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  I started to laugh at her drama-queen impersonation—after all, moonlight illuminated the forest quite sufficiently for fox-assisted eyes. But there was actual blood on my sister’s cheekbone, suggesting this was more than an act intended to send us back to the SUV to sleep.

  No, my sister really was floundering without Mama’s star ball, humanity reasserting itself as the borrowed magic faded away. Luckily, I could see well enough for the both of us. Readjusting our positions, I tucked Kira’s fingers into one of my belt loops then began holding each limb carefully sideways until we were both long past.

  We continued that way for perhaps three quarters of a mile, the traveling made easier once we latched onto a game trail that had been beaten into the earth. Here and there, I caught faint hints of canine. But the scents were old and might have been made by farm dogs rather than by wolves...or so I let myself believe.

  Finally, the ground rose beneath our feet, giving us the option of turning sideways as the deer had done or smashing our own path through blackberry thickets up to the crest. My fox instinct whispered upward, and my human nature agreed that the rise would be an easily defensible location just in case the afore-mentioned scents belonged to shifters rather than to pets.

  “Just a little further,” I promised, easing Kira through the tangle. She whimpered as thorns snagged in her hair and tore at her cheekbones, but the girl didn’t complain as I less than agilely untangled strand after strand.

  A Kira too tired to even protest being manhandled was a sad sight indeed, and in desperation I turned to stories to keep her there with me. “Did I ever tell you what it was like when I got my star ball?” I asked, feeling her head shake slightly from side to side as I picked a thorny twig out of her hair.

  Taking that motion as an indication of moderate interest, I dove straight into an anecdote from my past. “It appeared above my pillow the morning I turned thirteen,” I offered, gently pressing Kira back onto the path as the thorn let loose its hold on her head. “You’ve gotta remember, I wasn’t lucky enough to have a borrowed star ball from the time I was a toddler the way you did. So this was the first time I’d been able to change into fox form.”

  My sister murmured understanding, which was enough to keep me leading her up hill while telling a story I’d never relayed to anyone previously. “It was scary and exciting to be an animal,” I told her. “And, I’m ashamed to say, I ended up barfing all over my birthday cake....”

  The tiniest trickle of a giggle was the nicest sound I’d heard all day. Then we were out of the briers, sinking down to sit side by side on a soft bed of tall grasses.

  “But my birthday was two months ago,” Kira rebutted after a moment, the impatience in her voice making her sound almost like her old self again. “And I don’t have a star ball. I can’t shift.”

  “So maybe biology doesn’t always operate by the calendar,” I answered. Then, ignoring the twinge of conscience in my stomach, I voiced a vow I had no way to keep. “Your magic will show up soon, I promise. And, if not, I’ll find a way to get Mama’s star ball back.”

  Chapter 13

  I fell asleep begging my mother for answers, and maybe that explained my dream. A dream of fingers raking across rippling muscles, a male convulsing above and within me as I shivered in triumph and disgust.

  Disgust because I was prostituting my body. And triumph because I’d harvested enough blood this time to sedate my Master...and also to empower myself.

  “Stay,” the male murmured as I disentangled myself from his body. “You’re a wildcat. I dig it. There’s more where that came from.”

  “Another night,” I purred, licking scarlet liquid from beneath my fingernails and watching as the werewolf beside me slipped down into unbreachable slumber. Like the others, he’d remember nothing more than sharp-edged pleasure the following morning. Once again, the harvest had been a success.

  I might as well have been alone now as the moon shone in through a screened tent window, the male’s slumber a reprieve from possession and pretend. But the Master wouldn’t like it if I lingered here indefinitely. So I licked more blood from around my cuticles, daintily spitting the liquid into a tiny bottle provided for this exact purpose before moving on to the next.

  Without my star ball, I couldn’t outright disobey direct orders...but my jailer didn’t know enough to hedge every potential gap in the defensive wall that hemmed me in. So after cleaning my right hand and moving on to my left index finger, this time I swallowed instead of spitting.

