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  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The wolf dreams were more frantic and confused when they came this time.

  Fenrir, so much bigger on all fours than I was upright, launched himself at the massive rock his chain wound through. Furious, insane lights glowed in his fearsome eyes. Foam dripped from his mouth, coating his chest in white flecks and flowing like a river around him. He didn’t even notice.

  Sköll and Hati raced faster through a black sky. Angry clouds roiled in the distance, ominous and frightening. The twin wolves snarled and thrashed their heads back and forth, showing sharp, yellowed fangs. The lights in their eyes were as insane, as inhumane and impossible, as Fenrir’s were. They stiffened, their ears perking up.

  They launched themselves higher into the air, splitting away from one another to run in a wide V. Faster and faster they ran before veering toward one another. They stopped and started circling. They snarled and snapped at something I couldn’t see.

  I knew what they were attacking though. Dace. The pain of that truth was intense, boiling through me like the foam cutting a desiccated canyon into the rock around Fenrir.

  As soon as the pain hit, the scene flickered.

  The misty figure I’d seen with the two shadowed wolves in my previous dreams replaced the snarling twins. He was mist and cloud, as insubstantial as fog but there all the same. He crooked one hazy finger, and one of the two wolves stepped forward from the shadows. As daylight hit him, he flashed like a strike of lightning.

  When my vision cleared, I stared uncomprehendingly at familiar green eyes and snowy white, gray-streaked fur. The other wolf stepped up beside him, as familiar to me as the other, and just as beautiful with fur as white as snow from nose to tail.

  A howl of recognition rent the air as that wolf looked at me.

  In a blink, the scene spun again. Wolves raced across the forest floor with a flock of ravens overhead. The two wolves I’d already seen raced ahead of the others, leading them toward death. Two huge ravens soared overhead, flying to battle as surely as the wolves ran toward it.

  One of the ravens turned its head and saw me. His beak opened, a scream of fury ripping through the air.

  Dace’s wolf turned green eyes on me. For a moment, his stride slowed. He stopped, his eyes burning into mine.

  I love you.

  Pain raged through me.

  I came to with a strangled sob, memory rushing up to replace my dreams the minute I surfaced. Dace! Dace was hurt.

  I thrashed, trying to move.

  Hands grabbed at me, restraining me.

  “He’s alive, Arionna,” a familiar voice told me, urgency lacing his tone. “He’s alive.”

  My eyes flew open, my heart hammering wildly.

  Professor Edwards leaned over me, his hands pinning me down. His eyes were wide and worried. “He’s alive.”

  My eyes flickered across his face, and I knew he wasn’t lying. But things weren’t okay, either. Edwards had a grim set to his mouth to match the worried glint in his warm eyes. Dace was alive, but I didn’t think he was in control any longer. The wolf broke free.

  “Do you understand me?” Professor Edwards asked, forming each word slowly.

  I nodded, numb with the relief washing through me. Dace was alive.

  The professor’s hands relaxed on my shoulders, then fell away.

  I sat up and groaned, my head throbbing. Where was I? My gaze swept around the room. Home. On the couch.

  A lady I’d seen only once before, at Dani’s funeral, stood across the room, watching me with eyes as vividly blue as Dace’s were emerald green. Naomi Edwards, one of Dace’s shifters.

  “Where is he?” I asked her. My voice was hoarse, my throat sore. My body ached, but the painful protest felt misty, too slow. “You drugged me.”

  “We had to,” Naomi said. “You wouldn’t stop screaming.”

  “Where is he?” I demanded, not giving a damn if I’d screamed the entire town deaf. It didn’t matter. Dace almost died. I wanted to howl in relief that he was okay, and scream in fury that he’d been hurt at all.

  “Your father and Gage are with him,” she said.

  “I want to see him.” I had to see him.

  “Not right now,” she answered, coming closer. “He’s not in control.”

  Her eyes met mine, telling me something.

