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  Plus, assuming Ruth wasn’t just hopping off the highway for a bathroom break, the declining speed meant we were likely close to our destination. If I wanted to maintain the element of surprise, I needed to act fast.

  To that end, I clawed at the wisp of rope that would unhook the trunk latch. My fingers got no purchase, but I wasn’t completely lacking in tools the way Ruth had intended. Instead, the magnets that had held my pelt in cloak shape snapped together around the end of the rope, forming a replacement handle.

  Unfortunately, they also clung to the metal the rope emerged from.

  The car was slowing more precipitously now. My breath was loud in the darkness. I ignored the magnets for the moment, wriggling as best I could out of my clothing. The space was too cramped to undress properly, though, so I gave up on my boots at the end.

  My pelt slipped back around my naked form with the ease of a hug. Fingernails that had gotten no purchase on the rope lengthened ever so slightly as my lupine nature rose within me. Fingernail-claws slid between metal car body and magnets. Allowed me to cling to the makeshift handle and give a sharp tug....

  The trunk whipped open as if it was spring-loaded. There were trees above me, orange leaves half-blocking a crimson sunset. Vaguely, I heard female exclamations—not just Ruth; two other voices also. One high-pitched and young. The other deeper and old.

  “What’s...?”

  “Stop her!”

  Then I was lupine and running. Clothes and magnet forgotten, I sprinted into the nearby woods.

  PAWS CRUNCHED ALONG behind me less than a minute later. My pursuers weren’t woozy from whatever I’d been drugged with and they likely knew the territory. But I had a solid head start.

  A head start...and a direction. I shouldn’t have been able to smell Luke, yet his spicy aroma tantalized me. Cinnamon sweetness led me due west into the sunset.

  Luke met me halfway.

  Black fur emerged from descending shadows. He was running three-legged, one hind foot tucked up beneath him. A sight for sore eyes...until I realized that bolt of energy rushing through me wasn’t joy.

  Nope, that was pure rage.

  Turned out I was furious with Ruth for drugging me and my cousin then stuffing me in a trunk to be taken where I refused to go willingly. I was mad at myself for pining—yes, pining, like a sixteen-year-old girl crying over the marriage of a twenty-something rock star.

  Mostly, though, I was angry with Luke, who hadn’t trusted me enough to join him in what was clearly a perilous undertaking. Who had kept tabs on me online but never once contacted me. Who cared more about his pack, apparently, than he cared about me.

  Or—my eyes flew to his tucked-up foot—more than he cared about himself.

  But this wasn’t the moment for fury. Luke swung wide to come between me and danger as two scarred females and a slender, unmarked wolf crested the hill on which we stood. Rather than snarling, I took up a position one step behind him.

  By then, Ruth, Aunt May, and Carly were shimmering upward in tandem. “This isn’t what it looks like,” Ruth—their clear leader—started.

  I couldn’t shift in front of Aunt May and Carly. But I could get my point across. I growled deep and low in my throat while Luke unfolded upwards to speak the same spiky warning I was trying to convey.

  “I sincerely hope not.”

  His words were hard, but his right ankle was purple and swollen. Any of the women present could have pushed him over with a well-timed shove.

  I was the one who wanted to shove him. Instead, I padded around to stand between Luke and his relatives. After all, I possessed fangs and four working limbs.

  My gesture drew a chuckle from Aunt May. “All’s well that ends well though. Isn’t it, nephew?”

  Luke closed his eyes for one split second—was he battling the same rage I was at this whole situation?—then he bit out a command. “Leave us. Ruth, get her belongings. The rest of you, don’t tell anyone Honor’s here.”

  Ruth snorted, staring at me hard as if trying to remind me of my supposed purpose. What had she wanted me to do, again? Something about my bite?

  I wasn’t interested. Luke’s leg quivered. He needed to sit down before he fell down.

  So I barked an agreement with Luke’s order. And, to my surprise, Ruth nodded. She and her two companions shimmered down until they were once again four-legged, then they retreated back the way they’d come.

  Chapter 11

  Only when the sole wolf I smelled was myself did my fur slough off my body. I laid the pelt down on the damp leaves and demanded: “Sit.”