  And, immediately, the body I was inhabiting melded deeper around me. The world, which had been muffled and distant, roared closer in a haze of cricket song and hazy moonlight. Werewolf energy blossomed beneath my skin, and for one short moment my abilities amped up so far I was able to not only grasp blindly for my daughter but also to speak.

  “If you can hear me, Mai, know this is your heritage,” I murmured, feeling blindly through the void that separated us. “Your soul in someone else’s body. It takes werewolf blood, but it is possible to achieve....”

  I wanted to show her, to turn my head toward a mirror and let the red of possessed eyes shine out of someone else’s features. After all, Mai likely couldn’t hear me, but maybe she could see the potential if I tried....

  Unfortunately, there were no mirrors present, and the closest body of water was too far for me to reach before the Master’s will tugged me back onto the accepted path. Already, I could feel this dozenth try at communication failing. Could feel a tug in my belly drawing me away from the tent, across closely shorn grass, to the drop-off point at the edge of the field.

  I tucked the bottle of liquid behind a rock in the designated area, pain coursing through me as I tried once again to disobey. Because I knew the Master’s use of this magic would be worse than the possession that had harvested it. I knew...

  ...nothing as my conscious began to fade. The body I was inhabiting shuddered as my soul wisped into static. But I clung on with incorporeal fingers, unwilling to disappear before righting my own wrong.

  Because I’d wrenched my star ball from my body to protect my daughters. How bold I’d been to think I might change the course of history when the trail into the future branched and branched and branched again.

  And yet...I continued to be bold. Because every peek I mustered past the veil of the present promised dangers to my offspring. And I refused to leave them walking blindly into the mists.

  So I used the last drop of werewolf blood still embedded in my palm to power one final attempt. “Be careful,” I tried...and failed...to warn them.

  Then, once again, I lost myself into the dark.

  I WOKE WITH COPPER on my tongue and the vile memory of my mother—myself?—having sex with a stranger. My shoulders hunched in horror as I spat red-tinged liquid out onto the grass.

  “Mai?” Kira murmured beside me. She woke slowly, the same dawn light that had broken me out of the nightmare prompting her to unfold, stretch, leverage her slender torso semi-upright.

  She looked terrible this morning. Her lips were gray around the edges. Her eyes were barely slitted open. Her voice sounded like a fox’s moan of discontent.

  And there was nothing I could do about it except mimic werewolves. So I slipped my hand onto her shoulder for a quick dose of comfort then pulled her upright to follow the path my gut suggested downhill through the trees. The Master is this way, a voice in my head seemed to murmur, its tone midway between Mama’s and my own.

  But as much as I wanted to find our enemy and settle this issue once and for all, we had to pass through the forest to get to that point. And my life in a concrete jungle had left me with few wildcrafting skills to call upon. Perhaps that’s why it took pretty much the entire day to pick our way through a forest that seemed to fold in on itself and grow larger by the hour, every passing moment making me doubt my instincts more and more.

  “I’m thirsty,” Kira whined as hot afternoon sunlight turned the forest into a sauna. Then she brightened, point
ed—“Look! There’s a stream...”

  “...Which you’re not drinking out of.” I grabbed the teen’s arm and pulled her away from the enticing rivulet of water. Wildcrafting wasn’t my strong suit, but even I knew that imbibing untreated water in a forest full of deer poop was a recipe for disaster. This trek would be significantly less pleasant if we both came down with the runs.

  Of course, I could have shifted into fox form and drunk from the creek without repercussions, but that would have been akin to smacking my kid sister in the face with her loss. Instead, I swallowed against the scratchiness in my throat, turned resolutely away from the water, then beat a path straight up a forty-five degree hillside in the direction my gut told me led toward the solution for my sister’s malaise.