  “You know.” I didn’t need her response. I saw in her eyes she knew who I was and what I meant to Dace. I’d never considered it before, but as she stared at me, I realized he’d made each of his shifters promise to keep him away from me if he ever shifted. He’d demanded the same pledge from Kalei’s pack. Until he trusted the wolf completely, he wouldn’t risk my safety. I wanted to shake the man and kiss him at once.

  “I know,” she said. “You wouldn’t stop screaming.”

  I still wanted to scream. Dace lost control. That didn’t frighten me, but I knew he was probably terrified.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Naomi hesitated.

  I turned to Professor Edwards. He watched us warily, his expression still grim.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked him.

  “Mandy Chapman is missing,” he said, his reluctance obvious. “She disappeared sometime during all of this.” He waved a hand, as if to indicate the room.

  I knew what he meant. Dace. Me.

  ”Are Beth and Chelle—?” I couldn’t finish the question.

  “They’re safe,” Naomi answered.

  What was her animal? A wolf? A big cat? Before I could decide, her words registered. Relief that Beth and Chelle were safe slammed into me.

  Dace’s wolf slipped into my mind. The all-over ache intensified, little snippets of pain breaking through the surface of whatever drug Naomi gave me. The wolf didn’t leap this time; he simply slipped through like air. I wanted to sob, my relief at feeling him overwhelming. I didn’t even care if feeling his pain mixed with my own hurt. He and Dace were truly okay.

  He growled in response to my pain.

  I’m fine, I soothed him.

  The wolf stopped growling and pushed at my mind tentatively, trying to tell me something. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on him. My head hurt, and I had no clue what I was doing, but somehow I did it. I pushed through the walls Dace built, then stumbled into the wolf’s mind as easily as he and Dace came into mine.

  His thoughts weren’t neatly ordered and rigidly controlled as Dace’s were when I managed to catch a glimpse of them. His thoughts were less focused than that, and infinitely more profound. His mind was the sky, and his thoughts the stars. The vastness of his conscious was brighter than anything I’d ever seen.

  The pain intensified. He growled faintly, but didn’t shut me out. He welcomed me instead, embracing me as if Dace himself wrapped his arms around me and held me to his heart. For the first time since I’d realized I was supposed to be like Dace, I had been like him at one point, I felt right. Like I’d found my home.

  The wolf felt it, too. The anger pulsing through his mind vanished as if it had never been there. Love poured into every space anger had taken up, striking that sky with clusters of bright diamonds. Even our mutual pain receded as he wrapped me in waves of love and devotion as endless as what my memories had shown me.

  I saw us, I told him in wonder as he turned those familiar green eyes on me. I saw who we were once.

  The wolf didn’t think in words or even images. I knew he understood those things, and that he’d sent them out to me before, but as Dace said it was with Kalei’s wolves, the knowledge of what he wanted me to know simply appeared. My thoughts and his overlapped, but the way they connected wasn’t chaotic. They twisted together like thick ropes, just as mine and Dace’s did.

  The constant chatter of my thoughts quieted as our bond allowed emotion to course between us like electric down a line. My dream tumbled to the surface, pulled out by him. Two wolves stood side by side, staring at me. As Dace’s wolf nudged at my mind, realization of what he
tried to tell me shot through me like an arrow.

  I’m part of you, I whispered to him, stunned. I’d always felt more right with Dace and the wolf in their little corner, but that peaceful feeling didn’t even compare to how it felt to be wrapped in his thoughts at the same time. We were interlocking puzzle pieces snapping securely into place.

  Mine. The voice was that same fierce growl of possession I’d heard from him and Dace before. Only, he didn’t mean him alone though. He meant him and Dace both. I belonged to both of them, and he did not question it at all.

  Being accepted so completely by this side of Dace awed me, and I wanted to cry. The wolf had no reservations and held nothing back. Everything he felt and everything he thought, he showed me without hesitation. I was humbled by how many of those thoughts were of me and what I had been, and of what we had always been together. Not my wolf and his, but the four of us.

