Behind me, Ambrose laughed that deep, booming chortle that sounded so wrong coming out of Jack’s lips. I lifted my chin, intending to tell him to shut up. Or perhaps I’d just glare and take this call out of the prison so I could speak without being interrupted.

  But my eye caught movement from the opposite direction before I’d fully turned to face Ambrose. The door to the outside had opened and a familiar face was peeking through, one belonging to the last person Jack would have wanted drawn into this mess.

  Lynette. The teenager who was Drake’s ward and who I’d locked in a cell months ago. She needed to be protected and I was very much not the one to do so.

  “Honor,” I said into the phone, interrupting her planning, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

  Chapter 19

  Lynette and I were still arguing hours later as we approached our destination. “You have two choices,” I told the teenager as our car followed the van Honor and her cousin were using to transport Ambrose. “I can drop you off with Tru and mention the fact that you’re not actually spending winter break with your boyfriend’s aunt and uncle. Or you can stay in the car where it’s safe.”

  Her fury smelled as acrid as car exhaust. “Jack would never even consider ratting me out.”

  “You didn’t know Jack existed until November,” I countered. As best I could tell from the memories I’d paged through back when I first met him, Jack had spent a grand total of ten or twelve days in this girl’s presence over the course of the past few years. Each time, he’d pretended to be his brother, which made Lynette’s demands now feel more like teenage drama than anything grounded in reality.

  And yet, the warm emotions that colored Jack’s recollections were enough to make me regret my words as soon as they popped out of my mouth. That plus the way Lynette’s chin dropped down to her chest, her shoulders hunching inward.

  I’d hurt her again. With one thoughtless sentence, I’d severed a connection Lynette considered family. And unlike the last time, her pain now seemed to hop directly from her skin into mine in the form of a tightening of my throat.

  Belatedly, I realized that Jack might not have mentioned Lynette when he shared his dream of the two of us one day living next door to his brother, but that was only because he must have considered her inclusion self-explanatory. Lynette was like a niece to him. Anyone who’d lived within a real body for more than six weeks would have understood that.

  I’d messed up by suggesting anything else.

  So I rewound, or tried to. “Look, I’m an idiot. You might not have known who Jack was until November, but you know him a lot better than Honor and her cousin do. And I know him even less well since Ambrose has been in his skin pretty much the entire time we’ve been mated.”

  “Whatever.” Lynette continued staring at the fists in her lap. I’d need more than words to fix this.

  So I did something royally stupid. Human bodies seemed to encourage that sort of behavior.

  “I brought his pelt.” I didn’t explain why. Didn’t explain how I’d opted to keep it safe in that dusty old trunk in the attic, then had veered back for it at the last minute. Someone out there was stealing woelfin pelts, and I couldn’t risk the minuscule chance that leaving Jack’s behind would put him in danger. The mere possibility twisted my gut.

  I didn’t say any of that and Lynette didn’t ask about it. Instead, she muttered a single word: “So?” Her face was still turned away from me although her attention had risen to look out the side window. Given that there was nothing to see out there other than darkness, I considered the change of focus progress.

  “So I don’t want to leave it behind unprotected,” I answered, trying to fill my voice with the kindness I remembered others applying to Lynette. “Can you stay in the car and guard it for me?”

  The truth was, Jack’s pelt was currently tucked around the spare tire in the trunk. If no one knew it was present, it should have been pretty safe.

  But Lynette needed a job. Something to make her feel important, part of this mission. Something that would give her an incentive to stay out of harm’s way without feeling coddled. I was starting to understand a little better how my words on our way from Rosa’s house to the coffee shop had been useful on the surface but deeply unhelpful underneath.

  And my newfound understanding of humanity paid off. Lynette’s gaze finally met mine just as I pulled up behind Honor’s van at the side of a pitch black country road ten miles from the O’Connell mansion. “I can do that,” the teenager promised, a hint of a smile on her face.

