And, yes, there were other issues to consider. Me waking up naked in that stable. Who might have had the motive and opportunity to make that happen. How to prevent the internet predator from stalking other young girls like Merry, or perhaps adults like me.

  But Jack was holding onto his own body through sheer grit at the moment. All I could focus on was helping him cling to that control.

  Then he was handing me Ambrose’s gun and his own pelt and phone before walking into a starkly metal-barred cell. I locked him inside with enough prepackaged food to last a month. That, along with a bed, sink, and toilet, meant I could have left him alone and known his physical needs would be met.

  But I didn’t want to leave and Jack clearly had other ideas also. Because he demanded, “Cuff me here and here,” somehow managing to make even those heart-wrenching words sexy.

  Finally, once his wrists were bound to the bars, the danger Ambrose represented was defused enough for us to let down our guard and feel the mate bond sing between us. I leaned against the outside of the bars while Jack leaned against the inside. Between the cold metal uprights, there was just enough space for hands or lips to touch.

  We didn’t touch quite yet though. “You smell it when he’s coming?” Jack asked, his lemon-sugar breath fluttering across my cheek.

  “Yes.” One word was all I could manage.

  My mate closed his eyes, reopened them, and became as serious as I’d ever seen him. “Ambrose could still command you to let him out, but alpha commands fade with distance. Take the cell key and put it...”

  I silenced him with a kiss. Yes, I’d protect this skin of mine now that I knew it was permanent. Soon, I’d get in touch with Honor via Jack’s cell phone and pass along my suspicions about the identity of the internet predator.

  But this might be the only moment I had with Jack before Ambrose took back over. I wasn’t about to waste that precious time.

  At first, our kiss was tentative, soft as question marks. But then Jack opened to me, inviting me deeper. He opened...and sweet citrus tingled across my tongue.

  This connection was everything I’d dreamed of, and it was no longer enough for me. I wanted so badly to feel Jack’s hands running across my skin, warm and very faintly roughened. I wanted to feel his fingers sliding through the fur of my pelt, bringing us closer than I’d thought possible.

  I wanted, I needed, I craved everything. Now.

  “No,” Jack answered, speaking via the mate bond since our mouths were otherwise occupied. “Too dangerous.”

  “Says the man who rode a water buffalo.”

  “Danger to me isn’t the same as danger to you.”

  His logic was flawed, but I was done arguing. Instead of answering with words, I reached between the bars to cup the back of his head, drawing us even closer together while not crossing the line of safety he’d drawn between us. Cool metal bit into my skin, but I barely noticed. Lost in the taste of him, the Jackness of him, my knees turned weak.

  Not from lack of food this time. Not from fear or tiredness either. Instead, it was sheer wonder of what I was experiencing that affected me. Human bodies were a revelation.

  So was Jack. “Lean on the bars. Lean on me.” He hummed aloud as his words emerged fully formed inside me.

  I obeyed him. Reveled in his stubble as it grazed my neck. Reveled in shivers that shook not just my body but also something deeper. I ached to open the cell door, to uncuff his hands, to…

  “No.”

  He pulled away and the loss of his kiss was worse than Ambrose wringing pain out of my pelt early that morning. Jack’s eyes bored into me as he demanded, “The key to the cell.”

  “You haven’t forgotten?” I’d forgotten everything. Forgotten the world existed beyond the two of us. Forgotten there was a past and a future attached to this present.

  “Kami, please.”

  His please was irresistible. So I uncuffed his hands then forced myself to go, carrying the cell’s key back down the mountainside to our borrowed car, far enough away that an alpha command would fade before I ever got back there. Far enough so even if Ambrose resurfaced, Jack and I would both be safe.

  Returning beneath moonlight, the emptiness of the abandoned village chilled me. A loose piece of metal roofing clanged and I imagined the people who had lived here until Ambrose scared them deeper into hiding.

  What might Ambrose have done while I was hiking down to the car and back? What might I have done a month ago if I were in Ambrose’s shoes?

  The possibilities were many...and bloody. I burst through the door of the jail, half expecting Ambrose to have escaped or worse. But Jack was still there and Jack was still Jack. “You need to eat,” he told me.

  I had better ideas about what we could do with our mouths, and Jack must have heard them down the mate bond because his dimple indented. “You need to eat food,” he clarified.

  “Picky, picky.”

  “How about I entertain you in another way?”

  So while I microwaved noodles and warmed my belly from the inside, Jack colored within the lines I’d already sketched from context about the world of woelfin. Unlike Honor, Jack was only half woelfin, the fear of so-called “skinless” that troubled others of his kind having been counteracted by his werewolf mother. Still, he shifted using a pelt and had a twin brother who was more important to him than an ordinary sibling.