  My wolf and I were the heart Dace and his wolf shared and the link that bound them. They had always been the same for us. We were not two half humans and two half wolves, but two complete humans and two complete wolves, tied so tightly together that no side of us was right without the other.

  The bond running between us completed us, allowing us to walk fully in both the human and wolf world in every life we’d ever lived. What we saw, what we thought, and what we felt in each of those worlds we shared between us. We were four fully functioning parts of one soul, and infinitely more powerful than any wolf or human could ever be alone. We weren’t human or wolf. We were mystical, powerful, and only complete when we were all together. At least we had been, once upon a time.

  You have to let him come back, I told the wolf.

  He rumbled, and the sound shook me. Pain flashed through me—his pain for Dace, and mine. Anger lashed at his mind like the strike of a whip or a clap of thunder. My anger coursed white hot through my veins. It didn’t frighten me this time, or overwhelm me. His mind protected me, allowing my anger to rise while buffering it from overload.

  We have to find Ronan.

  The wolf growled, curling his mind around me as if to protect me with his very essence. I got it then, and nothing had been so clear in my life. Dace and his wolf cherished me above all else, and they would protect me against everything, even if that meant protecting me from them. It didn’t matter if my wolf remained buried or not. I could no longer shift, but it changed nothing for them. They both loved me in this life as they had in every other, and neither of them would risk me for even a second. Our bond was unbreakable, and it meant everything to them.

  Our connection was also more personal than anything else. Something for us alone. Dace’s wolf, our wolf, was furious that Ronan intruded on that and hurt me. I belonged to them and them alone, just as they belonged to me and me alone. Anyone else who touched did so at their own peril because we did not share. Ever.

  Dace’s fear of me getting hurt wasn’t his fear alone. The wolf shared his fear, and Ronan had angered both of them, made them both feel as if they hadn’t protected me as well as they were supposed to. Dace’s attack today made that worse. For both of them, I think. They’d been unable to hide the truth from me, unable to hide their pain.

  We have to find Sköll and Hati, I told him.

  The wolf howled, agreeing, and pushed me gently from his mind. The link between us vanished. That was okay though; I knew the wolf would allow Dace to return as soon as he could. He didn’t want to control Dace. He’d never wanted that. He wanted Dace to understand, and he’d tried desperately to communicate with Dace the only way he knew how.

  “Arionna?” Naomi called my name as tears dripped down my cheeks.

  I opened my eyes to find her and her husband both watching me, concern etched on both their faces.

  “I’m fine,” I said, meaning it.

  Dace and the wolf would be okay, and even if I was no longer able to shift, I still I belonged by their side. They were stronger with me than without me. They always had been, and they always would be. We always would be.

  After being unable to save Chiran, I think I’d needed to know that.

  “Are the wolves okay?” I asked Naomi, wiping tears from my face.

  “They’re fine,” she said. Something flickered in her eyes.

  “They’re here,” I guessed.

  She bit her lip and then nodded.

  “I want to see them.” I pushed to my feet, wobbling a little. What kind of sedative had they given me?

  “I don’t think—”

  “They can help look for Mandy,” I cut her off, not caring what she thought right then. “If they’re here, then they aren’t doing that.”

  “Dace won’t like it.” She might not have been scared of that possibility, but she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with his anger either.

  “He doesn’t have to like it,” I muttered. He could yell at me for it later if he felt so inclined. I didn’t think he would though. I hobbled into the kitchen and out onto the back porch with Professor Edwards and his wife trailing behind me.

  Day had given way to night at some point while I’d been out. Stars shone overhead, little tufts of cloud floating through the sky.

  I pushed open the back door and gritted my teeth before shuffling down the steps. My muscles screamed as I sank down on the bottom step, breathing unsteadily.

  “Buka,” I called, confident she would hear me. I knew what drew them here now: Dace.

  They were as bound to us as we were to one another. We’d led wolves and men into battle against Sköll and Hati for eons, and they answered that call instinctively. The pack felt their coming, even if they hadn’t known what it meant, and they came to stand against them.

