For a moment we froze like that. My arm in Gabi’s grip and Gabi’s in Orion’s. There was a lot of squeezing going on all around, but Gabi showed no signs of noticing the pain I felt.

  After several long breaths, however, she did release me. “Mind your manners,” she warned Orion.

  Rather than answering in words, Orion merely growled before puffing himself up like exactly the sort of posturing alpha werewolf Gabi had trained me to deal with. At the same time, I shook out my hand to relieve the residual pinch of Gabi’s grip.

  And if that hand-shaking brought my fingers very briefly in contact with a dangling braid? The motion was irrelevant to Gabi, who had already mentally moved on.

  “Do we need to beat our chests a little longer?” she asked, continuing to address Orion. “Or can we jump ahead to the part where we make a deal? Your sister for my sister.”

  As she spoke, the briefest flicker of what could almost be termed affection softened my former mentor’s stern features. Still—

  “I’m not turning Celeste over to you,” I interjected, hoping Orion wouldn’t disagree. Even though we had no idea what had happened to Maya. Even though he had to be frantic after losing contact with his sister via the pack bond.

  Orion just glowered while Gabi proved that wasn’t what she wanted anyway. “Not what I’m asking for. I’ve already made my request—get Celeste out of town. Keep her safe. Do that and I’ll bring Maya to you in three days…”

  Three days was after the children were moved, after the prophesied deadline. Still, the air turned sour. “No.” This time, Orion’s growl wasn’t feigned to divert attention away from my sleight of hand. “I want proof of life.”

  Gabi rolled her eyes. “Your sister isn’t dead.”

  In perfect tandem, Orion and I leaned forward to sniff Gabi’s breath. His head was so close to mine that it was almost impossible to notice the sweet scent of truth over his cactus-thorn signature.

  Ignoring our inhuman behavior, Gabi continued: “I used the same drug they developed on the oil rig. It’ll make her manageable, keep her from shifting…”

  “Keep me from feeling her down the pack bond,” Orion added.

  “Is that so?” Gabi smiled as if she hadn’t known that tidbit of information. “How useful. I’ll be sure to make a note of that.”

  She would too. Gabi seemed to honestly care about Celeste, perhaps so much she was willing to sneak around behind the back of the man who I now realized must also be her father. But Gabi was still our enemy.

  “You want three days so you’ll have time to set up a sting in our territory,” I guessed.

  “No. I need time to make it look like you wrested Maya out of my grip when I release her.”

  The air around Orion turned sour. He didn’t trust Gabi. I didn’t trust her either. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  “Do you really need me to spell out every little thing?” Gabi over-enunciated her words, which she perhaps thought made it easier for us to sniff out their veracity. She needn’t have bothered—we were both close enough now to catch the complete lack of a lie in the air when she continued.

  “If you keep Celeste safe,” she promised, “I’ll do the same for Maya. In seventy-two hours, all six of us will meet within your territory—you two, Celeste and her boyfriend, Maya, and me. You choose the time and place. I won’t tell anyone about the meeting and I won’t bring backup. I’ll transfer Maya into your custody while satisfying my curiosity about Celeste’s top-secret boy toy. Then you and I will go back to being enemies with one point of commonality only—Celeste.”

  Chapter 18

  “Do you intend to tell Celeste about her sister?”

  Orion’s rumble cut through the darkness inside the rental car eight hours later. I’d thought he was asleep in the tipped-back passenger seat while I took the second shift of alternating my gaze between the dot on the tracking app and the black square of Gabi’s window. As best we could tell, after letting me and Orion slip past her and escape from the apartment building, my ex-mentor had turned in for the night and not moved since.

  In the interim, Orion and I had engaged in a wild-goose chase, hunting the tracker we’d hoped might still be in Maya’s pocket. It hadn’t been, of course. The cigar scent at the bottom of the stairwell had suggested that avenue of investigation was compromised, but we still needed to try just in case. Neither of us was surprised, however, when the tracker turned up abandoned inside a city bus.

