His irises had transitioned from pure blue to dark lupine rage. Had filled with the willingness to rend and tear and end the life of someone he’d treated like a friend only yesterday.

  I was furious too, but we couldn’t afford to kill Hank. Not when he was the only one who knew where Ava was located.

  Plus, Thom had been raised human. He wasn’t ready to face the aftermath of murder in the skin of his wolf.

  I pushed harder against the wolves between me and our alpha. This final ring, however, didn’t want to give up their prime viewing stations.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the wolves, Thom growled, teeth biting down deeper. As if catching the mood of his alpha, the beast in front of me turned to snap at the air an inch from my knee.

  Among shifters, aggression was as contagious as the measles. All it would take was one wrong move and this entire pack could turn on each other like so many lone wolves. They were, after all, only partially pack mates. I didn’t possess even that dubious distinction.

  Luckily, I was a fox, not a wolf. Impervious to lupine rage and barely earthbound, even in human form.

  So I stopped fighting my way forward. Pushed off instead and leapt over the snappy wolf, landing beside Thom and Hank.

  My sword slid across the submitting wolf’s throat just above where Thom’s teeth disappeared into fur. “I’ve got this,” I told Thom. Then, to Hank: “Shift. But I recommend you do so without moving. No one here seems to like you very much.”

  I HADN’T BEEN SURE either would listen, but both blinked acknowledgment. Thom growled then eased his teeth out of his enemy’s fur. And Hank’s fur receded, arms and legs straightening as his torso lengthened to human size.

  Then there were two naked men beside me. Hank, still flat on his back with my sword at his throat. Thom crouched beside us, his blue eyes clearing but not clear yet.

  “You talk,” he managed.

  I could do that. I turned all of my attention on Hank, noting without pity that he’d begun to shiver. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  And I didn’t know why Hank bothered lying when the scent of mistruth was so foul it made the closest wolf sneeze. Instead of replying verbally, I dug my star-ball sword in deeper, sawing little by little until blood welled up.

  Forcing a pack mate to obey me by drinking their blood was a last resort, but Ava’s face hovered in my memory. Her animated smile as we hunted stink bugs together. Her shut-down body posture when she hunched behind her library book.

  Wherever she’d been caged, the child didn’t even have a fictional world to lose herself in at the moment. She’d trusted Hank as a member of her pack and he’d betrayed her.

  So I reached out with my free left hand and scooped up a fingertipful of blood.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noted Thom’s body posture tensing and I hesitated. He was the alpha and, more than that, I trusted his judgment. If he didn’t want me to take this step....

  “Drink it.” Thom’s rumble was low, but every wolf heard. Ears pinned against skulls, but no one made a move to stop me as I sucked the liquid into my mouth.

  Hank’s blood wasn’t as foul as I would have expected. Didn’t taste like the blood of a murderer, so maybe the suspicion hovering in the back of my mind that whoever took Ava had also killed Kaito was wrong.

  I could only hope that meant the fox-scented child would turn up safe and sound and only mildly traumatized. The sooner the better.

  To that end, I asked the same question a second time. “Where is she?”

  Hank fought against replying. His face twisted, his body jerking convulsively against the ground.

  I’d never seen someone resist so hard. But I was a kitsune and I’d stolen blood. Hank couldn’t deny me.

  In the end, he only managed vagueness. “We went into Reed territory.”

  Vagueness, then unconsciousness. Hank passed out before I could wrest further information from his lips.

  Chapter 28

  It was enough. Enough to prompt us into leaving the bare minimum number of shifters handling Hank while the rest of us raced back to vehicles.

  After all, the road Hank had been traveling led directly from Thom’s territory to Chief Reed’s.

  “We can’t go in as a pack,” I argued as Thom once again drove faster than seemed safe down windy country thoroughfares. Already, two other vehicles had sped in off side roads to join us. Soon, the whole pack would be at our heels and we’d be passing from Thom’s territory to the land ruled by another.

  By an alpha who’d scarred my cheek in exchange for our last incursion. This invasion—in human form, no playfulness involved—would spur harsher repercussions.