  It was as if fury fled along with my pelt. Luke’s laughter was warmer than the air around us. Especially when he ignored my order, leaning back against the smooth trunk of a beech tree and pulling me in closer. His skin slid up against my skin.

  “I can’t believe you came.” His palms burned heat into my shoulders. “I thought you’d decided....” He shook his head. “You are the most beautiful wolf I’ve ever seen.”

  I tilted my head back, breathing in his scent. I’d forgotten the depths beneath the cinnamon. The sharp bite of flint broken along a perfect crease in the rock’s internal structure. The faintest flicker of fire just beginning to singe.

  Attraction was overwhelming my ability to think straight...so I physically pushed myself off Luke’s body. Turned my back and took a step away until the spicy scent released me from its grip.

  Right. Anger. Betrayal. And the real issue between us...

  “I’m not skinless,” I warned. “I’m woelfin.”

  “I’m well aware of that.” Silence, then: “Honor, will you turn around?”

  Swiveling to face him was like walking back into a fire. The scar on my neck throbbed. I had to lock my muscles to prevent myself from falling into his arms again.

  Perhaps that’s why my words turned tart, fury rekindled. “Woelfin don’t make decisions for each other,” I bit out. “We don’t have big, bad alphas who rule with an iron fist. It’s not the men up here,” I lifted a hand to head level, “and the women beneath them. We’re a family. We bend to help each other, but we each follow our own path.”

  Luke nodded. “I screwed up. When I bit you.”

  Cinnamon spiraled up from the scar on my neck. Luke didn’t get it. That was the only part of our relationship that didn’t feel like a mistake at the moment.

  And...somehow the space between us had disappeared. The last rays of sunlight beat into my back, while Luke bent his neck to bring our lips closer together. He was...sniffing the thin scar at the crook of my neck?

  “You didn’t wash it.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or angry. Either way, air pushed back between us, this time not because of my actions.

  Luke had released my shoulders. Gravity rocked me back onto my heels as a voice insinuated itself into the gap.

  “I brought her here to fix that lapse.”

  RUTH. I turned to face my captor, who was not only taller than me but also armed with my own weapon.

  My feelings about Luke were muzzy and muddled. My feelings about Ruth, though, were perfectly clear.

  She was a bully and I was having none of it. “Give me my sword,” I demanded, stepping forward stiff-legged until I was one inch from the blade’s well-sharpened tip.

  Ruth snorted. “What do you think I brought it for?”

  Of course, she didn’t hand the weapon over. That would have been too simple. A flick of her wrist and the sword tumbled end over end, catching the last ray of sunset then seeming to quench the day’s light as the hilt thunked into my grip.

  Meanwhile, cinnamon swirled behind me. Ruth might be a bully, but Luke was a protector at his core. I barely had time to realize how naked I felt without access to my lupine side before Luke draped my pelt around my shoulders.

  Perhaps that’s why I leaned back into his cinnamon. Back into the safety of his body heat. Back into Luke.

  Ruth watched this byplay, eyes narrowing. “If I’d wanted
to drown in sugar, I would have raided a bee tree,” she muttered, her features disappearing into shadow.

  Then, shaking off her annoyance and dismissing me in the same moment, she spoke to her brother over my shoulder. “Aunt May is gathering the pack. We’ll reopen Honor’s wound and bind herbs inside to overcome your odor.”

  Just like that, the Luke I knew shattered. Now he was the one bathing in metaphorical bile. Rather than speaking he growled out a deep rumble of refusal. Ruth snorted and spoke over his complaint.

  “It’s either that or have someone else bite her. I didn’t think you’d—”

  “No.” This time Luke’s objection was more of a roar.

  I tensed, hands rising to grip my pelt. Luke’s scent swirled around me like cinnamon-sugar that had oozed out of a pastry and burned on the pan while the rest was baking. No longer a protector, it seemed I had a wild wolf at my back.

  Unlike me, Ruth was unfazed by both scent and verbal explosion. “This isn’t Honor’s world, Luke. Let her go, make an example of whoever killed our father, and the pack will heal enough so you can leave as well.”