  “You’re sure Lynette will be safe?” I asked a quarter of an hour later, while helping Honor load doggy backpacks with everything she and I would need to slip into the O’Connell mansion. Flashlights. Clothes and ski masks. Swords and ropes. A can of the same spray deodorant we were currently wafting over ourselves to make us much harder to track.

  Other than the addition of Lynette, we’d planned everything down to the minute. Honor’s cameras had provided enough data to give us a good chance of slipping between O’Connell guards without being sighted, a necessary dodge since the cameras hadn’t picked up on any evidence of Mariana’s involvement thus far.

  Which meant we were breaking shifter law trespassing on O’Connell property. Taking action that Jack’s brother would be forced to punish if he heard about it. The fewer people involved, the less likely repercussions were to impact those we cared about.

  Yes, it all made rational sense. Still, my body told me everything was about to blow up in my face, a feeling that accelerated each time I glanced at where Lynette sat hunched over the glow of her cell phone inside my borrowed car.

  “My cousin will take care of Lynette,” Honor promised, those strange amber eyes boring into me. “Justice is Merry’s father. He wants this to work.” She paused for a moment, then offered me an out. “But if you need to stay behind, I can do this alone.”

  My entire body jittered with nervous anticipation, but I shook my head. No, I wouldn’t let this person Jack thought of like an older sister hunt solo for her niece’s pelt.

  So I unrolled my own pelt, the one I’d never used since becoming permanently grounded in this body. I’d hoped to don it for the first time after defeating Ambrose. To shift side by side with Jack, pelts sliding across our bare skin and wolf fur emerging in tandem. Our paws would strike the turf together as we ran side by side beneath a fingernail moon, the sharing as profound as the kisses and stories we’d exchanged between cell bars.

  Instead the moon was nearly full as I slid the pelt up under my backpack then shifted beside Honor, accepting this loss like I’d accepted others. Still, the memory of what Jack and I had never shared might explain why the cold hit me so hard when leather and fur melted into my skin, when for one split second between woman and wolf I was fully kami and back in the spirit realm.

  The gray there was different than I remembered. Frigid and dark with a wind whistling past me that didn’t exist a millisecond later when I popped back out on the other side in lupine form. Even the air had felt heavier, my shoulders still bowing under residual pressure as I shook myself to shed the in-between strangeness.

  Wolf, however, I handled the unsettling visit to the spirit realm better than I would have while human. That was then; this was now. It was time to move on.

  My reaction had been noticed however. Beside me, Honor cocked her lupine head, amber eyes full of questions. Was anything wrong?

  Perhaps. But if so, it was irrelevant to our current mission.

  Rather than answering, I turned away from the van within which Ambrose was cuffed. Away from Lynette holding onto Jack’s pelt and Honor’s cousin guarding both of them. Then I ran toward the O’Connell mansion, toward the hope of redemption that could never quite wipe clean my former activities committed on that same plot of earth.

  Chapter 20

  I understood family a little better an hour later, or perhaps the right word was pack. Not that Honor and I started out that way.

  Despite being united by a common purpose, despite our frequent calls and texts over the last several weeks, our paws had hit the ground out of sync from each other. The first time Honor paused at a road crossing, I barreled across it on the understanding that headlights would have made oncoming traffic obvious. Later, I turned up a slope the same instant she veered down toward a stream.

  Then, somehow, our actions harmonized. By the time we neared the stone wall surrounding the O’Connell grounds, all it took was an ear flick for us to decide who hesitated and who acted as decoy in case guards ended up outside their usual location. We didn’t even need a single yip to alert the other that now was the time to sprint through the ragged gap crumbled out of the stone and now was the time to lie panting on the leaf litter ensuring we hadn’t been seen.

