The intricacies of the buckle evaded me. I growled, nipping at the flesh just beneath his chin. Now, now, now, open!

  Rather than helping, a hard hand clenched around my right wrist. “Kira. Stop this.”

  I whimpered out pain, anger, denial. Thom must have only heard the pain because he swore and released me.

  Then air was brushing past my skin. Powerful hips jolted as he carried me away from the crowd.

  Not that the where mattered. What mattered was the way Thom’s movement rubbed me just the right way.

  This time the sound I made was pure pleasure. I grabbed onto the tie that might as well have been invented to assist in kissing. Pulled until Thom’s head lowered toward mine.

  He smelled like wood ash and alpha. No, the ash wasn’t coming from Thom, but from all around us.

  That would be sensually intriguing. Slick ashes against naked bodies. The sun above, the earth below, we’d merge and....

  I growled. Thom’s head hadn’t lowered after that first inch. His belt was still buckled.

  And now something invisible yet fully tangible looped around my upper arms. First loose then tighter and tighter....

  I was immobile before I knew what was happening. Was being lowered to the ground just slowly enough for me to get my feet under me.

  I strained forward but found myself unable to advance toward my target. I was bound by the unaccepted pack bond.

  “THE MOON ISN’T EVEN full.”

  Thom’s words made no sense as I battled against the inflexible bindings. Battled then ceased as a method of escape grew clear.

  “Are you feeling better?” Thom’s piercing blue eyes met mine, his head cocked just a little.

  Better? I had no idea what he was talking about. But I nodded, and that appeared to be the correct answer.

  Because the invisible tether loosened just the tiniest fraction. And I leaned into that weakness, shifting to fox form as I wriggled free of both bonds and clothing, regaining my humanity as soon as I was free.

  Bare feet sank into ash that was just as soft as I’d imagined. Yes, this would form a delightful cushion for both of us.

  I tackled Thom and he grunted as I struck him. But he didn’t topple over. Too strong, too stable.

  Too alpha. I purred. I’d lost that move, but I’d also won.

  My hands splayed across his chest. Slid into the gap between buttons. Thom muttered another curse, followed by: “I should have sent you home when I had the chance.”

  The word home was an icicle slicing through my passion. I hesitated, almost understanding. Shaking my head hard, I managed a single word: “No.”

  Then Thom was walking again, and this time he was holding me in his arms rather than letting me slide up and down against his arousal. I wriggled around, trying to regain the craved connection. I was naked. This should be easy.

  When Thom dropped me, I wasn’t ready. Couldn’t twist and get my feet under me. Instead, I landed butt first in ice-cold water. Spluttered out shock and anger as he dunked me once, twice, three times in a flowing stream that stank of muck.

  Muck and oil. Some sort of dark substance washed off my skin, sluicing away atop the stream. As it did so, frigid reason reasserted itself.

  “Okay.” My teeth chattered. I was freezing...and mortified. “It’s gone. You can stop.”

  Thom did. Drew me out of the water, tugged off his suit jacket, and wrapped me up in it. Pulling me close, his body heat stilled my shivers. Chin resting atop my head, he murmured, “We have to find a way to prevent this from happening.”

  “Or,” I countered, “we could just let it happen.” Because, despite the dunking, despite having chosen the absolute worst moment to try to tear Thom’s clothes off...I didn’t want to let him go now.

  Not when his warmth was so seductive. His strength so tantalizing. Even without the moon’s influence, I craved this connection to Thom.

  And, yes, there was the issue of consent. But if we both agreed beforehand....

  “No.” Thom’s muscles tensed, and at first I thought he was going to push me away again. Argue the point I’d raised the same way we’d argued it before.

  Only, he addressed someone else over my head instead of me. “Dixie Lee, I’m afraid this is a bad time.”

  “I can see that.” Her voice was just as curt as ever, her scent containing a seesaw of fury and terror. No amusement, though. No smugness at catching me naked at a formal event.

