There was a coil of rope long enough for me to hold between my hands at shoulder-width, something dark crusting its surface. And a tiny fragment of pelt that could easily have come from a wolf but which sparked static electricity when I stroked it.

  Unlike the rope, the furry pelt fragment smelled lemon-meringue-pie sweet. As if Drake had handled it many times when no one else was around to intermingle their aromas.

  Well, the fragment of fur smelled like lemon and now, also, like musty book pages. Drake would know I’d poked around when next he opened up the safe.

  I closed the door quickly then turned at the sound of a male voice.

  “I see,” Seth observed, voice tight in a different way than it had been when I overheard him not many minutes earlier, “that he’s let you into his heart.”

  The last time Seth and I met, I’d just woken from a memory loss that occurred following Lynette’s most recent kidnapping. Soon thereafter, I’d unwittingly sent him and Drake away rather than telling them where Lynette was caged.

  No wonder Seth’s shoulders were stiff now and his fists clenched. Meanwhile, heightened emotion made his scent so strong I could smell it all the way across the room.

  Sunlight on ice, one of the most common aromas leftover in the office from previous visits. Seth had spent many hours in this room.

  But this time he didn’t come past the doorway, even though I suspected Drake had sent him to help me hand out envelopes. The Strays would take instructions better from someone they knew than from a stranger. Still, Drake had put the letters into my possession, not his.

  Looked like the two of us were going to be working together. In an effort to reduce the obvious friction between us, I started: “I owe you an apology…”

  But Seth interrupted before I could finish. “Not relevant today.” He gestured at the letters. “May I?”

  Only after I nodded did he enter the office, and I realized then that he hadn’t been hovering in the doorway because of the old grudge between us. He’d been giving me space in case the scent of fresh fur made me need to flee.

  I was past that, though, at least mostly. At the moment, I had no problem holding my ground as Seth flipped through the envelopes, drawing out his plus two others: Lynette’s and Cedric’s. “These can go back into the safe.”

  I didn’t argue. Just set the letters in front of the unidentified treasures and shut it all back up tight. Then I followed Seth out into the snow again and we pounded on door after door after door.

  We worked well together, but I didn’t miss the fact that Seth had sidestepped accepting my apology. I didn’t miss the fact that, in between handing out letters, the silence between us was as frigid and crystalline as the snow we kicked up with every step.

  Still, I was too busy looking over my shoulder in search of a hint of Kami’s presence to force the issue while we moved between residences. And, inside each cabin, the overwhelming terror spinning out of shifter after shifter made our personal disagreements pale in comparison.

  Because each Stray had come to this mountaintop as a last resort. No wonder being kicked out made some rage, some cry, and one laugh hysterically as if being told to leave behind this promise of safety was the biggest joke she’d heard in a very long time.

  “I was Drake’s first,” India told me and I only realized my teeth were turning sharp when the tiny woman—thirtyish with short, crazy hair tinged in at least three different unnatural shades—patted me on the cheek. “Not that kind of first, honey. I was his first Stray. I told him this place couldn’t last, but I guess I’d started to believe him when he said we’d be safe.”

  “You’ll be safe where you’re going,” Seth promised, stepping back into the room with a backpack dangling from one hand. Every single Stray had a go-bag like this somewhere easily accessible, somewhere Seth was also familiar with. I assumed they also had some mode of transportation lined up since there’d been no other vehicles where Drake had told me to park my car.

  “Read your letter,” I suggested when the woman just shook her head in response to Seth’s reassurance. And like every other Stray, after India tore open the sealed envelope and perused the sheet of paper inside, her scent turned sweet and soft.

  I’d seen bits and pieces of the contents of other letters, enough to know that Drake had addressed each shifter personally. He’d mentioned shared histories then had gotten even more personal. The most frightened had been reminded of their strength. The most angry had been reminded of their calm.

