I expected her to take me to task, but she didn’t. Didn’t even apologize to our hostess as she followed me out of the house and back along the path we’d taken to get there. I walked fast enough to strain her older body and even that knowledge didn’t slow my steps.

  We made it all the way back to Okaasan’s cottage before my anger exploded. “What was that? I’m home for a week and you’re already so sick of me that you want to marry me off to a child?”

  “He’s exactly your age,” my mother corrected. “If you don’t count the years you spent elsewhere. And is this really your home?”

  I made an inarticulate sound of disbelief and she continued as if that was a valid rebuttal. “You haven’t tried to pass through the portal for three days. You want to ground yourself in this time? Then you must face facts. Women are wives here. Wives and mothers. That is what you’re choosing when you choose to stay.”

  I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to the twenty-first century until the truth of her words slapped me. She was right about how discontented I would be slotting into this world, but she was very wrong about something else.

  “I’m not choosing anything.” I wrestled the futon away from the portal, which remained just as vivid and glowing as it had been when I arrived here. Also just as before, its surface was impenetrable when I stomped out into the middle and jumped up and down like a child throwing a tantrum…or like a woman intent upon showing her mother that the ice beneath her feet refused to break. “I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else,” I finished, pointing out the obvious.

  “Is that so? Shall we put it to the test?”

  I didn’t like the gleam in Okaasan’s eyes but I couldn’t stop her as she spat out words I didn’t want to hear.

  “I’m not your mother.”

  “Of course you’re my mother.” Despite myself, I walked closer. Sniffed the air and smelled no lie lingering on her breath.

  There was no lie in the air as she continued either. “Yes, I raised you. But I didn’t birth you. Your mother handed you over before passing through time with hair just like yours—one unbroken streak of white on the left side, two black hairs remaining within the white on her right temple.”

  I shivered, the past rewriting itself as I stepped yet closer to Okaasan. The cold that never seemed to leave my gut chilled further despite my attempt to warm myself with her proximity. “So you adopted me when I was a baby. That makes no difference. Family is about love, not about blood.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Okaasan demanded. Then, before I could respond, she placed both of her hands on my shoulders. “Do you know why you lost your first life?”

  “Because my husband is pure evil.” That was an easy question. I could feel my bond to Ambrose even now. Inside me. Part of me.

  Choking me.

  “Because I sent you to your death,” Okaasan corrected. One of her fingers touched the skin of my neck and the contact was ice despite the hot humidity of the air. The contact felt like the awfulness of my mate bond.

  I shook my head hard, refusing to accept what she was saying even though her breath continued to smell like long-delayed truth between us. “You had no idea what would happen…”

  Okaasan spoke over me before I could complete my denial. “When you showed up with a streak of white at your temple, I knew you’d died. But I sent past-you away to be married anyway. I sent you directly toward what broke you here.”

  Her fist thumped against my chest a little harder than was strictly necessary. But that wasn’t why I flinched. I flinched because Okaasan was the rock I’d been clinging to. The promise of unconditional love that had kept me waking up every morning even after I’d lost everything else that mattered.

  “You thought you were protecting me,” I said, trying to make excuses for her. Trying to stop her from speaking, if I was entirely honest.

  Because that gleam in her eyes grew wilder by the minute. And the pain in my gut was now so severe I thought I might pass out.

  I couldn’t lose Okaasan also.

  “I taught you to work puzzles,” the woman who wasn’t my mother countered, enunciating each word clearly. “Look back at what happened. Ask yourself, wouldn’t I know from seeing that streak of white that your husband intended to kill you? Ask yourself, didn’t I send you to your death?”

  She had. The knack I’d learned at Okaasan’s knee answered her question before I could turn off my puzzling. Okaasan had sent me to Ambrose knowing what would happen.

  Which meant, blood connection or no blood connection, she wasn’t my mother. Because how could a mother send her daughter to be tortured? How could a source of safe, unconditional love place Ambrose in my path?

