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Frankie stumbledbackas a pulse of blue light and energy hit her full force. Screams and yelps echoed through her ears. She nearly hit the floor, but managed to keep her balance. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the platform. Her breath caught, and before she knew what she was doing, she was shoving her way through the crowd and running toward the stage.
Jace. She had to get to Jace.
David was at her heels. As the energy dissipated, several members of the pack howled and shifted into wolf form. But Frankie could only focus on Jace.
She threw herself down at his side and wrapped her arms around him, but he didn’t move. He was kneeling in the middle of the platform, as still as a statue. She distantly heard herself screaming his name.
What the hell just happened? He was supposed to shift. That grin told her he’d figured it out. What was happening?
Lines of blue light gleamed on his body, as if he were covered in a glowing pattern of tattoos. His eyes had transitioned from their normal green to the gold of a wolf’s eyes. He stared toward the sky, unblinking.
She shook him as hard as she could. “Jace! Jace!”
A second later, Rock was grabbing her arm, Alejandro beside him, attempting to haul her away to safety, but she couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.
She turned on them, eyes feral and teeth bared. “Stay away from my mate!” she snarled.
Amarok and Alejandro’s eyes grew wide at the connection she’d just declared.
In response, another pulse of energy flooded the room, emanating directly from Jace. It hit Frankie hard. Her head fell back, and pain boiled beneath her skin. The familiar feeling of her bones rearranging overtook her, and she felt herself involuntarily begin to shift. Within seconds she lay on the ground, transformed completely.
Hunkering to the floor, she whimpered. Her gaze darted around the room to the other pack members. The only human left was David, who couldn’t shift. Howls and the sound of keening rang out as they all waited for the next aftershock of magic, of energy. She covered her head with her paws to block the sound from her ears.
What the hell was happening?
She’d never seen anything like this before.
Another wave of energy shot from Jace’s body. He jerked forward and rose onto his knees. Even in wolf form, Frankie stopped breathing.
A replica of the symbol they’d seen in Manhattan Square Park glowed between Jace’s shoulder blades. Frankie howled as recognition washed over her.
She knew that mark. She hadn’t been able to place it before, but now, God help her, she remembered.
Jace wasn’t a wolf shifter.
He was aberserker. A wolf shifting warrior rumored to have been crafted by the Nordic gods of old, a shapeshifter, not a wolf, who she’d just declared as her mate. Frankie shook from head-to-toe, as realization tore her. Jace was a warrior crafted by long dead gods.
And to her abject horror...
So was Robert.
Jace’s eyelidsflickeredopen onto a haze of shining blue. Slowly he pushed himself off the ground, drinking in his surroundings. It was as if the world had been engulfed in a cerulean haze. He stared and could faintly decipher the outlines around him.
A forest. He was in the middle of a damn forest.
The same as that nightmare. He racked his brain to remember how he’d gotten there but came up with nothing. What had happened? And why was everything like an amorphous blue shadow?
He listened for some sign of life, but heard nothing except silence.
Where the hell was he?
He stood and scanned the area. A flash of what looked like an animal’s tail rounded a nearby tree. Inching forward, he moved toward the elm and stared into the blue forest. A large wolf was peering around a bush, its eyes beckoning him forward. Like everything else, it looked like nothing but a shadow, an outline of what a real wolf would have been.
Shit. This was all wrong. Either he was dead or dreaming, or he’d swallowed one hell of a dose of LSD.
The animal turned and ducked behind the bush again. An invisible string tugged at Jace’s chest, and though his mind briefly protested, he soon found himself trailing behind the wolf.
Weaving in and out of the twilight trees, he followed it through the forest.