  I was the one who pushed myself away from Thom, ignoring my lack of clothing. “What is it?” I demanded, shivers starting back up again. I was only half dry and the air bit like wolf teeth.

  Plus, something about the wildness of Dixie Lee’s eyes suggested our world wasn’t going to get better in the near future. Instead, the icy slither of cold air down my back warned it was about to get much, much worse.

  Sure enough, Dixie Lee swallowed hard before finding words. Then she told us, “I can’t find Ava. I’ve looked everywhere, but she’s gone.”

  Chapter 26

  For an instant, I relaxed. “I sent your kid back to read in the car. She was miserable.”

  “So you’re responsible. I should have figured as much.” Dixie Lee spun away from me, facing Thom only as she explained. “No one has seen my daughter in over an hour. Her book is on the front seat, but she’s not with it. There are fresh tire tracks in the mud....”

  Dixie Lee’s words choked off, her strength crumpling. I reached out to console her but she recoiled as she had every right to do. Okay, so I’d instead focus on getting Ava back.

  The task should be far easier than tracking down Kaito’s killer. Because it seemed that Thom’s initial impulse—to doubt his own pack mates—had been wise.

  After all, who had known about today’s wake? Charlie, Jessie, Ito...and every werewolf who lived in Gate City. A glance across the crowd proved that my human friend and her family were still very much present.

  The question became: which werewolf was not?

  It was impossible to count heads in the crowd, but Thom could solve that problem easily. “The pack bond....” I murmured.

  Three months ago, I would have needed to explain, to point out that an alpha’s invisible connections to other Gate City werewolves would allow Thom to nail down everyone’s current location. Now, three words and a nod were enough to let me know he was already on top of that trick.

  He worked fast too. His right eye twitched and then he gritted out the name of someone I hadn’t expected: “Hank.”

  Dixie Lee lifted her head out of her hands to demand, “He has Ava?”

  “Don’t know. But Hank’s not here and his little brother has severed the bond between us.”

  Why hadn’t Hank also severed his bond? The why didn’t matter so much as the result however.

  “Can you tell where he is?” I asked.

  “Better.” Thom’s teeth sharpened as he smiled. “I can pull him back here. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind evicting Charlie’s family?”

  Then his fist clenched down around something invisible. Muscles rippled as he yanked the tether toward him. Reeling in Hank. Drawing—we hoped—Ava back toward us as well.

  I glanced once at Dixie Lee. Her bottom lip trembled, but she’d regained enough of her composure to glare at me. “Go,” she demanded.

  I couldn’t do anything here to help matters, so I went.

  “YOU HAVE NO PANTS,” Charlie’s girlfriend informed me as I joined their little huddle.

  “Fell into a creek,” I lied. Well, I guess it wasn’t a lie, just a mere fraction of the truth.

  Charlie shook her head, used to shifter shenanigans. Then she provided the introduction I’d craved an hour ago: “Nora, meet Kira. Kira, Nora.”

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to waste time getting to know this very interesting human Charlie had found worth revealing her sexuality for. “Great, good,” I said quickly. “Look, I need you guys to go.”

  Rather than obeying, Nora tapped one finger against her lips. “Hot chocolate.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Ignoring my question, Nora rooted around in a purse that didn’t look nearly large enough to disgorge the shiny silver thermos that came out of it. She unscrewed the cap and poured out a steaming portion of what did, indeed, appear to be hot chocolate.

  “You’re suffering from hypothermia,” she informed me. “I’m an EMT, so you can trust me on this one. Drink this then we can see about finding you a blanket. Or pants. Charlotte, do you have anything in your trunk?”

  “Charlotte?” I couldn’t help myself. My eyebrows shot up as I considered the friend I’d only ever heard referred to as Charlie.

  “It’s her name and it suits her.” Nora thrust the metal cup into my hand, forcing my fingers around it. “Drink.”

  I drank. What else could I do? Gulped down the whole thing—it was delicious—then returned the cup to Nora while addressing Charlie.

  “Can you and Nora take Jessie and Ito out to lunch?”