  I waited.

  A shadow flashed at the edge of the lawn, darker than the others. It crept closer.

  “Come here, Buka,” I said, peering at the shadows.

  She broke through, loping toward me, graceful and on edge at once.

  “Hello,” I greeted as she stopped a few feet from me.

  She whined low in her throat.

  “Dace is hurt.” A tear slid from the corner of my eye as I said it. Even though I knew he would be okay, knowing he’d been hurt at all killed me.

  Buka flew to my side in an instant. I threw my arms around her neck, burying my face in her fur. I took a deep breath and shuddered. She laid her head on my shoulder in a timeless, human gesture of shared hurt. She loved Dace, too.

  Professor and Mrs. Edwards stirred behind us. Their amazement at how easily Buka and I comforted one another was evident. We were not woman and wolf though, but friends. Naomi, at least, should have understood.

  “I need your help, Buka,” I told her after a minute, removing my arms from her neck so I could look at her. She sat back on her haunches at my feet. “One of Dace’s humans has been taken. She’s in danger. You and Kalei must help find her.”

  Buka laid her ears back, her lip curling.

  “Yes,” I said, reaching out to scratch her head. “He will be angry if she’s hurt. And so will I,” I added, the words burning with truth. “She was very nice to me. A friend.”

  Buka whined again.

  “We have to find her before Dace comes back. Sköll and Hati hurt him Buka.” I narrowed my eyes, the words sending shards of anger through my mind. “They almost killed him.”

  Buka growled dangerously.

  I knew what she wanted.

  “We will find them,” I promised her, meaning every word. We would find them, and we would kill them. If it was the last thing I did, I’d help ensure that. Not because we had to, but because I wanted to. For what they’d done to Dace. “But we have to find the girl first, the human.”

  Buka rose from her haunches.

  “Thank you, Buka.” I patted her head.

  She stepped forward and touched her forehead to mine once before loping back into the trees at the edge of the lawn. Her howl rent the air.

  I rose to my feet as the howl faded, then turned back to the house. Professo
r and Mrs. Edwards watched me, their expressions indecipherable.

  “They’ll find her,” I promised. I only prayed the wolves found her in time.

  “How did you … ?” Professor Edwards started and then trailed off when Naomi nudged him.

  I met his gaze, feeling oddly defiant.

  He gave me a weak smile, then looked away.

  “I want to see him,” I said again, turning to Naomi.

  “Soon,” she promised. Her expression was both apologetic and uncompromising.

  I would have to settle for that answer. Dace’s wolf wouldn’t hurt me, but I didn’t want to cause them any more stress than was necessary. Until the wolf retreated and I could make Dace believe, I had to be patient.

  Naomi and the Professor kept a silent vigil with me until the wee hours of the morning, on red alert for any news. I sat curled in an armchair, staring into the empty fireplace and waiting. Periodically, one of their cell phones rang, but the calls were never from my father or Gage.

  By two o’clock, the calm that had settled into my mind began wearing off. I needed to see Dace with my own two eyes, touch him with my own two hands, but his wolf wouldn’t allow that any more than Dace would. Were there any male species that weren’t overprotective and stubborn?

  The furtive, wary glances the Professor kept shooting me didn’t help. He looked at me as if trying to figure out if I was an alien. His wife behaved little better. She didn’t flush with guilt when I turned at the feel of her eyes on me. She only moved her gaze unhurriedly along, a thoughtful glimmer in her eyes.

  More than once, I repressed the urge to tell them exactly what I was in an attempt to get them to stop staring at me. The numbing effects of the drugs had long since worn off, and I hurt. Every inch of me burned. There were no bruises, but I felt like I should have been covered in them.

  At three, a howl outside split the frustrating silence wide open.

  I leapt to my feet, racing to the back door before the familiar howl cut off. Naomi and the Professor were right on my heels.

  I threw open the door then raced down into the yard, oblivious to the protests my body screamed at me. Buka and her cub, Fuki, waited there for me. Fuki rocked in place.