Chapter 2

The nursery door hangs open, and I already know.

I cross the room in three strides and rip back the blanket, empty, cold, the sheet barely dented where she should be curled up small. I drop to the floor and check under the bed. Nothing. I wrench open the wardrobe, throw aside her coats, her boots, her boots are gone too.

I'm pounding on the nursery maid's door before I decide to. She stumbles out half-asleep, stammering that she checked an hour ago, Wren was fine, Wren was—

I don't wait for the end of that sentence. I'm already moving, throwing open doors down the east corridor, checking behind curtains, under tables, my own voice tearing out of me raw and useless, calling her name into empty room after empty room. I hit the guards at the perimeter and grab the nearest one by his collar.

"Did she pass you? Wren—did anyone see her?"

He shakes his head, eyes wide, and I shove past him before he finishes stammering an apology. I drop to a crouch at the tree line, nose to the dirt, and there, her scent, thin and sharp with fear, dragging straight toward the black wall of trees every pup in this pack learns to fear before they learn to walk.

I shift running.

Bones crack and rearrange mid-stride, clothes shredding away, and I hit the forest floor on four paws with my claws already tearing dirt. Branches whip my face. I don't slow down. Her scent thickens with every stride, and under it, rising fast, the musk of rogues.

I break through the brush and there she is, pressed flat against a blackened oak, three wolves fanned out in a crouch, one already gathering itself to spring.

I hit him before his paws leave the ground.

My jaws close around his throat mid-air and we crash into the dirt together, his blood hot and immediate against my tongue, his scream cut short. A second wolf slams into my flank and teeth tear down my shoulder, white heat, then nothing, adrenaline swallowing the pain whole. I twist, snap, catch his ear between my teeth and wrench until he yelps and scrambles back. The third circles wide, snarling, testing the distance between us.

I plant myself between him and Wren and I don't move.

He runs. The other two follow, bleeding, yelping into the dark, and the forest goes quiet except for my own ragged breathing and the frantic thud of my heart against my ribs.

I shift back on my knees in front of her.

"Are you hurt? Look at me—did they touch you?"

She shakes her head, too shaken to speak, and I run my hands down her arms, her legs, checking for teeth marks, for blood that isn't mine. Nothing. I pull her against my chest and she finally breaks, sobbing into my collarbone while I rock her, one hand cradling the back of her head.

"I've got you," I say against her hair. "I've got you."

She cries until she's empty. I carry her out of the trees, back across the training grounds, past a pack house blazing gold and loud with celebration, and I don't stop walking until I've laid her in her own bed and pulled the blanket to her chin. I sit on the edge of the mattress and watch her breathing slow, watch her eyes finally close.

I go looking for Damon, wondering how he was able to sleep at night when his child was in danger. I almost lost Wren today because of him.

His scent hits me on the east staircase, thick and unmistakable, and laid over it, a second scent that stops me cold on the top step.

Jasmine and smoke.

I push the door open.