  Luke’s wolf breathed down my neck as he gritted out a rejoinder. “I killed our father.”

  “Sure.” Ruth shrugged. “You put him out of his misery. But my gut says whoever ripped out Father’s belly is responsible for the bear trap, the backbiting, maybe even the lone wolves nipping at our boundaries. Find them. Kill them. The pack will be strong again.”

  Air brushed up against my neck as Luke changed position behind me. “I won’t be our father.”

  “And you refuse to let Carly mate to build alliances either.” Ruth was the one who sounded half-lupine now. “So there’s only one alternative. Remove your bite from Honor’s neck and clarify who’s sword maiden. Then I’ll deal with the mess.”

  A long moment of silence, nothing but the rustle of wind in the branches above us. Then Luke’s scent enfolded me so strongly that I knew he’d leaned in closer. “This is your decision, Honor. Not mine. Not Ruth’s.”

  He was giving me what I’d asked for. The adrenaline rush of having a wild wolf behind me softened, sweetened. My rage entirely fled.

  Then Ruth snorted and Luke’s voice hardened. “Honor makes her own choices. Are we clear about that fact, sister?”

  Ruth’s answer was a snarl. “Crystal.”

  This time I did turn...to face a swirl of cinnamon that was already fading into the dark.

  Chapter 12

  Ruth returned all of my possessions except my cell phone. “I left it in the car,” she explained. “No service out here.”

  So I had to take her word for it that Justice was fine. That she’d stashed him under the bridge where no one was likely to find him. That she’d used speed dial on his phone to alert Bastion of his state.

  Her patience with reassuring me only lasted a few seconds however. Then her voice turned intense.

  “No matter what Aunt May said, this isn’t a game,” Ruth informed me. “Our pack is sleeping rough in the forest because it’s easier to defend ourselves if there are no roads nearby. Luke is out from dawn until dark patrolling this not-really territory to keep out lone wolves. It’s only a matter of time until the packs we’re really worried about find out our clan is rotten in the center. I refuse to let our alpha be distracted at such a critical time.”

  Her words had weight, especially combined with the way Luke had recoiled when he saw my mating scar. “I screwed up,” he’d told me. “When I bit you.”

  It hurt that the mark on my neck was so obviously wrong by the standards of Luke and his sister. But I was in a skinless world, so I needed to learn from skinless.

  Or accept their advice and leave their world so Luke and I could reunite in mine.

  Aloud, I only said: “I get it. Luke needs time to fix the pack so he can leave it. That’s why I’m here.”

  Another snort as Ruth cocked her head. “Is it? Or are you here because I threw you in the trunk, woelfin?”

  I started to answer, but she shook her head. Wolf ears had heard something I missed. “Get dressed,” she ordered.

  “Try not to bark orders,” I countered.

  Still, Ruth was right. I barely had time to hide my pelt beneath clothes before the pack crested the hilltop. It was fully dark now, so I felt more than saw the surge of wolf bodies rushing toward us. Too intertwined to distinguish. Too many to count.

  Here and there, though, I caught the glint of eyes in the darkness. Smelled signature aromas—damp pennies, cold pizza, a discarded feather from a hawk.

  There was no light other than the moon. No sound beyond the crunch of leaves beneath paws and my own harsh breathing. I used a tree trunk to guard my back, gripping the hilt of my sword hard even though the blade rested deceptively alongside my thigh.

  A hint of sweet cinnamon suggested Luke was present also, but he didn’t prevent the strange skinless from pressing around me, sniffing, testing. When they shifted in tandem, the transformation raised hairs up and down my arms.

  Their faces were far enough away so their voices ran together:

  “This is the sword maiden?”

  “Why doesn’t she run with us?”

  “She smells like our alpha.”

  Complaints, annoyance, interest. I must have pulled the skinless from warm beds for this ceremony. Was that why the ones milling around me were all male, mostly young?

  Or, no, I was wrong. They weren’t all male. Aunt May spoke so close to my left shoulder it felt like she’d read my mind.