  Still, Thom didn’t reply to my argument. I listened to gravel spinning out from under the pickup’s tires for a moment, then I elaborated.

  “Gate City is a tiny territory. Your pack is incohesive and young. If Chief Reed considers this an invasion, he’ll wipe us off the face of the earth.”

  The scent of alpha aggression that had filled the cab ever since we got back into the vehicle softened. When I raised an eyebrow, Thom shrugged. “I like to hear you say us,” he murmured. Then he added, “And I appreciate the warning. We won’t enter as a pack. I’ll go in alone.”

  “That will still be considered an invasion, but a stupid invasion.” I didn’t have the energy to mind my tongue. “You wouldn’t make it out alive.”

  Thom’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel. “Recommendation?”

  “Send in an envoy. Someone unassuming enough not to be considered a threat while they request an alpha-to-alpha meeting. I’m willing to be that person.”

  “I’m not willing to let you.”

  Our conversation slammed to a halt as we rounded a curve and found a truck parked crosswise on the road. This was the border and apparently Chief Reed expected exactly what Thom had intended.

  Expected it and was shutting down any invasion before it could begin.

  Only...Thom hadn’t slowed. Did he really intend to ram the other vehicle, shoving it out of our path through the sheer force of his impatience?

  No. At the last possible second, Thom hit the brakes. One arm straightened to protect me even though my seatbelt was doing the same job quite admirably.

  Nothing stopped me, however, when the truck screeched to a halt and I hopped out.

  THERE WERE OTHER VEHICLES behind the roadblock. I understood that when multiple doors slammed and at least a dozen shifters strode around both sides of the crosswise truck to greet us.

  “Chief Reed is expecting you.” The speaker was about Thom’s age, nearly as well built, but much more submissive. His gaze remained averted as he spoke, gesturing to the narrow pathway between his pack mates leading back the way he’d come.

  “He is?” Thom’s tone was flat. “Then perhaps he should have come to meet me.”

  “Not you, Chief Faris.” The submissive wolf raised his eyes off the gravel for one split second before dropping them again. “Kira Fairwood has been granted an invitation to visit our alpha’s villa. We will leave a pack mate with you in exchange.”

  Someone was pushed forward out of their line. A teenager, not much older than Ava. She was pale-cheeked and terrified, but she obeyed the hissed command from behind her. Walked past her pack mates and toward ours with wobbly knees.

  Thom growled, not at her but because of the situation. I knew that. She didn’t. The girl flinched, froze, then swallowed hard and started forward once again.

  “This is Chief Reed’s grandniece,” the same submissive wolf explained. “She is his blood.”

  His blood...or his sacrifice. Still, this was what I’d wanted. I stepped forward...or started to. Thom’s hand clenched down around my wrist.

  “Kira....”

  Wolf ears strained both before and behind us. A pack bond, now, would have been a great asset.

  We didn’t have one, so I fudged it for the sake of our audience. “Yes, alpha. Of course I will be careful.”

  His nostrils flared, gaze meeting mine. We couldn’t speak silently, but maybe we could communicate after all. Because I knew what he was thinking.

  Thom’s eyes told me walking alone into enemy territory was unbearably dangerous. My eyes replied that Ava was less able to defend herself than I was.

  For another second, Thom’s grip warmed my skin. His fingers were ever so slightly rough against the soft underside of my wrist, his thumb stroking my pulse point.

  Then he released me, nodded. “See that you are.”

  CHIEF REED’S UNDERLINGS patted me down as soon as we were hidden from view by the roadblock. They took my cell phone, which I’d reclaimed along with my clothes before we started chasing Hank. They also took my ace in the hole—the vial of alpha blood I’d harvested last autumn from three alphas including Chief Reed.

  I’d hoped not to need the blood, but losing it made me feel naked. Not defenseless, though. I still had my star ball, which could turn into a sword or dagger.

  “No weapons,” the woman who’d searched me reported.