  Something inside me broke then. The fragile shell of normalcy I’d layered atop the pain shattered. “Okaasan, no.”

  My voice sounded like a child’s. And like a child, tears streamed down my face as the woman who wasn’t my mother refused to accept the honorific. “Don’t call me that. I’m nothing to you.”

  Then she shoved me with more strength than I’d thought she was capable of. Shoved me backwards until I tripped and fell toward the glowing circle of light in the floor.

  I twisted as I plummeted, trying to catch myself so I wouldn’t land on my back. But I didn’t land.

  I broke through the ice, frigidity sheathing me as I plummeted into the portal and left the woman who wasn’t my mother behind.

  Chapter 31

  Tru

  I expected to pop back up on the other side the way I had during past transitions. But Neko wasn’t present to guide me and there weren’t paths to choose from this time.

  Just darkness. Nothingness. Like the void within myself.

  That plus intense pain as the ice sheathing my body seeped deeper into my skin. The pain in my gut continued to overwhelm the pain elsewhere, however. The tightness strangling my throat continued to be worse than inhaling shards of ice.

  Which helped me realize that I did have something to guide me back to Drake’s present. A mate bond, just not the one I’d used previously to find my way to the coffee shop.

  Reaching up to my throat and grabbing onto that tendril of connection felt like sinking my teeth into carrion. The bond, as I ran my fingers along it, rose up over my head like a hangman’s noose.

  It wasn’t as tight as it felt, however. Around my neck, yes, the bond attempted to strangle me. But the tether extending out from that constriction sagged down toward my feet after losing contact with my flesh.

  It was, if I was very careful, climbable. I could work my way up Ambrose’s mate bond and use that connection to reenter Drake’s world. Lynette’s world. Rosa’s world.

  Even if none of them wanted me in their lives any longer, I could do this to save the man who’d spent months watching over me. Could enable him to save the people he cared about.

  Swallowing, I tasted rot on the back of my throat. But I ignored the awfulness and scrabbled upwards…only to slide back down as my hands lost their purchase.

  “You don’t want to go back,” the woman who wasn’t my mother had accused me. And she was right. Climbing up this tether that reeked of death and filled my soul with darkness was the most awful thing I’d ever attempted. It was like clawing my way into Ambrose’s head and taking up residence. Accepting his evil as my own.

  “And if that’s what it takes to save Drake, that’s what I’ll do.” I spoke the words but couldn’t hear them. There was no sound here. Nothing but darkness and cold so intense my fingers were beginning to lose feeling. Even the awfulness of my bond to Ambrose was weakening, the tightness around my neck loosening bit by bit.

  If I was going to make a second attempt to scale the tether, it would have to be soon.

  This time, I didn’t just try to scramble up. Instead, I knotted the carrion-stench mate bond into a foothold at waist height and another at head height. I had no idea how far I needed to go, but this would give me a literal leg up.

  Or give me enough rope to hang myself. Either way, I had to try.

  And it helped. The knots made the carrion-flavored knowledge of my connection to Ambrose a little weaker. Weak enough to let me gulp in another breath of ice then begin again to clamber up.

  This time I made it further. Clung longer. But, past the knots, I had to wrap my legs around the mate bond to hold myself upright. And as I did so, the slide of tether against my now-bare skin felt like Ambrose’s fingers slithering across my cheek.

  “I wonder,” the evilness I’d chosen as my mate had murmured, “will fucking you work even better than blood?”

  I choked and nearly lost my hold, swinging above empty space and somehow tangling the tether around myself so it yanked my head painfully sideways. I reached up frantically, trying to find the bond above me to steady the sickening swing I’d started…and something hot swiped against my upraised arm.

  For one split second, the warmth felt good, then it burned worse than the ice coating my entire body. It burned, but the flavor of rot receded. If I didn’t miss my guess…

  The burn had been fleeting as whatever it was brushed past me. But she’d try again. I knew she would.