  Which left us with no way of finding Maya. Worse, we only had Gabi’s word for the fact Orion’s sister was even alive, something I knew weighed heavily on his mind by the increasingly hard line of his jaw.

  We also had no way of knowing whether there actually were shifter children being transferred tomorrow—well, today actually. So we watched and we waited.

  And, apparently, we discussed Celeste who, last we’d heard, was safely tucked into bed in Orion’s territory. “I’m afraid to tell her,” I admitted as the first hint of dawn marked the beginning of the prophesied day of the sister matebrand. “She’s already furious with me. Once she realizes she has a real sister…”

  “Celeste always had a real sister—you.” Orion’s warm hand crossed the center console to hover above my knee, not quite touching. “You need to trust her to remember that fact.”

  “Yeah.”

  Celeste was also a very early riser, even in the summer when school wasn’t in session. So I didn’t second-guess myself. I dialed the number of the burner phone we’d been using to stay in touch recently, only remembering the time difference between Arizona and Texas when Celeste’s voice came through muzzy and sleep-soaked. “Hello?”

  “I woke you up. I’m sorry.”

  This wasn’t the first time I’d called Celeste too early. Back when I’d first started working for the Council, I’d once screwed up royally and needed a pickup after getting myself stranded without clothes or a vehicle. Only a luckily placed pay phone and a found quarter saved me from public indecency charges and I’d been too embarrassed to contact Gabi or Julius. I’d known Celeste wouldn’t judge me though. Wouldn’t complain even though she had to request an emergency sub to cover her own class.

  Then, she’d woken up fast just like she did now. Had jumped straight to the same question—“Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No-arterial-blood-spurting-and-no-broken-bones fine or fine-fine?”

  “Fine-fine,” I assured her. “I just needed to talk to you. But we can do this later.”

  “You want to talk about Finnegan.” My sister’s voice turned guarded.

  In response, my autonomic nervous system suggested dropping the phone and running far and fast in the opposite direction. Instead, I huddled there inside our rental car and forced words out of my mouth. “I don’t, actually. I want to talk about Gabi.”

  “Mmm?” my sister hummed, her tone instantly softening. This was the way she’d greeted midnight admissions of fear when we were both teenagers. The way she’d drawn reluctant words out of my mouth back when we were each others’ sole confidantes. There was no pressure in it, no judgment. And, gradually, my lips unfroze enough so I could recite every bit of the recent conversation from the stairwell along with the truth Orion and I had smelled on Gabi’s breath.

  “I don’t know for sure that she’s your sister,” I concluded, my heart beating so hard that I could barely hear my own words, “but I know she believes she is.”

  The moment of silence that followed felt like an eternity. And when Celeste finally spoke, her observation wasn’t at all what I expected. “That’s why she’s so jealous.”

  “Jealous?” Gabi couldn’t be jealous. My ex-mentor was endlessly capable and relentlessly hard-nosed. It was hard to ascribe any weakness to her at all.

  “She’s always hated the fact you and I are close.”

  I swallowed, yearning to open up the rest of the gaping emotional wound between me and Celeste, squeeze out the pus, and let it heal cleanly. I needed to know whether she’d meant to use the present tense—are close—instead of the past tense—were close. Needed to know whether her wording had been a slip of the tongue.

  But I couldn’t quite make myself tease out any of that. Because wasn’t it obvious that the two of us weren’t as close as we’d once been? Hearing Celeste confirm what I knew to be reality would have broken me, so I shut my mouth around the question I wanted to ask.

  For her part, Celeste waited quite a while before speaking again. And when she did, her words were gentle. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Orion’s hand finally lowered onto my knee at that point and I was deeply grateful for the contact. Because it reminded me that I had friends beyond Celeste. That I wasn’t entirely alone even if the woman I considered a sister took this new information as an excuse to be done with me.

  Still, I was shaking when I hung up the phone.

