By the time we hit the interstate, dawn is rising over the mountains in the distance and casting the desert in shades of amber and purple. I’m not wearing a watch, though it’s not like that’s ever stopped me. I can tell it’s that purple time of day where late night is bleeding into early morning, and the birdsong answering somewhere in the distance only cements my certainty.Once we reach empty road, we open the throttle and fly. We make it three miles before I start to breathe easier—five miles before I look in my rearview mirror and assure myself no one followed us. Maybe they were all knocked out or they were just too terrified to chase us when they woke up, I don’t know. But they let us go.Which is what a person should do when they’re facing a threat they don’t understand. Like Kian said, something that could eat them. Historically, humans didn’t make the best decisions.I cling to the handlebars with adrenaline still pumping through my veins. As far as I know, we don’t have a pl

Kian’s declaration snaps me out of my daze—both the lingering arousal and the fuzziness in my head from the crash. The poison pain has faded again, but that attack did feel stronger and more intense than the first. It didn’t last as long, but it felt like I was dying.That alone makes me fear that Kian may be right.“Potion isn’t going to do us any good if it shattered during the crash,” I point out, a sick feeling settling in my stomach.Kian’s brow arches. “Come again?”“The potion. It was in my trunk. And that was…” I wave a hand, indicating the road and the crash. “That was a big boom.”“Fuck,” he growls, then stalks away from us back toward my bike.While Frost was coaching me through shifting, Kian must have walked down the road and retrieved my Ducati. It sits on the embankment behind their bikes, upright and with a working kickstand, but absolutely savaged by the wreck.Kian rips open the internal trunk with a bit more force than necessary, then digs around in my things before

I wake up several hours later, groggy and disoriented from a daytime nap in a strange place.Sometime while I slept, the cat disappeared, and I must have looked cold because someone tossed a soft white blanket over me. I stretch beneath the cloud-like fabric, testing out all the aches and pains I fell asleep with. I’m sore—and probably will be for a few days—but I’m able to function.Not a bad thing, considering that if I were human, I’d probably be bound for the hospital. Possibly in a body bag.I swing my legs off the couch and rub the sleep from my eyes. By the look of the sunlight outside the bank of windows behind the couch, it’s early afternoon. There’s no immediate sign that my companions are around, and I have a brief moment of fear that they’ve left me. That they’ve set me up to lie here and sleep until the homeowner returns and catches me.But when I focus on listening to the quiet house, I hear low voices filtering into the room from down the hall. Shoving aside the blanket

It takes three random civilians before we find someone who can tell us where to find Crazy Harry.The answer leads us to a small park on the outskirts of town. An old rusted swing set, a scorching metal slide, and a precarious-looking wooden seesaw sit just beyond the park sign. A small group of young evergreens huddle around a man-made pond, where a lone figure stands tossing bread on the ground. Two ducks and three squirrels dart around the sparse grass at his feet, snatching up pieces as soon as they hit the dirt.We approach the old guy together. The three shifters flank me as if they’re afraid to let me get too close to Crazy Harry without them there to buffer. It’s another strangely possessive gesture that makes me feel like I don’t know what twilight zone I’m living in.We stop a few feet to the old guy’s left, on the banks of the pond. He’s a grizzled old man with a giant nose covered in broken blood vessels and a beard that forms a point over his skinny, sunken chest. He’s we

The trek to reach the Devil’s Teeth turns out to be a lot harder than it looked from the top of Black Mountain.We make it back down the mountain by sunset and find a place to camp for the night. I’m not bothered by the break—my body hasn’t fully bounced back from the poison attack, and I fall asleep the moment I curl up on a soft patch of grass.The morning of the third day, we set out through the series of dips, valleys, and smaller mountains that separate us from the Devil’s Teeth. We can no longer see the Teeth, since they’re well-hidden by the mountainous terrain, but at least we know where they are. For the first time since I agreed to a truce with these men, I can see an end in sight, and it is glorious.And, well, kinda sad, too, I think. The past week, for all its confusing ups and downs, has been a welcome respite from the endless monotony that my life has become over the past two and a half years.Even in wolf form, the going is tough, and it’s obvious that both Frost and I