  India, apparently, was reminded that there could be humor without hysteria. Because she accepted her bag from Seth and left with a joke and a smile, heading to an individualized meetup point that Drake had set up so pairs of shifters could evacuate while watching each other’s backs.

  My hands were now empty of envelopes. Our assigned duty was complete.

  “Done?” Seth asked, monosyllabic as we stood alone together outside India’s house. The wind had kicked up, blowing snow into the air where it sparkled like fireflies.

  Even though the wind was bitter against my cheeks, I shrugged out of my coat before answering. Every innocent had been sent away or was being personally protected by Drake. Which meant I could succumb to the temptation of a puzzle.

  “You’re done,” I told him, “after you point me in the direction of Cedric’s body.”

  Chapter 12

  Tru

  Seth didn’t point. Instead, he led me wordlessly back into the office and shucked off his clothes while I did the same, backs turned for a modicum of privacy. Wolf and fox, we pushed through the flap in the door and followed the trail of footsteps to the path Lynette and I had walked up not so many hours before.

  In the dark, I hadn’t been able to make out the lay of the land. But now I saw that the Strays’ village sat atop what appeared to be a double ring of cliffs with a single break that the path passed down through. Once we’d descended through the first half of that gap, however, Seth led me away from the muddle of evacuee tracks and along the bottom of the upper cliffs, where a thin path followed semi-flat ground before the next drop-off began below.

  This path had already been traversed once today. A single set of wolf prints, coming and going, preceded us through the snow.

  Unable to speak in animal form, I had to assume those prints were Seth’s. That he’d seen the fallen body from the clifftop and taken this route to discover whether Cedric was alive and in need of assistance. Without knowing when the snow had fallen, however, it was impossible to say whether Cedric and his murderer had traveled along this same path or whether the former had indeed tumbled down from the top of the cliff.

  As we ran, chill bit into the shaded forest, the sandstone wall on our left blocking every ray of sun. Ice floes slicked the path where a trickle of water had passed over it, and I was looking down to make sure I didn’t slide over the edge of the only slightly shorter cliff below us when the strange wolf pounced.

  She must have leapt across the trail and scrambled up to perch in a shadowed alcove above us. So her location made sense despite the single trail of tracks. Her fur form not so much.

  Surely Kami would shift into a fox, not a wolf? I thought, then shook away that line of thinking. Now was very much not the time for puzzling. Not when the strange wolf was aiming straight for me, our size difference making a straight-on battle ill advised.

  Good thing I had Seth as backup. Even now he was pivoting in preparation for thrusting his body between me and the ambusher. Meanwhile, the landscape worked in my favor also, the slippery path making agility more important than brute strength.

  Then I lost half of my assets. The falling wolf barked and the air turned even colder as an alpha command froze Seth relentlessly in place.

  The field had narrowed to her and me and now she was landing where I’d been a moment earlier, claws anchoring her in place before she could slide over the edge.

  For my part, I angled my body between her and the frozen Seth. It would be so easy for a dominant wolf to nudge a frozen submissive over the cliff with a hip bump. A second Stray dead this morning from a hard fall wasn’t in the cards, not if I could prevent it.

  So I didn’t leap across our enemy’s back to make her head spin the way I’d originally intended. Instead, I darted in and out, nipping at her front legs then retreating before she could catch me. At this rate, I’d draw enough blood to disable our enemy…in approximately a year and a half.

  She let me create three small scratches, then she barked a second time. And when Seth started walking forward, jerkiness proved it wasn’t under his own volition. He crowded me toward the bared fangs of the other werewolf, a drop on one side and a cliff on the other preventing me from evading the pincher maneuver by simply veering out of his path.

  I hesitated, unable to think of a solution that didn’t leave Seth in mortal peril. And our enemy took full advantage. So fast I hadn’t even seen her move, her teeth clenched down over my ruff. Then I was in the air, unable to find purchase with my scrabbling paws.

