LOGINAlex spins and the needle tears out of my skin, and the roar that fills the room comes from the chest of an Alpha who has found his mate strapped to a table.Nick crosses the room in three strides, torn clothes, blood seeping through the bandages on his chest, the lead knife in his fist. Alex raises the syringe between them and Nick swats it out of his hand. It hits the wall and shatters, pale blue running down the white paint in thin lines.Nick drives the knife at his head and Alex ducks, faster than he looks, and the blade buries itself in the doorframe.Then the lycan is there.It hits Nick from the side and they go down into the instrument tray, scalpels ringing across the tile, the lead knife jarred loose and spinning away. I pull against the straps until the leather opens my wrists."NICK!"Its jaws drop open above his throat. His hand finds a scalpel on the floor and he buries it in the creature's forearm, and in the half second its grip loosens he rolls, snatches the lead kni
EMILYThe door opens and Mia runs through it.She hits me so hard the medical bed rocks. Her arms lock around my neck and she's shaking, shaking so hard her teeth chatter against my collarbone."Mama. Mama mama mama.""I'm here. Baby, I'm here."My wrists are still strapped. Her small ribs heave against my chest and her tears soak through my shirt and my arms are six inches from closing around her and the leather won't give."Alex. Take these off."He watches from the doorway with the same expression he wore whenever I burned dinner in our apartment. Mild disappointment. A little tired. Like I've inconvenienced him by existing.Then he crosses the room and unbuckles the left strap, then the right, and my arms close around Mia so fast she gasps. I curl my body around hers and press my face into her hair. Soap and tears and the fabric softener from Agnes's fur. Agnes is crushed in her fist between us."Are you hurt? Did anyone hurt you?""No. I watched cartoons. But I was scared, Mama."
NICKI wake up tasting blood.There are pine needles under my face and cold dirt against my cheek, and my ribs grind when I breathe. The claw wounds running from my shoulder to my hip are still open, and the blood pooling under my body is warm against the cold ground.Small fingers press against my wrist."Dad." Mason's voice comes out thin. "Dad, your heart is going really slow."I open my eyes. He's sitting beside me in his jacket with two fingers pressed against my pulse."Hey, buddy.""You got hurt.""Yeah.""Really bad.""Where's Mama?"His bottom lip pushes out. His eyes fill, and he shakes his head."Mia too?"He nods.I push myself up. My arms buckle, my face hits the dirt, my ribs grind against each other, and the sound that comes out of me makes Mason flinch."Dad, don't. Sage said don't move."Then Sage is above me, tear-streaked, my blood dried on her hands. "Nick, stay down. Your ribs are broken and the claw wounds haven't closed.""Where is she?""Alex has her. And Mia.
SAGECole's blood has dried into the lines of my palms. It's under my fingernails now, dark and stubborn, and I've stopped trying to wipe it off because there's nothing clean left to wipe it on. Forty minutes I've been sitting on this road with his head in my lap, watching his wolf work beneath the surface of his skin. The gash on his forehead has closed to a pink seam and the swelling around his eye is going down, but he hasn't opened his eyes, and his chest keeps catching mid-breath in a way that stops mine every single time.I should have screamed when the car hit. When the metal crumpled and the glass broke and his head snapped forward into the steering wheel, some sound should have come out of me, but Derek's hand was over my mouth before it could, and now the scream lives behind my ribs, building pressure with nowhere to go.A few feet away, Mason is curled against Nick's side. Nick's wolf hasn't moved since Derek and I dragged him out of the trees. His silver fur is matted dark
EMILYThe ceiling is white and the room is cold and my wrists are burning.I blink until the fluorescent strip above me stops swimming. It hums, a thin whine I can feel in my molars. The air stings the back of my throat, antiseptic layered over something chemical that makes each breath feel like swallowing a coin.I try to sit. Leather catches both wrists. My ankles are free but my legs don't feel like mine. The metal bed is pulling heat straight out of my spine and the shaking starts in my shoulders and runs down through my ribs before my brain catches up to where I am and why and who put me here."Mia." My voice sounds like I swallowed gravel. "Where is Mia?""She's here."Alex. Behind me. I wrench my head sideways and the room tilts but I find him in the corner, legs crossed, tablet in his lap. Showered. Changed. Rested. Looking at him is like finding a photograph of someone you buried and realizing the person standing in front of you has the same face but nothing behind it."She's
EMILYThe impact is a sound before it's a feeling. Metal giving way, a deep wet crunch, and then my body is airborne, the seatbelt locking across my chest as the car spins. Glass explodes inward. I don't think. I just grab. My arms find Mia and Mason and I curl around them like a shell closing, my back taking the spray, my head cracking against the window frame hard enough that stars bloom behind my eyes.We slide. We stop.The engine hisses. Steam vents from under the crumpled hood. My ears ring so loud I can't hear my own breathing, but I can feel it, ragged and shallow, catching on something sharp in my ribs.Under my arms, Mia trembles. A full-body shake I can feel through my chest. Mason is rigid, his small fingers clamped onto my wrist."Mama." Mia's voice is a wet whisper. "Mama, there's glass in your hair.""Stay down. Both of you. Don't move."I lift my head. The world tilts. Cole is slumped against the steering wheel, blood running from his hairline down the side of his face
EMILYNick walks into my studio carrying a backpack and a boy who isn't crying anymore but hasn't started talking yet either. Mason rides on his hip with his face pressed into his father's neck, arms locked around his shoulders. He's holding himself still. Dry-eyed. Breath shallow and even against
MASONThe car stops and Jessica pulls me out and we’re somewhere with little planes.Not the big airport where Dad took me once to watch planes land. A small place with a fence and a gate and a man who waves Jessica through without checking anything. It’s dark and the lights on the ground are blue
I wake up to sunlight burning through my eyelids. My head is pounding like someone’s taking a hammer to the inside of my skull, and my mouth tastes like something crawled inside and died. My body feels heavy and wrong, like it doesn’t belong to me anymore. When I force my eyes open, everythin
“I reject you as my mate.” Nick’s voice echoes through Silver Moon pack house, and when his grey eyes find mine, there’s nothing in them. Not anger, not hurt. Just empty, like I never meant anything to him. Like we weren’t planning to run away together just hours ago. I’m on my knees in the c