  We hadn’t. And we weren’t seen as we wound through the complicated route between wild woods and formal gardens either. Clouds drifted across the swollen moon just in time to darken the landscape, which helped matters considerably. Still, the complete lack of guards was unsettling. The fur on my ruff bristled, but I soothed it down with the knowledge that Honor had trespassed here once before now. The cameras she’d planted weeks ago were the reason everything was going so smoothly now.

  We shifted back to human form within sight of the towering edifice within which the O’Connell alpha lived with his closest underlings. Time before last that I’d been here, I’d locked Tru and Lynette into cells in the basement. I’d turned off the lights as a parting shot even though I knew the teenager was terrified of the dark.

  How was Lynette doing now, waiting in equivalent darkness with only a stranger for company? My gut told me it had been the wrong move to leave her so close to Ambrose, but there had seemed no right move at that moment. Relationships were so much more complicated than I’d thought they were when full-on kami. It was difficult to choose a path when Lynette’s physical well-being was at odds with her emotional health.

  I only realized I was fingering the powered-down cell phone we’d brought along for emergency use when Honor’s voice breathed into my ear. “Listen, I get it. You’re worried about Lynette. I want to check on Merry too. Make sure she’s still stealing cookies and lying about it while giggling so hard everyone knows she’s the culprit. I want to find out whether her lost pelt is making her feel weird, whether she’s scared, whether she needs me. But if we turn our phones on, they’ll have evidence against us. We can’t afford that.”

  I nodded rather than answering. Honor was right, and it meant a lot that she’d taken the time to murmur such a long explanation when we were supposed to be silent. I didn’t need to call Lynette; I just wanted to. It was one of those oddities of being fully human. The head seemed prone to war with the heart.

  But the head was what I needed to listen to today. So I slipped into the black, skin-tight clothes Honor had brought for me. Pulled down the ski mask over my face and adjusted the straps on the nearly empty backpack until it sat tight against human shoulders. Finally, I steadied myself by gripping the hilt of my sword.

  No matter what happened, I could fight my way free again. I could fight Honor’s way free also.

  “Ready?” she asked, voice quiet as an autumn leaf floating down to land on the floor of the cloud-dark forest.

  “Ready,” I answered at exactly the same volume.

  Together, we opened the door and padded inside.

  I’d been so hungry when I visited this mansion with Ambrose and Honor six weeks ago that I must not have paid proper attention to the decor. Still, it was strange that I’d missed such overt trappings of Christianity. A ten-foot illuminated cross stretched up one wall as if this was a church rather than a residence. Music threaded around us, a chorus of unaccompanied voices singing God’s praises despite the fact everyone should have been sound asleep.

  Both cross and music were oddities, but neither was what we were here for. The alpha shared a suite with his mate on the second story. That was the obvious place to begin looking for Merry’s pelt.

  Soundlessly, Honor and I stalked shoulder to shoulder up the stairs.

  We were even more alert now, having accepted the inevitability of running into O’Connell shifters once we set foot indoors. To prepare, Honor and I had brought gags and ropes, the plan being to disarm and immobilize anyone we came in contact with, never speaking so we wouldn’t be recognized. If we were lucky and didn’t run into anyone before then, we’d definitely have to use our equipment on Mariana and her mate.

  And we were lucky. Despite the scent of fur strong in the hallway, no one crossed our path as we made our way to the alpha’s chambers. Even the music had faded to a distant thread as we paused outside the door to the couple’s suite.

  There, Honor raised her eyebrows in question. I wiped a palm that had turned oddly sweaty against my pants then settled my fingers back around the hilt of my sword with a nod. Yes, I was ready.

  She flung open the door and I spun through it nearly as fast as I used to without a body. But the area we entered—a living room complete with sectional sofas and a sleek flatscreen—was devoid of people. So was the bedroom, the bathroom, even the walk-in closets. The only sign of life was a single candle burning in front of what appeared to be a small tabletop shrine in the living room.