  A fox in a wolf’s mouth had little recourse. But my enemy didn’t end things quickly. Instead, she slung me from side to side, turning her head back and forth so my much smaller body was whipped faster and faster with each iteration.

  My hip slammed into her shoulder with bruising force and my neck ached from whiplash. A little faster, a little harder, and my spine would snap…

  I shifted, banking on that moment of change when fur receded into skin to give me a minuscule advantage. I could only hope the slick texture of my human flesh would let me wrench myself free from enemy jaws…

  Only, the strange wolf shifted as I did. We landed on the icy stone naked and panting, the cold burning into the bruise on my hip then into my butt as I scrambled around to face her.

  I’d assumed this woman was Kami. That she’d somehow donned the form of a wolf while taking on that other face after I broke the bond with her a month ago.

  But our enemy wasn’t Kami. She was someone I recognized from the screen of Drake’s cell phone. The big boss. His mother.

  “So you’re the one who’s sunk her claws into my son,” she observed. Then she was lupine and leaving, running away from us down the path Seth and I had followed to get to this point.

  Seth wasn’t able to unfreeze his muscles sufficiently to walk for a full fifteen minutes. But he’d managed a head shake when I demanded information about whether I should sprint ahead and warn against the danger Drake’s mother represented.

  No, his first head shake said, Lynette wasn’t in peril. No, his second head shake confirmed, this attack wasn’t out of character, wasn’t a sign of possession.

  And I accepted Seth’s advice, glad of an excuse to put off the unpleasantness of further acquaintance with Drake’s parent. Shifting back to fur to hold onto precious body heat, I settled in and waited for my guide to regain his shattered equilibrium.

  He came out of the alpha command gradually. First those head shakes, then he was able to inch his tail out from between his hind legs over the course of a minute. Finally, he wrested the last of the compulsion off with a whole-body shudder, as if he was shedding noxious water after an ill-advised swim.

  And even though Seth wasn’t my friend, I chalked up another mark against Drake’s mother on my mental tally sheet. She hadn’t harmed Seth permanently, but she hadn’t been kind either. She could have unfrozen him just as easily as she’d locked him into place rather than making him work the compulsion out of his system the slow, hard way.

  As I thought about it more, I liked the woman less.

  Then I put her out of my mind as Seth brought me at last to the place I’d asked to be guided to. A scene that saddened me despite how much Cedric’s hand-kissing had set my teeth on edge last night.

  Seth had likely been right to say Cedric fell from the cliff top. It appeared as if he’d broken his back, paralyzing his lower limbs then trying to claw his way back up the path to safety. Maybe Cedric had made it some distance down the trail before dying and maybe he hadn’t. It was impossible to tell since the snow had fallen long enough after his death that it lay across his body like a funeral shroud.

  The only patches of clear skin were on his neck and face. Nearby, a line of wolf prints that resolved into one pair of bare human footprints suggested Seth had shifted to check for vital signs before returning to his fur and rushing back to tell Drake the news.

  There was no rush now, so I nosed at the body. I didn’t expect any olfactory clues, but something unusual made me pause and sniff a second time.

  Cedric smelled oily. And when I puffed breath across his face to clear away snow then flicked the tip of my tongue against his bare skin, my taste buds rebelled at the foulness.

  I bit snow, spat it out, and bit again to ensure the oil wouldn’t affect me. Then I turned away from Cedric and led Seth back the way we’d come at a trot.

  Because the substance on Cedric reminded me of what had sluiced off Erik when Lynette and Kira doused him in liquid. The time had come to question Erik more fully no matter how that interrogation might upset my ward.

  Chapter 13

  Tru

  The tinkle of Lynette’s laughter greeted us as we reentered the village, but I didn’t follow the sound to its source immediately. Instead, Seth and I headed toward Drake’s office, once again shifting with our backs turned.

  I’d expected us to dress in the same silence we’d undressed in. But to my surprise, Seth offered information about recent events without me having to beg. “The woman who attacked us—Winter De Luca—is Drake’s mother.”