  “No obvious weapons,” the submissive wolf countered. Now that we were separated from Thom by a good distance, he seemed to be regrowing his backbone. His shoulders widened. The pinch to his face opened to reveal a mouth wider than average and teeth ever so slightly pointed.

  When his attention turned to me, his scent turned anticipatory. “Your star ball goes in here,” he told me, pulling a metallic reddish object out of his pocket.

  I considered the two hollowed-out half-spheres, joined by a hinge then strung onto a chain. The item was small, clearly intended to hang around someone’s neck after being closed. Could I stuff my star-ball magic into that tiny space? Probably. Did I intend to? If that’s what Chief Reed required to discuss Ava, I didn’t see that I had much choice.

  “I’ll pass out if I’m separated from my star ball for long,” I admitted at last. “That would appear to defeat the purpose of being brought to your alpha.”

  “You won’t be separated.” The shifter’s words said one thing, but his scent said another. He was a hunter who had dangerous prey in his grip and who knew just where to bite to turn the tables.

  Nonetheless, he was true to his word. He jerked his chin and the woman lifted my hair so she could clasp the chain around my neck. Unlike Thom’s touch, hers was cold, impersonal.

  Just like the male shifter’s tone as he continued. “You will remain in contact with your star ball at all times. You will simply be unable to access the magic.”

  Those extra-wide lips quivered as they tried but didn’t quite manage to hide a smirk. He thought he was pulling the wool over my eyes. He wasn’t. But what choice did I have?

  For a second, I considered forcing only part of my magic into the necklace. But if this pack possessed an item able to contain my star ball, they clearly knew more about my kitsune heritage than I did. Chances were they’d test for residual magic and be sorely displeased if I tried to trick them with half measures.

  Sorely displeased enough to injure Ava? I couldn’t risk it.

  So I drew my entire star ball to my fingertips, condensing the blazing light smaller and smaller until it flared so bright I couldn’t look at it directly. The walnut-sized nugget fit into the orb, just barely.

  The male shifter unbridled his smirk as he reached out and snapped the cage shut.

  Chapter 29

  I wasn’t at all surprised when my minder’s behavior took an abrupt left turn once I was no longer armed and dangerous. “In the car,” he demanded. When I didn’t move fast enough, he shoved me in the direction of an idling vehicle, pressing in after me and slamming the door so fast it nearly clipped his own heels.

  The backseat should have been plenty large enough for both of us, but somehow he managed to impinge on my personal space while the driver steered us up a narrow mountain road entirely lacking in guard rails. Looking out the window was making me queasy and it felt childish to tell Chief Reed’s spokesman to get back on his side of the line. So, instead, I focused on Ava. “The girl who was brought here. Is she safe?”

  I wasn’t particularly surprised that he shrugged in answer, so I tried a different tack. Lifting the necklace that caged my star ball, I considered at the peculiarity of a wolf pack having such an item on hand. “What is this? Does your alpha have a history with kitsunes?”

  “Be silent,” my minder growled, “or be silenced.”

  Instinctively, my fists clenched, but magic didn’t fill them. Instead, the orb was the only thing inside my fingers, the tiniest trickle of star-ball energy oozing back and forth through pore-sized holes in the metal. Enough to keep me upright and active. Not enough to materialize a sword or even a knife.

  And a weapon wouldn’t help Ava. I was here to negotiate, not to fight.

  So I was silent. I didn’t protest when Chief Reed’s spokesman manhandled me out of the vehicle at the top of the mountain. Didn’t argue when he twisted one arm behind my back in a way that was entirely unnecessary and marched me up what felt like a thousand steps to the column-flanked front door of a villa that looked like it should have been planted on a Greek mountainside.

  I wasn’t invited in. Instead, my handler led me around the side to a patio with a view so breathtaking I forgot for a moment what I was doing there. The exposed space should have been frigid, but a fire had been lit in a tall, skinny heater while the sun pounded down, warming the stones. The result was surprisingly comfortable for a mountaintop in January. I could imagine Chief Reed basking here as wolf or man.

  Then I didn’t have to imagine him. I turned to find the nameless shifter gone, Chief Reed in his place. “Sit,” he commanded, “and we will discuss what you have that I want.”