  “Now? What’s going on?”

  I didn’t want to draw these two into our mess. I had a feeling neither would leave as easily once they knew what was happening.

  But the mood of the gathering had already shifted. Werewolves were assembling rather than pretending to mingle. A sharp exclamation drew my gaze to Thom as he stumbled backwards, barely catching himself before he ended up in the same creek I’d been dunked in.

  If I didn’t miss my guess, Hank’s pack bond had become so strained it had broken. Which meant we’d need to hunt for the culprit and the missing girl the hard way.

  Which, in turn, meant it was even more essential for those who didn’t know about the existence of werewolves and magic to leave.

  Unfortunately, my friend’s feet were planted. She wasn’t going anywhere without an explanation. So I admitted the truth, or the part of it that was suitable for public consumption. “Dixie Lee’s daughter is missing.”

  Nora’s phone was in her hand and she’d dialed two digits—9-1—before I barked out a sharp, “No!”

  “Calm down.” Nora’s tone was firm as she stared me down, but she didn’t hit the last number either. “If a child is missing—I assume this daughter is underage?—we should contact the authorities. They can put out an amber alert.”

  I glanced at Charlie, who shrugged. In the human world, yes, that made perfect sense. But—the lie bubbled up before I thought it through—“Immigration issues. They’d deport Ava and her mother as soon as they found her.”

  Nora considered Dixie Lee, whose tear-streaked face made her the obvious bereaved parent and whose blond curls and sweet southern accent made her the most unlikely immigrant present. “You don’t say.”

  “I do say.” When deeply committed to a paper-thin lie, the only solution I’d ever found was to turn the paper sideways until it cut. “I’m surprised that you, of all people, would judge someone’s ethnicity by their appearance.”

  “So you’re, like, one of those Mexicans?” The tone-deaf jibe from earlier hovered in the air between us.

  A werewolf would have snarled at me. Nora just went still.

  Then she turned to face Charlie. “I do believe I’m done here. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  “I THOUGHT YOU WERE the one person I could count on to make Nora feel welcome,” Charlie said as we both watched the girlfriend I hadn’t wanted anyone to hurt walk away, injured by my own sharpness.

  “I should have been,” I started. But Charlie was already following Nora. Was gathering up Ito and Jessie, clearing the area of non-pack humans by the time werewolves began slamming into vehicles.

  Ignoring the ice block in my belly, I slipped into the passenger side of Thom’s pickup. I’d collect my own car later...along, I hoped, with the shreds of my friendship.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Reed boundary.” Thom’s voice was grim. “Well, almost.”

  He told me the rest in bits and spurts as we sped down the road, heading east then north. Hank had been near the far corner of Gate City territory when Thom latched onto his pack bond.

  “With Ava?”

  Thom shook his head, not slowing the tiniest bit as he took a curve wide then veered away from half of the pack. “I don’t know. But he won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Not in his car at any rate.”

  Because it turned out Thom had done more with the pack bond than I’d thought was possible. First he’d dragged Hank toward him for a good long while. Then, when Hank started fighting back, Thom had let up for a moment before latching onto Hank’s fine motor controls. With a quick twist, he’d piloted Hank’s vehicle straight into a tree.

  I almost laughed but didn’t, imagining Ava’s screams as the car collided. I hoped the girl had buckled her seat belt. Hoped she’d been able to hold tight to her wish to be a hero rather than collapsing in terror like an ordinary thirteen-year-old.

  Hoped she’d been in that car with Hank. Because the location he’d been found in was deeply suspicious.

  For a split second, I remembered that bottle of blood the Reed alpha had taken from me. Remembered Ava’s kitsune heritage and the fact that, to me, she smelled like fox.

  Well, if Chief Reed was involved, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. Which would be soon at the rate Thom was driving.

  In fact, his enjoyment of the thrill ride I’d engaged in on the way to that West Virginia post office suddenly made more sense as he continued to take curves so fast the car’s inside tires lost contact with the pavement. Three more turns and the rest of the pack was no longer eating our dust.

