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He doesn’t respond, but he sniffs the air once and then takes off into the underbrush.
We race another half mile through the valley behind the Devil’s Teeth, heading away from the ravine. The heavy brush and tree canopy keeps us out of sight, and I know Amora can’t track our shadow forms. But still, I stay alert—the woman is too cunning and stubborn for her own good. I won’t breathe easy until we get the fuck out of New Mexico.
Frost bounds to a stop on a shallow, sloping hill, dropping his nose to huff at the grass. Malix and I slow to a stop behind him as he sniffs the ground. I can feel the rift now too, but I let him keep up his search just to make him feel better. He’s always been the strong, silent type, but since we left Amora on the ground near the Tree of Life, there’s been a different kind of weight to his silence.
Dammit. I feel like we’ll never be back to normal again. She dug her claws into every one of us and ruined us.
Below, Frost says after a moment, pawing at the ground.
I step up beside him to find there’s a narrow crevice cutting through the hill—which turns out to not be a hill so much as a sloping cliff. I peer through the dim, narrow opening, calculating that it’s about a ten-foot drop. The crevice is too narrow for us to wriggle down into in wolf form, so I shift back to human form and drop through. I land in a crouch, balancing the impact between both legs. Wouldn’t do me any good to break an ankle in the middle of the mountains, although my brothers and I usually heal even faster than normal shifters.
Still, the human form is much more fragile than the shadow form.
Behind me, Frost and Malix do the same, and the three of us straighten, heedless of our nudity as we fan out to look around for the source of the rift.
The crevice is slightly wider at the base where we landed. But it’s darker here due to the way the rock walls narrow overhead on either side, forming a kind of natural roof and windbreak. It’s quiet, too—no bugs trilling or frogs singing.
It’s clearly too close to the shadow realm to feel safe for the denizens of the natural world. We’re used to the eerie silence and lack of life that always surround the thin spots in the veil between this world and the shadow world. When we go near these barren patches, our own shadows grow still.
Rocks roll beneath my bare feet as I walk farther, my senses open and alert. The shadow realm is close—so close I can taste it, can feel it, can sense the low level pain in my body fading away in its presence. I follow the roiling energy like a moth to the flame.
Or a shadow drawn home.
A few feet away, Frost slams his fist against the rock wall, the sound cracking through the air like a gunshot.
“Not thin enough,” he says shortly. He’s gazing up at the gray rock wall, his pale blond hair hanging over his shoulders. “We can’t work with this.”
Malix leans his back against the wall a few feet away from Frost, one foot propped up beneath him. His skin is several shades darker than the rock, and he’s cut like stone thanks to all of our hours spent racing across the landscape trying to fulfill our alpha’s mission. It makes him look like someone carved him right out of the cliff side.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I could work with this.”
I grunt, placing my palm on the wall next to him. The constant torturous pain inside me from my shadow half fades almost entirely this close to the shadow realm. I can’t even fucking imagine the absolute relief of stepping foot into the shadow realm itself. Instant reprieve. The pain just… gone.
Placing my other palm on the stone, I lean my weight into my hands and let my head fall, taking a deep breath in through my nose, then letting it out through my mouth. Shadow energy pulses beneath my touch and grows around me. A heartbeat that aligns with my own, easing the burn inside me with every throb.
A long time ago, I came to terms with the fact that I’m just as much shadow as I am wolf. It’s never so obvious as when I’m standing this close to the other realm. Some part of me—of all three of us—belongs to the shadow realm. I embrace that side wholeheartedly because it’s who I am, and I can’t change that.
That’s why Amora had to go.
“Frost is right,” I say, pushing away from the wall. “I can feel it, but it’s not strong enough. The veil isn’t thin enough, which means it’s not worth trying to break through here. We wouldn’t be able to do it.”
Malix shrugs. “We could try.”
“Waste of time and energy,” I argue. “The right rift is out there somewhere. We’ll keep looking for it.”
“Yeah, all right.” Still leaning against the wall, he squints up at the narrow opening overhead, his violet eye glinting in the dim light. “Too bad we had to come all the way down here for nothing. Climbing back out isn’t gonna be fun.”
I purse my lips at his dumb ass, then call up the shadow energy from inside me, shifting only my paws so that I have access to my sharp, powerful claws. “Are you a wolf or not?”
My brother frowns. None of us like doing a partial shift like this. It’s not easy to maintain, and it’s not something regular shifters can do. But it helps in situations like this. Ignoring his grimace, I turn away from him and slam my right claws into the stone. It chips beneath my strength, and I begin to haul myself upward.
Suddenly, a strong, citrusy scent swirls past me.
Orange and mango and tropical sunlight. Warm skin that looks and smells like sex on the beach. A scent I’d know anywhere.
Amora.
Fuck.
I rip my claws out of the stone and whirl around, exchanging glances with my brothers. From the stricken looks on their faces, I know they can smell her too.
Shift, I order. Shadow magic flows over me like cold water, elongating my limbs and morphing my body into my shadow wolf form.
I crouch against the wall between Frost and Malix, my senses trained on the narrow crevice overhead. I can sense her a few yards away in her wolf form, clearly backtracking in an attempt to track us down. She can’t find us in our shadow forms. We’re undetectable. Untraceable.
But we shifted to human above, at the edge of the crevice, in order to get down here.
Shit. We need to get out of here before she smells that. I don’t want to kill her. I just want her out of our fucking lives so we can do what we need to do. What we were made to do.
I take stock of our surroundings, looking farther down the crevice away from the rift. To the right, it’s dark and gloomy, but to the left, I can see the barest hint of light.
Come on, I snarl in mind speak, then lope away down the narrow path.