  “Step back. Give the sword maiden room to breathe.”

  I felt more than saw as the skinless receded into a broad circle. Smelled females gathering into the gap.

  “Come.” This was Ruth, reaching out her hand to draw me forward. “We’ll start with the washing. It’s important the pack smells the change on you. Right now, you reek of two-legger perfume.”

  It wasn’t perfume. More like soap and shampoo. Still, I stumbled after her, relieved when the brightening glow of moonlight allowed me to see who was walking on either side of me.

  There were women present beyond Aunt May and Ruth. Four of them. Three old women and....

  “Carly?”

  The girl cocked her head at me, uncertain how I knew her name when we’d never been introduced. Rather than clue her in, I released the question that had been pulsing through me ever since the pack showed up in a haze of testosterone. “Are the children with their mothers?”

  An old woman sighed. Ruth snorted. Aunt May was the one who answered.

  “This is all of us. And there’ll be one fewer once Carly’s betrothal is finalized.” A squeak from the girl didn’t quite overwhelm the old woman’s return to the original subject. “Come. It’s time to get you washed.”

  WE PICKED OUR WAY DOWN into a mossy gully where a spring bubbled up out of the ground. “It’s safe to drink,” Carly murmured. Only then did I realize that my throat was raw from a day spent comatose followed by a mad dash and emotionally-charged conversation. I pressed my entire face into the water, letting the icy cold tingle across my tongue.

  “There’s mint downstream,” Aunt May barked, sending Carly scurrying away from me. Like a child, not a teenager. Was the girl really old enough to be married? Mated? What did betrothal mean to skinless?

  That thought fled along with Carly. It was hard to focus on anyone except myself when five sets of eyes bored into me. I was relieved when Ruth barked out a command.

  “Turn around.”

  “She doesn’t have anything we don’t have, girlie.” This was the oldest of the women. They were all naked. I was the only one clothed.

  Clothed...with a pelt hiding beneath woven fabric. Unbeknownst to them, I really did possess something they did not.

  So I waited. And, eventually, they humored me. The older women wandered off as a unit to sit on a boulder and discuss something I could only half hear. Words like “Girls” and “shy” and “mating moon” drifted toward me, but I blocked o
ut their teasing. Stripped. Washed in ice-cold water that was much less pleasant on the outside than it had been on my throat.

  While I splashed, Ruth whispered directly into my ear. “When the time comes for the cut, don’t flinch.” Her voice was nearly silent, low enough so the old women might not have heard her. She shuffled her feet in newly fallen leaves to further cover up the sound as she explained. “Even though you’re leaving him, your weakness would reflect badly on the alpha.”

  “The alpha,” not “Luke,” not “my brother.” I nodded even though I could barely see her in the moonlight.

  Then minty air breathed across me. Carly had returned.

  “Is this enough?” The girl’s voice was hesitant. As if growing up amid so many men and so few women had turned her mouselike. Was that why she didn’t reject a betrothal I couldn’t imagine she wanted? Was Michael—younger than her, even though technically her uncle—the only one to whom she could speak her true mind?

  I had no idea of the answer, but I built her up anyway. “It’s perfect. Good job, Carly.”

  The girl’s shadow form straightened in front of me then sank back in upon herself as Ruth snorted. Did that woman do nothing other than snort?

  Okay, no, she also bit out orders: “Carly, turn around. Honor, if you intend to dress again, hurry. Leave your neck bare.”

  I slid into my pelt, using the magnets Ruth had returned with my clothes to draw the edges closed around my belly rather than around my neck this time. Clothes stuck to damp skin as I yanked fabric on over the fur, causing my outfit to ruck up in strange ways.

  Grace would have been horrified at my breach of fashion etiquette. I was more concerned by the suspicion that my pelt wouldn’t stay in place if I was forced to move rapidly.

  I’d just have to hope there was no reason to run.

  Chapter 13

  I crested the hill, damp and chilled, to the sight of a bonfire. A small one, as if Luke’s pack was afraid to attract undue attention. Still, the light and warmth were appreciated. I took another step forward...and the chatter instantly ceased.