  “They’re splitting up,” Thom answered without me needing to ask. “Blocking potential avenues of escape.”

  He wasn’t even breathing heavily. I was. In fact, I was ashamed to see that I’d grabbed onto the oh-shit handle...and I couldn’t quite seem to let go.

  Then we saw it. A crashed car—Hank’s car—crumpled against a tree trunk so solid it barely looked scratched by the impact. Thom slammed on the brakes and we both sprinted forward.

  The frame was crumpled. The door I yanked refused to open.

  But a window was rolled down, the driver’s side window. I leaned in with my entire upper body only to discover that the vehicle was empty.

  If Ava had ever been present, she wasn’t any longer. And Hank? He’d cut his losses and fled.

  Chapter 27

  There was blood on the steering wheel, its metallic scent overwhelmed by the reek of spilled oil and gasoline. Thom and I shifted in tandem, sniffing the ground as we hunted for a trail....

  There it was. Well, Hank’s trail at least.

  I continued circling, hoping to find Ava’s scent veering off in a different direction. For a moment, I thought I caught a whiff of female, so faint the girl’s identity was indeterminate. But it was gone as quickly as it had wafted up my nostrils. Tracing the aroma back to its source, I found only the barest hint of someone who wasn’t male lingering in the car’s back seat.

  Ava—if that had been Ava—hadn’t gotten out after the accident. There was no scent other than Hank’s and ours on the scene no matter how many times I circled around the vehicle. Sniffing hard at the trunk turned up no odor other than mold and exhaust.

  So Ava must have been stashed somewhere before Thom grabbed onto Hank’s pack bond. We could go off half-cocked, invading the territory of an alpha who’d made it clear how he treated invaders. Or we could force Hank to give us more information first.

  The path forward was clear even though the inevitable delay clawed at my gut. Thom must have come to the same conclusion because he yipped once from the spot where Hank had dripped blood onto the leaf litter. The sooner we found the kidnapper, the sooner we found one scared child.

  Without further discussion, Thom’s nose and mine drifted down to the scent trail. Together, we ran.

  Well, not together for long. Thom’s legs outpaced mine within fifty yards and soon I was alone in the winter woods, following a path that was as clear as it was erratic.

  Hank, I guessed, had been dazed by impact. He was fleeing, but in an ungainly almost drunken fashion. Thom should catch up to him easily.

  Sure enough, a howl drew me forward, a howl that was more than mere sound. The pack bond curled around me, turning my feet in a subtly different direction. Toward Thom. Toward Hank.

  Toward, I learned as I crested the final rise and peered down upon a scene of werewolf wildness, the entire pack.

  They formed a roiling mass of fur, ruffs raised, teeth bared. In the midst of the melee, dead center, two wolves fought.

  Thom and Hank. Blurs of gray moving so quickly I couldn’t see who was winning. I caught my breath and found myself human, sword grasped in one tense hand.

  The watching wolves didn’t move out of my way when I approached but they didn’t purposefully trip me up either. Instead, their shoulders bumped against my hip, their warmth pressing against my nakedness. Each wolf was jostling for space, content to watch rather than join the single combat.

  As best I could see between the muddled mass of bystanders, both fighters were brindled gray. Both were large and powerful. Both moved so quickly I only caught the blue of Thom’s eyes once, his alpha scent arriving in erratic bursts.

  Then I lost track of identities altogether. It was hard to keep the fight in view, even though I was taller than the rest of the watchers. Uninvolved wolves kept waving their tails across my sight line, accidentally or on purpose. I pressed in closer as one of the fighters latched onto the other’s jugular. The loser was slammed to the ground, panting and trembling as he whined on his back.

  Was that...? Yes, Thom had won.

  I released my pent-up breath...what appeared to be a moment too soon. Because Thom didn’t release Hank’s throat despite the obvious signs of submission. Instead, he clenched down harder, growling. When the wolf in front of me tilted out of my way, I caught a glimpse of Thom’s eyes.