as the moon climbs higher and higher in the sky. I want to run—my wolf wants to run, to be able to chase her down quickly—but it’s slow going since we aren’t positive about which direction she went.

Finally, when I’m going to snap from the pent-up anger, we arrive at the edge of the trees an the edge of the Northern territory itself. It’s even colder up here, as we climb into the mountains. The kind of cold that hurts your face, that you can feel freezing your lungs from the outside.

Why the hell would Mylah come this way? She’s too smart to risk freezing to death.

Unless she wanted to make sure she could get out of our territory as soon as possible. She would have known we would find it harder to track her outside our official pack bounds.

Brack lets out a growl, then a low bark that says you’re going to want to see this.

I’m by him in a second, looking at what he’s looking at.