  The rest of the day was less emotionally fraught but considerably more frustrating. Gabi drove to the Enclave, returned home to her apartment, and showcased her ability to notice a tail by waving at us repeatedly along the way.

  There didn’t appear to be any stolen shifter children being moved, at least not by Gabi. And it was day fifty-two—the prophecy’s deadline. I was certain of it.

  Well, certain once I pulled up a calendar app on my phone and counted weeks since Orion and I had matebranded. “Could the prophecy be basing its timeline on something other than the formation of our matebrand?” I wondered aloud.

  “If it’s counting from the day I broke our bond,” Orion answered gruffly, “then we have five days left.”

  That didn’t feel right. But the prophecy was so vague I couldn’t think of any way to prevent the compulsion of a not-yet-identified sister. And I wasn’t about to ask the desert for more information when our previous request had resulted in so much loss of ink.

  So I dropped both the issue of the stolen children and of the compelled sister, trying to ignore the ominous lump in my stomach that grew larger every time I thought about the fifty-second day having passed without incident. The prophecy’s fizzle should have come as a relief, but the power of the outpack had been demonstrated so clearly that I couldn’t quite believe it had missed the boat this time. Instead, I tapped on my calendar app over and over as we caught a flight back to the Arizona desert, re-counting days I’d already counted more than once.

  It wasn’t until the drive south to Orion’s pack central that I finally relaxed a little. The landscape expanded out in all directions, its vastness making each of my inhales a little deeper than the last one. And I realized this corner of Arizona felt more like home after a month spent amid its sand than Julius’s mansion ever had been during my two and a half decades within its echoing halls.

  Parking in a hidden alcove of Orion’s canyon, we found a cluster of pack mates waiting for us despite the late hour. I hugged Celeste hard, grateful beyond words that she was here and safe, no longer under her father’s thumb and still speaking to me. I thanked Hailey for taking care of Celeste in my absence, measuring the younger woman’s composure and finding that she’d steadied into her new role of ambassador just like Vega said she would. Then I explored the living quarters that had been set aside for the three of us while Orion slotted himself back into running a clan that had missed its alpha.

  The whole time, I rubbed at a new patch of reddened skin where matebrand ink used to be, a patch that covered a full third of the original tattoo’s expanse. The most recent loss had occurred seemingly out of nowhere while Orion and I were on the plane, using no magic and making no contact with desert sand. I was flipping through the in-flight magazine and he was staring out the window while—by the set of his jaw—thinking about Maya. Then we’d both jumped, likely at the same bee-sting sensation.

  “What happened?” Orion had rumbled.

  I’d shaken my head. I didn’t know. I hadn’t done anything and apparently he hadn’t either.

  Which was concerning. But it couldn’t be the culmination of the prophecy because we’d passed the day in question and at least a little ink remained on both of our forearms. Surely that meant my blood sister, whoever she was, wouldn’t be forming a matebrand while we were stuck inside an aerial tin can.

  The sun set on the fifty-third day with even less drama. In the interim, I slid into a new life as a guest in Orion’s pack, trying to ignore the way I didn’t quite fit in whenever my host wasn’t present. He often wasn’t, too busy after his extensive absence to spend much time with me. No wonder I ended up waking far too early on the fifty-fourth day, tossing and turning until I forced myself out of a bed that was perfectly soft and yet still unbearably strange.

  Back in Julius’s mansion, insomnia had an easy fix. I would slip into Celeste’s room and she would half-waken, pull back the covers, then invite me to snuggle.

  Even here, my sister was only a single door away from me. I hovered outside that barrier, listening to her breathing and remembering how strained things had become between us. She’d turned silent the previous afternoon when Finnegan was mentioned, a sadness hovering over her that had never been present previously.

  My fingers closed around the doorknob. But I couldn’t turn it. Instead, I left her room behind and padded out onto the terrace that overlooked the canyon, peering straight up until the waning moon came into view.