  A click of metal on metal had me swirling around just as I finished clearing the final closet. But it was just Honor closing the door to the hallway. Our luck still held. Mariana and her mate were busy with late-night entertainments elsewhere. Ignoring the shiver of cold running down my spine, I sheathed my sword and got to work ransacking the alpha’s space.

  The only saving grace of a lost pelt was its size, wide enough to wrap around its owner’s shoulders and thick enough that it turned into an armful even rolled up. There were only so many places one could be stashed even in a set of rooms as large as Mariana’s. And surely, outside her own suite, she wouldn’t count on the pelt going unnoticed by the rest of her pack. Unless every O’Connell was in on it, Merry’s lost item had to be here.

  It wasn’t. Honor set a timer on her wristwatch for fifteen minutes, a span that we’d agreed upon while planning as the most we could risk in the heart of O’Connell territory. If we didn’t find the pelt within that time frame, we’d leave and regroup, come up with another plan.

  I didn’t hear the vibration when the timer went off, but I scented Honor’s fear for her niece, her need to make the most of this fading opportunity. Our agreement was about to fly out the window.

  I understood her yearning far too easily. Bodies took rational thought and twisted it. That was the benefit of having pack along with you. When one mind went cloudy, the other stayed clear.

  Tonight, my job was to be the clearheaded one.

  We couldn’t risk speaking, but I encircled Honor’s wrist with my hand and tugged her toward the door. For one long moment, she resisted. Then she followed. Back down the hall, back down the stairs.

  The music was louder now. Perhaps it wasn’t recorded the way I’d originally assumed. Was it possible the entire werewolf pack had gathered after midnight to practice their skills as a choir?

  The oddity of it turned Honor’s feet in that direction. And after a brief hesitation, I followed. The singers sounded so intent upon their art. Surely they wouldn’t notice us peeking in to see what was going on?

  Pack again, Honor and I followed the sound in the opposite direction from where I’d stuffed my face six weeks ago. Through an open doorway beside the cross and down another long hall which opened up into a candlelit room large enough for the entire pack to congregate inside.

  Large enough for all of them and, as best I could tell in the shadowy dimness, it seemed everyone was actually present. There were no windows or other doors, just candles providing a flickering illumination as dozens of human-form shifters huddled tight around something I couldn’t see in the center of their circle.

  No one looked down though. Instead, every shifter’s chin was upraised, every eye squeezed shut. And every mouth opened wide as they sang human words to the vaulted ceiling in a manner that resembled nothing so much as a lupine howl.

  My human body came with odd urges, and right now the urge was to find out what was in the middle of that circle. Luckily, there was a balcony with no one on it up above the crowd. A balcony that was totally dark since whoever lit the candles had placed them only at floor level.

  Of course, it was idiocy to go up there. As best I could tell, there was only one access point to the upper level—the open staircase that started no more than ten feet from the closest shifter’s back.

  I wasn’t the one who took the first step, but when Honor sidled in that direction I followed her. Singing swelled around us, covering our nearly silent footsteps. Then as air patterns shifted, I winced.

  Not because of danger this time. Because of the stench. Like roadkill that somehow managed to spend days in the heat evading vultures. My sensitive woelfin nose twitched and a sneeze threatened.

  Pressing my thumb and forefinger hard against the bridge of my nose, I managed to keep my nostrils silent. But my eyes were watery by the time I reached Honor’s side at the balcony rail. And it took me longer than it should have to blink away tears and realize what I was seeing below.

  In the center of the circle of singing shifters, Mariana lay atop what might have been a cloth-draped table. She was quite clearly dead, but that wasn’t the worst part.

  From the aroma of decay, she’d been dead far too long to have stolen from Merry. This invasion of O’Connell territory was a wild-goose chase, every bit of it.

  Which is when one of the singing shifters opened his eyes.

  Chapter 21

  He shouted. We sprinted. The alpha took one look at us hitting the stairs, then he shifted into lupine form, pulling his entire pack into fur alongside him.