Malix dives under, and I startle, looking around for him. Is he coming for me?I turn my back on the shore and wade a little further, only to realize it’s much too deep for me to touch here. I’m forced to go back a couple feet, only for Malix to surface right beside me.I glare at him. “Can I have some privacy please?”His hand emerges from the water. “Thought you might like some soap.”I stare at the small round bar in his hand, all the bluster fading from me. “Oh. Yeah, actually, that would be cool.”As I pluck the soap from his fingers, he gives me an amused grin and then backs off, giving me extra space.Turning around, I start rubbing the soap over my body beneath the water. Not the best way to scrub myself, but I’m not too keen on walking further inland and having Malix stare at my naked body while I wash.Well, maybe I’m too keen on that. And that’s scarier.I rub the bar through my hair to get a good lather going, then offer it back to Malix. “Thanks.”“No problem, kitty.”Sho

After washing up again and letting the mindless task of scrubbing at my skin settle my thoughts a little, I climb out of the water. There’s a towel waiting for me on shore—thanks to Malix, I suppose, though I never saw him return with it. It’s not the thickest of towels, a little travel thing, but it does the job. I dry off and wrap the damp fabric around me to go dig some clothes out of my bag.Kian is building a fire while Frost and Malix skin the deer the other two shifters brought back with them. All three of them glance up as I return in my handkerchief-sized towel. I crouch beside my bag to dig out my jeans and a clean tank top, and I notice both Frost and Kian tilt their noses into the air.Toward me.Fuck. Can they smell the lingering scent of sex on me? Even after I washed off in the lake again?They turn their suspicious gazes on Malix, who just smiles charmingly as if he has no idea what they’re thinking.Frost looks away out into the darkness beyond the light of the fire,

KianA dead treecracks beneath my back paws as I use it for a launching pad to scale a large, round boulder the size of an SUV. For a split second, I’m weightless, inside and out. Just me and gravity. Free from the weight of the earth and the constant hum of pain inside me. Free from bad decisions. From intrusive thoughts.But then I come back down to earth. I slam down onto the boulder, and it shakes beneath my bulk. My brothers land behind me, Frost with sinuous grace, but Malix with a loud skittering of his shadowy claws. I snatch at his smoky form with my teeth, nabbing him before he can slide right off the dusty stone of the mountain ledge into the open expanse beyond—which looks like a painful fucking fall, even for a shadow wolf.When I release him, all three of us come to a stop, panting lightly from our exertions. Malix sits on his haunches, his tongue lolling out. In his normal wolf shifter form, the look is ridiculous. Makes him look like some kind of deranged hyena. In his

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 ba

Even runningat my fastest pace, and only resting for the briefest naps, it takes me two days to reach Red River, the small ski resort town where we parked our bikes. I’m not surprised to find the guys’ bikes gone. Their shadow wolf forms are annoyingly a lot faster than my normal wolf.I’m even less surprised to find that my bike has been disabled. Someone took wire cutters to everything that could possibly be destroyed, just like I did to Kian’s Harley back in Oscura.“Fucking asshole,” I mutter, kicking the bike’s back tire. I’d bet every fucking penny I own that Kian was the one who did this.As if mutilating my soul to remove the mate bond wasn’t enough, he had to cut me another way.It’s the off-season, so the town is fairly quiet. I find a rental place that specializes in motor sports—mainly snowmobiles and dirt bikes meant for dicking around in the mountains. Lucky for me, they’ve also got a few motorcycles. I don’t go inside. I just walk by the facade of the store to check the