  Sleep had been elusive lately, so I’d been watching the moon a lot. Had been noticing how it reached its zenith an hour later every day. Something about that niggled at me. Something important…

  But my brain was foggy from lack of sleep and the air was chilly. I shifted into my wolf fur then laid my chin on my paws. And that way, finally, I slept.

  It wasn’t until late morning when Orion tapped on the frame of the door I’d left open despite the already oppressive heat. I was sweeping an already pristine floor to take my mind off the additional ink I’d lost overnight, but the busywork hadn’t been particularly effective. Because as Orion entered, my gaze immediately flew to the spot on his forearm that matched the reddened patch on mine.

  “There’s still ink,” he assured me, although his black swirls were so few as to be almost invisible, the skin beside them clearly irritated.

  So was Orion. He didn’t suggest we sit together on the window seat that looked out over the canyon floor the way he had when he found a spare quarter hour to share with me yesterday. Instead, he paced back and forth across the room, exuding an alpha musk that had seldom before overcome his signature scent of cactus flowers.

  “There’s a problem,” I guessed. “No luck figuring out a place to meet Gabi?”

  We had several hours left before my ex-mentor’s arrival, which meant she and, hopefully, Maya were currently in transit. The tracking app I’d planted on Gabi supported that supposition, and the timeline gave us a good bit of leeway. Gabi wouldn’t expect more information about a precise meeting spot until she crossed the border into Arizona.

  Between now and then there was the not-so-minor issue of finding Finnegan to deal with, but Donovan and Orion seemed to have a plan for that. So I wasn’t surprised Orion shook his head in response to my question now.

  I was more surprised by how agitated he seemed, continuing to cross and recross the living room, long strides eating up the small space far too quickly. When he spoke, his voice was deep and growly.

  “Bellwether is here.”

  “Here on the edge of your territory?”

  Orion shook his head. “Here in the canyon.”

  I flinched. The exact location of this hidden pack central was supposed to be unknown to anyone outside Orion’s clan and Prince’s. It was considered a safe haven for a pack in transition.

  I’d come to my feet and was patting down spots where I’d concealed weapons when Orion halted me. “It’s not an invasion,” he rumbled. “He asked to speak with you.”

  Chapter 19

  The alpha who’d demanded I accept punishment days ago had dropped by for a simple social call? Unlikely.

  Still, I took the time to turn my head upside down and shake my hair into the tousled curls I knew made me appear youthful and innocent, peering between strands at Orion as he continued to pace in silence. I would have changed my clothes to add to the illusion, but there was a sweet spot to keeping an uninvited guest waiting. I didn’t want to draw out the suspense too long.

  “I’ll meet with Chief Bellwether alone,” I started, only to be interrupted by a single-word from Orion:

  “No.”

  “We need to figure out what he really wants,” I countered.

  “To harm you.”

  “Doubtful.” I shouldn’t have needed to explain my reasoning, but Orion wasn’t himself at the moment. So I broke my thought processes down for him. “Chief Bellwether went to all the trouble of setting up a blood-magic ceremony rather than killing his predecessor the easy way. He’s smart and he’s power hungry. Now he’s fixating on me. It’ll be easier to discover why without you in the room.”

  Orion nodded. “Understood. I’ll wait outside the door.”

  “Where he’ll smell you.” As I spoke, I opened a drawer and pulled out the shifter-friendly perfume I’d stashed for special occasions. Unlike the stuff humans usually wore, this was much subtler and also deeply effective. One spritz on the inside of my right wrist resulted in a strangled groan from Orion.

  “You intend to walk in there like that?”

  Up until this point, I’d given Orion benefit of the doubt. Vega had warned me that alphas had a hard time being rational about their mates, and while I wasn’t technically Orion’s mate I could understand that his wolf was the one making decisions when it came to my safety.

  Still, it was one thing to stop another alpha from manhandling me. It was another thing to second guess the tools I chose to use.

  No wonder I found myself snapping: “Are you policing my body?”

  The air between us turned heavy with unspoken retorts. Orion opened his mouth then closed it again. As if his wolf was trying to speak while his human side fought against the intrusion.