  We walked forever, until my head pounded from the heat, drowning out cicadas, my thoughts, and even Kira’s dismal panting in my wake. “I really think if we’d stayed in that valley, that creek would have led us right here eventually,” my companion groused after we’d crested a rise, gone down the other side, and ended up beside a creek eerily similar to the one we’d started out beside.

  I opened my mouth to agree, then hesitated as strongly scented air flowed across my palate and down into my throat. The breeze was sharp with ozone, and now that our feet weren’t shuffling through leaf litter I was positive I heard something unusual rising over the insects’ relentless song.

  Yep, there it was again—a yelp piercing the thrum of the cicadas, a growl so deep it vibrated against my very bones.

  Kira’s dark eyes met mine, hers wide with worry. So she’d heard the same thing I had. Had heard, and was reacting in the way any smart fox would when facing predators larger than themselves—with the urge to flee.

  But Kira looked like death warmed over and the tug in my gut told me the solution lay before us rather than behind. So, taking my sister’s hand, I tugged her around a curve in the hillside...and straight into an amphitheater full of wolves.

  Chapter 14

  The indentation in the earth was massive, big enough to seat perhaps a thousand audience members upon the grassy steps that led from where we were standing down toward a similarly open and grass-lined stage. Which meant the two hundred or so shifters lounging both two-legged and four-legged before us should have been a measly showing barely sufficient to tempt the entertainment—two battling werewolves—out of bed.

  But the air was electric with excitement. The fighters moved so quickly I couldn’t tell one from the other. And every audience member leaned forward with such intensity that none noticed when Kira and I stepped out through the trees behind their backs.

  Which was a good thing since it gave me time to scan the audience, seeking the solution to Kira’s increasing weakness. The answer must be here somewhere—surely it wasn’t coincidence that we’d come all this way and ended up right back within the ozone-scented Atwood pack....

  There, my instincts whispered, the tug in my gut pulling me one step further out into the open before fading away entirely. Whatever was aiming me had turned my chin a little left of center, and I saw at once what I’d been guided toward.

  Ransom lounged upon a gilded throne at the edge of the stage area, one leg flung up over the armrest and an empty goblet dangling laxly from the opposite hand. A male whispered in his left ear while a simpering female topped up whatever he was drinking. And as the battling wolves before him tumbled and growled with such ferocity that even my bloodthirsty sister winced in sympathy, Ransom just smiled wider and lifted his goblet back to his lips.

  “When we were kids, Ransom was the rash one,” Gunner had told me many months earlier. “He made...mistakes...and was glad to have me as his compass.”

  Now, as a chill ran up my spine, I suddenly regretted never digging into what those mistakes consisted of. Why hadn’t I found time to ask the reason the younger brother acted in many ways like the older son?

  Because Gunner was unshakably loyal to his brother, that’s why. Because I trusted the alpha who had protected Kira so selflessly. Trusted him...and didn’t want to see him hurt.

  There in the amphitheater, Ransom’s eyes met mine with gleeful malice. And I accepted at last that I might have let the younger sibling’s trust cloud the instinctive judgment of my fox.

  Because the brows of the Atwood pack leader lifted sardonically, then his eyes flitted sideways to take in Kira sagging beside me. The gesture was a clear warning, and I wished by all that was holy that I’d thought to stash my sister in the forest before walking boldly into the evening entertainment of the Atwood pack.

  Hoping to correct my mistake, I scanned the crowd in search of familiar faces. Tank, Allen, Crow, and Elle were present, I noted thankfully. All four were clustered on a back step, close enough so Kira could likely reach them before Ransom’s men had time to attack.

  But I made no move to push her toward them, not wanting to relinquish my sister to second-tier protectors no matter how loyal they might be. Instead, I scanned the crowd again, hoping Gunner would materialize and use his strength to ensure Kira remained entirely safe.

  If the alpha was present, though, his large form was lost amid the watching shifters. And now the wolf battle amped up to the point where it drew even Ransom’s jaded eye...and my own skittish attention.