  This time, when the heat passed through the void, I was ready. This time, when the burn struck my flesh, I released the tether and grabbed hold with all ten fingers.

  It was a hand. My ward’s hand. I knew that even as I tensed, expecting her twisting of my oath to force me to let go of this only way out of the darkness.

  But it didn’t. Instead, ever so slowly, Lynette drew me upward. Through the ice and the rot and the loss of Okaasan, my only true family.

  Toward home and hope and the family I’d built for myself. Yes, even if that included a psychopath for a mate.

  I came out the other side gasping, light blinding me for an endless instant as my eyes readjusted. Vaguely, I heard words, some closer, some further away.

  “You did it!” That was Erik, voice jubilant. “Scorchy hands for the win!”

  “You were right!” Lynette countered. “You and your math got us here!”

  “Weather is just numbers,” Erik retorted, voice modest. “And this area is unaccountably colder than the surroundings just like the Strays’ village was colder than it should have been…”

  They continued congratulating each other, two teenagers happy and healthy and resplendent in each others’ presence. So I tuned them out, straining both eyes and ears to understand what was happening further away.

  “Take that!” Rosa sounded like a warrior, but no gunshot or clang of sword blade followed. Instead, I was pretty sure I heard…

  Blinking double time, I finally managed to catch sight of the strangest battle imaginable. I was in the same coffee-shop room I’d left behind what was, to me, over a week ago but what seemed to have been only a few minutes or possibly hours in this timeline.

  The room was much fuller than it had been when I left, though. The two teenagers knelt beside me while Seth shielded them with his body. Neko scampered around as if a showdown with an evil ghost was one big party. And the beautiful awfulness that was both Drake and Ambrose faced Jack, Kami—who seemed, from everyone’s body language, to be on our side now—and somebody else I didn’t even recognize at first.

  The somebody else was Rosa, but not the grandmotherly figure I’d grown used to. Instead, the older woman had two huge water guns strapped to her shoulders and a third in her hands. She was dousing Drake and, as I watched, his body changed.

  No, not from human to lupine. Instead, this transition was far more subtle. Shoulders that had hunched the tiniest bit as if they thought they were older than the body they inhabited unfolded. Eyes that had been charcoal black lightened to the gray of ashes. And Drake’s gaze turned in my direction, piercing me with that intensity I’d so sorely missed.

  “He wants your life,” Drake rasped. “Run!”

  Then Ambrose was back in command of their shared body. The water that had soaked his skin sizzled as it dried. The tether around my throat tightened like a fist.

  I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even breathe without Ambrose’s permission.

  He didn’t give it. Instead, the awfulness in beauty’s body crossed the room so quickly I barely saw him coming. So quickly Jack’s lunge wasn’t enough to stop him and Rosa’s second water gun instead soaked the non-possessed brother’s back.

  I knew what Ambrose was going to do before he did it. That’s what a mate bond meant—a deep knowledge of my partner’s upcoming actions. But I couldn’t stop Ambrose before his foot slammed Erik face down onto the floorboards, dragging Seth along via what appeared to be handcuffs linking the two together. I couldn’t stop Ambrose before his hands closed around Lynette’s throat.

  She whimpered once, then even that sound cut off. Only then did Ambrose speak.

  “Little fox,” evil growled with Drake’s voice. “Give me this body now or else.”

  “She can’t just give a body.” That was Jack, cat-footing toward us until Ambrose’s hands tightened and Lynette’s face reddened. Instantly, the man who looked like Drake but acted nothing like him froze, hands raised in total surrender, mouth resolutely shut.

  His gaze met mine, though, his need to see Lynette breathe almost as great as mine. And the distraction of Jack’s presence had loosened the mate bond’s iron grip on me just enough so I could speak. “I can give a body though,” I countered. “Or I can if—Lynette, do I still have any black hairs on this side?”