  “So he said.” Well, not the part about her name. I hadn’t even known Drake’s surname since the business cards he carried around were all different. But the fact the big boss was his mother…if Seth was privy to that information, he might also know why Drake had sounded so pained when he admitted to the relationship.

  “You know being Executioner is a family business?” Seth continued.

  I had to turn around to face him now even though I was only decent by the most lax of modern standards. We hadn’t bothered switching on the lamps, but enough light glowed in through the window to mean my bare skin was very much in view.

  And that didn’t matter. Among werewolves, nudity wasn’t much remarked upon. No wonder Seth just kept dressing, eyes on his work, as I admitted my ignorance. “No, I wasn’t aware.” Then, because it had to be said. “And if Drake hasn’t told me, you probably shouldn’t either.”

  “Any trait taken to extremes is a detriment,” Seth muttered. “Even honor. Drake has told you, at least three times that I’m aware of.”

  Which meant Drake had spoken of this part of his past during the period when I lost my memory daily. “Not recently,” I corrected. “He knows I don’t remember and hasn’t broached the topic again. My point stands.”

  We’d continued dressing while we spoke, and now Seth jerked on his shoes with more force than was truly necessary. “Drake hasn’t shared personal information with you recently because you asked him for space. You told him you needed to figure out who you were before you embarked on a romantic relationship.” His mangling of the laces suggested his patience with me had neared its end. “Do you want me to tell you about his mother or not?”

  I did. I really, really did. I was now fully dressed, though, and had no excuse to linger with a shifter who disliked me and was offering information I shouldn’t honorably ask for.

  Puzzles, however, were my weakness. Drake was the ultimate puzzle.

  And perhaps Seth was right that any trait, taken to extremes, was a detriment. Even honor.

  “Yes,” I said at last. “Tell me. Please.”

  I’d known for at least a month that Drake acted as the Executioner, a powerful alpha not affiliated with any pack who was able to use those two facets of his character to keep the existence of werewolves under wraps. I’d known that the big boss—Winter De Luca—decided which problems needed to be dealt with, sending her son off on jobs that sometimes had him returning to us emotionally battered and stinking of blood not his own.

  The blanks Seth filled in now were just as morally gray. Drake’s father had been the Executioner before him, and Winter had revoked an ordinary pack heritage when she chose him as mate. In the end, though, she’d proven to be just as hard-hearted as her partner, training Drake from birth and expecting him to step into his father’s shoes a decade ago when the elder Executioner died on the job.

  Ever since, Winter had harped upon the need for her son to find a suitably bloodthirsty life partner to take over her duties. “I don’t think I’m the kind of mate she had in mind,” I observed as Seth and I crossed the open space between the office and the building Lynette’s laughter had rung out of. Our destination wasn’t familiar to me but the heady aroma of sausage wafting out despite closed doors and windows made me guess that Drake had gathered the teenagers and was making them breakfast, likely with his mother in the wings.

  “She won’t be polite about her dissatisfaction,” Seth agreed. “But I don’t think she’ll actually do serious harm.”

  The bone-deep bruise on my hip would have begged to differ but I ignored it. Because Seth was important to both Drake and Lynette, so him speaking to me willingly overcame any concern about potential trouble from Winter.

  “Thank you.” I made sure my words were full of honest gratitude. “After how I treated you a month ago, I would have understood if you helped her push me over the edge.”

  In return, Seth shook his head. “Turns out you’re hard to hate.”

  “You’re ready to accept my apology?”

  “Have to. Lynette treats you like a mother and I think of her like a sister. So I guess I should start calling you Mom.”

  It was a joke combined with acceptance. So I was already warm when Seth pulled open the door to what turned out to be a kitchen large enough to grace a midsize restaurant. Then I grew warmer as my ward greeted me with joy in her voice. “You’re just in time for crepes!”