  There was fur in the air as the combatants rolled together across the stage area. The growls turned so fierce that I wanted to spray them with a water hose, and the front row of the audience scuttled backwards as the fighters impinged upon their personal space. I couldn’t understand why any pack leader in his right mind would allow such a battle to continue unhindered...

  ...and as if sensing my concern the pair froze, one wolf clamped down upon the other’s jugular. So this was it. The bloody end that a suddenly silent audience had been anticipating.

  “Mai, that’s...” Kira whispered. But I already knew what she was trying to point out. After all, I’d been smelling Gunner for several long minutes—the only surprise was that he was the losing wolf on the bottom rather than the triumphant wolf on top.

  Then the tables turned...or rather the wolves.

  The pause, it turned out, had been a gathering of energy rather than incipient submission. Because without regard to his enemy’s knife-sharp canines, Gunner shifted as he lunged upward. Muscled arms twisted, one behind his back and the other out in front. He heaved the black wolf through the air to thud so hard against Ransom’s throne that the latter lay still where he’d fallen. Then straightening, Gunner stood tall and naked, appearing more like a pack leader than his brother did upon his throne.

  The crowd erupted into an exuberant roar of shouts and clapping, but Gunner didn’t even acknowledge the noisy jubilation. Instead, his gaze met mine, the touch hard like the kiss we’d shared back at Wildacres...then soft like a hand on my back guiding me through an open door.

  Warmth, greeting, appreciation...then fear on my behalf. All of that flickered across Gunner’s features one second before all expression faded away.

  Unfortunately, Ransom was just as sharp as his brother and I doubted he’d missed the preceding exchange. But the pack leader didn’t remark upon our wordless greeting, merely clapped slowly and sarcastically as the losing combatant clambered to his feet and slunk, still four-legged, away into the crowd.

  “Well done, little brother,” Ransom broadcast loudly enough for me to hear from the top step. Clearly, the preceding battle had merely been a game in his estimation, and as he motioned toward the audience I saw for the first time what had been intended as the prize.

  Because a woman in a translucent white dress hovered at the edge of the assembled shifters. She was all pack princess—young and beautiful. And, apparently, for sale to the highest bidder now.

  “Congratulations,” Ransom continued. “You have won a night with the lovely Lucinda by your side.”

  Chapter 15

  I think I must have gasped. Whatever the reason, Kira’s right hand clamped down upon my left arm so hard I
lost all circulation. And, in reaction, I forced my spine to straighten, my face to remain as serene as Gunner’s still was.

  But Ransom wasn’t done teasing us. “Stay, stay, the show’s not over!” he proclaimed, halting shifters who had begun standing and shaking tension out of their bodies in preparation for departure. Obediently, they stilled and sank back down upon the grass even as I pushed Kira toward the promised safety of Tank and his companions.

  Because something was about to happen. I felt it, knew Ransom’s trouble centered around me rather than around the brother he loved to hate.

  And, sure enough, this time Ransom gestured across the audience in my direction. “Tonight will be a double header,” he continued. “Who wants to fight for the right to take Mai Fairchild to his bed?”

  Two hundred werewolves swiveled and stared at me, their eyes hungry, interested...and not friendly in the least. They were all young, I noticed, nearly all males too. As if the families and oldsters had opted out of Ransom’s summer gathering, knowing what sort of craziness was likely to occur therein.

  But Gunner rained on their parade quite admirably. Although already half entangled in Lucinda, he still managed to step forward and proclaim “Mai is mine” around the female shifter’s curly updo.

  Everyone else quaked before the younger sibling’s growl, but Ransom merely laughed. “Don’t get greedy, little brother. You already hold one bitch in heat. What use would you have for a fox?”

  And, just like that, the cat came thoroughly out of the bag. “Kitsune”...”Fox”...”Magic”—words rose above the crowd in waves of whispers. I caught only hints of the ensuing conversation, but what I heard was pretty much what I’d come to expect.