  I tilted my head so the girl could see the new white streak and she nodded, breath wheezing in as Ambrose’s grip loosened. I had his interest. Now I just needed to find a way to use this thing he wanted—my life—to save everybody else.

  “How many?” I continued, as if my ward and I were holding a harmless conversation.

  Ambrose’s hands loosened further. He wanted this answer as much as I did.

  “One,” my ward managed, her voice less of a croak now. She could breathe again even if she was in the literal hands of a murderer.

  I nodded. “And if I pluck it out, that will be my second life of three gone.”

  I was laying this out for Drake as much as for Ambrose. I needed the alpha who was no longer my mate to understand that I wasn’t sacrificing my entire self for him. That, at worse, I was losing my ability to pass through time—almost gone now anyway.

  And perhaps I was losing my memories also. Perhaps I’d forget the wonder of that month Drake and I had spent building a family, him bypassing each one of my traumas so I’d feel safe before nudging me to take each tiny forward step as I became ready for it.

  Why hadn’t I seized the perfect moment when it was cupped in my hands? Why hadn’t I kissed Drake under starlight and asked him to ravish me the way my body demanded to be ravished?

  If I had to forget that perfect life, I wished I’d lived first.

  I forced myself to swallow past the lump in my throat. And I forced out words I hoped would reel Ambrose the rest of the way in.

  “A life will allow you to solidify a body of your choosing. You won’t have to take Drake’s. You can recreate your previous body or dream up one even better. That’s what you were trying to do with the skull, wasn’t it, Kami? Trying to use its transformative properties to ground yourself in the human realm.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was louder than I’d thought it would be, as if she was creeping forward the same way Jack had. Everyone who had come here to save me and Drake was probably plotting potential solutions, but there was no solution left with Lynette’s throat in Ambrose’s hands. No solution other than the one I presented.

  “You’ll have the best body you can imagine,” I told the man who looked like Drake but stunk of rot, “and I’ll be your mate, bound to you until death and past it. It’s exactly what you wanted. All I ask is that you let everyone else here walk away.”

  Behind Ambrose’s eyes, something flickered. Fiery refusal. That was Drake, his protective streak unwilling to accept that saving most of the people in this room was better than saving none of them.

  If he could have stopped me, he would have. But he couldn’t. And what I was doing would protect him at last.

  So I ignored the even deeper cold in my belly as I went against the wishes of the man who should have been my mate.

  In contrast, the evil who was my mate nodded. “Acceptable. In fact, I think you’ve outdone yourself, little fox.”

  And Ambrose laughed out that long rolling belly laugh as he released Lynette. The same laugh I’d heard while rifling through his grave. The same laugh I’d heard when he killed me the first time.

  Which is when all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 32

  Drake: One hour earlier…

  I wasn’t thinking straight. I was aware of that. The fire had consumed me, but I still tried to regulate what I could while ignoring the searing pain in my gut where the last thread of our tether had finally snapped.

  She’s gone. Tru’s absence was like the final crumple of wood in the heart of a bonfire, losing shape, losing substance, turning something precious into thin air and ash.

  I was that ash. I was that hollowness. I was nothing without Tru by my side.

  Worse, though, was the knowledge that Tru hadn’t been saved when our mate bond splintered. Instead, she’d fallen through a pit in the floor and disappeared, possibly forever. Probably in as much pain as what currently bit into my stomach like lupine teeth.

  Everyone knows gut wounds are fatal. I only hoped I was the only one dying and not also Tru.

  I almost lost myself for several minutes, almost lost myself in the fire and the agony and the imaginings of what might be happening to the woman I hadn’t saved.

  Then Jack and Kami and Lynette and Seth and Rosa and Erik traipsed through the door as if this was a party not a battle against a vicious ghost.

  At which point, I had to force my thumb out of my ass and focus on something other than Tru’s absence. Because these people needed me, even if all I could do was seize minute control over the body I shared with evil and make it flinch at the wrong instant. They needed me alert and waiting for Ambrose to make the tiniest mistake.