  DESPITE HIS OPENING, Chief Reed beat around the bush for a good long while, teasing me with tidbits about Ava. “Yes, Faris’s wolf brought a young woman across the line into my territory this morning. Yes, he left without her. Yes, I know where she is.”

  Yes, I did notice that Chief Reed hadn’t actually told me he had control over Dixie Lee’s daughter. But I couldn’t very well sneak away and find Ava for myself, so I smiled and nodded and let the alpha indulge in the upper hand.

  My patience faded, however, when a woman drifted out of the manor to offer us refreshments. A woman whose fingers trembled as she poured a drink I wasn’t interested in.

  This was Chief Reed’s pack mate, terrified to spend time in his presence. What was Ava feeling, surrounded by similar werewolves? The girl was young, small, and entirely lacking in power. She’d be ten times as scared as this grown woman who kept her gaze resolutely focused on the ground.

  As if in response to my mood, the sun moved behind a cloud and a chill fell over the patio. We could dance around the topic forever, or I could broach it. “Why am I here?” I demanded.

  Rather than answering immediately, Chief Reed laughed. His throaty guffaws were magnified by the stone of the patio and the towering edifice behind us. He laughed until my silence grew awkward, but I let that awkwardness linger in the rapidly cooling air.

  And, finally, Chief Reed told me. “You, little fox, are here to become my heir.”

  So he wanted to bandy words? I could bandy. “Your heir? I find it hard to believe you don’t have one already.”

  “I’ve had several.” He sipped at his drink, set it down and continued. “My current heir brought you here today. He’s not worth much.”

  “And you think I’ll be worth more?”

  Rather than answering, Chief Reed hunched in on himself for one split second before smoothing the pain out of his features. This alpha, I suspected, was clinging to power through the force of personality and theater.

  Sure enough, his words—hoarse at first then stronger—suggested as much. “I think you’ll confuse my enemies. You’re small and scrappy, powerful and powerless. Plus, you don’t want my job.”

  That last part was true. As beautiful as the view was down into a seemingly endless valley, I would have given anything to find myself back within the close confines of the Full Moon Saloon instead. Thom would be half-visible as he served drinks in the dim warmth while Ava would read by lamplight in one corner. Lone wolves who were slowly being molded into pack mates would fill the Moon Room with only slightly dangerous antics. And humans like Charlie could come and go without worrying the supernatural would snap them up.

  Not so here. I considered Chief Reed over the top of the glass I hadn’t bothered drinking from. “You’ll give Thom the girl Hank brought in exchange for me being your heir.”

  “You’re more clever than you look.”

  His backhanded compliment wasn’t what made me flinch. It was the commitment he was demanding from me, the exact type of commitment I’d been running from for months.

  Because you don’t become heir to an alpha without building pack bonds. Pack bonds that would wipe away my ability to reconnect with my sister, niece, and nephew. Bonds that would block the inklings I was beginning to harbor of connecting instead with Thom and his clan.

  If I chose a new place to belong, I didn’t want that place to be Reed territory. There had to be another way to help Ava escape.

  I was shaking my head when Chief Reed drew a familiar glass bottle out of his jacket pocket, one I’d last seen when the scar on my cheek was a fresh cut. He unscrewed the miniature lid, raised an eyebrow, then shook his head at the blank expression on my face.

  “You don’t know much about being a kitsune, do you?”

  “Perhaps you could educate me.” My voice wasn’t as steady as I wanted it to be. The chill wasn’t just from the cloud shadows now; cold started inside me and radiated outward. I didn’t know what that bottle of blood meant, but I was starting to guess.

  “Of course.” Chief Reed tapped the bottle on the cast-iron arm of his chair, considering the contents for much longer than he really needed to. When he finally met my gaze, the faintest of smiles curled his lips. “It is my role to educate an heir after all. My role and my pleasure. So I’ll tell you what you already know first. Werewolf blood on a kitsune’s tongue gives her power over the wolf, as you’re well aware.”