  “My father didn’t stick to tradition, but I always assumed Drake and I would find mates at the same time and settle down next door to each other.” The music of his words joined with the blanket I’d pulled up to my chest, cocooning me in comfort. Now that I was fed and the cell key was hidden, I could rest finally. Could relax and focus on understanding Jack in a way I never would have imagined possible before becoming fully one with this body.

  His pause now was a question, which I answered. “We can live next door to them.” At that moment it didn’t matter that Drake and his mate both had reason to hate me. If Jack wanted them as neighbors, we’d be their neighbors.

  “They’ll love you,” Jack promised as if my concerns had been voiced aloud.

  And I believed him. Believed him so firmly I could imagine being there now. Four of us forming the center of a pack-like family. Me and Jack as mates and Drake and Tru as our brother and sister.

  I could see it clearly when I closed my eyes, despite the certainty we had to deal with Ambrose and a pelt stealer before we could embrace that future. The vision wasn’t blocked by the bars separating our physical bodies or by the four feet of distance Jack required I keep whenever he was uncuffed.

  An hour ago, I’d pulled up my cot to a location just out of Jack’s reach and now I lay there in the pitch darkness completely content in a way I’d never been before. It was late, our bellies were full, and our bodies demanded sleep. But neither of us was ready for our time together to be over. We both knew this evening might be our last.

  “When you text Honor tomorrow,” Jack murmured, voice even deeper than usual as slumber tried to grab him, “mention a kitten in a tree. It’s a code to make her trust you.”

  “Okay.”

  His hand reached out and my fingers made contact without me needing to crack my eyes open. I was far enough away so he couldn’t reach me without my assistance, but I was ready and willing to assist.

  Especially when his thumb stroked heady awareness into my palm. Especially when the mate bond spiraled around and between us, amplifying our shared pleasure.

  Unfortunately, his words were less pleasant. “I want you to take the memory of this evening.”

  “No!” The blanket fell away from me and cold air invaded.

  “I won’t let Ambrose use what we shared against you,” he countered. “The next time I’m me, you can give the memories back.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” I’d always used the memories I took, creating bodies or simply feeding on the energy. My kami nature meant I’d never even considered trying to allow a source of strength out of my grasp.

  I felt Jack’s shrug down the connection of our joined hands and also down the mate bond. “Try. If all else fails, you’ll still remember. You can tell me anything I need to know.”

  It felt wrong to steal from Jack. It felt like becoming another person, the Kami who’d ended lives and laughed about it. The Kami who Tall Nose had considered a like-minded friend interested only in power.

  But I couldn’t refuse my mate. So I sipped up his memory. Stole our first kiss and hugged it to my chest even though the taking awoke Ambrose and I barely managed to yank my fingers out of his grasp before he could confine me. I had to clamp my palms over my ears and flee when he thrust alpha commands in my direction.

  In the end, I greeted dawn tossing and turning alone in a house that smelled like Jack’s brother while my mate remained in a double prison, locked behind bars and lost inside his own skin.

  Chapter 18

  I wouldn’t precisely say Jack and I enjoyed our month-plus honeymoon, but we lived through it. Ambrose ruled Jack’s skin most hours, more so at the full moon and less so when the night sky was dark. Even at the height of his strength, however, Ambrose often lost his hold at the end of the day, allowing me and Jack to steal blissful moments together. Those memories tasted of lemon sugar...and each kiss was Jack’s first since I seized the memory afterwards to keep as my own.

  Meanwhile, the trail to the internet predator grew cold. I’d texted Honor via Jack’s cell phone that first morning using the kitten code and she’d responded with a video-chat request. I’d declined then promptly typed in a lie: “Sorry, busy.”

  “I know this is you, Kami,” Honor answered. “Video chat or I’ll have my tech guys track you down.”

  So I’d been the one to send a chat request the second time, expecting the same disbelief Honor had turned on me earlier. Instead, even through the tiny screen of my cell phone, I could make out worry lines pinching her face while her eyes offered sympathy. “What can I do to help you help Jack?”

  “You believe me now?”

  “The kitten in the tree...it’s an SOS sent via a credible messenger. You’re the one who sent it. Jack wants me to trust you.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure my own trust was ready to embrace Honor, but I told her the whole story anyway. And as I spoke, I wondered—was Honor simply keeping me on the line while determining my location? Would werewolves break down the door before I finished my thoughts?

  They didn’t. Instead, when I was done, Honor snarled, “Jack shouldn’t be caged. I hate this.”

  “Believe me, I hate it even more.”

  Which is when she circled back around to her original question. “How can I help?”

  She couldn’t. But perhaps I could help her, or at least help other woelfins. So I passed along my suspicions about the internet predator. I mentioned how Mariana had seen my pelt the first time she met me. How Ambrose had told her I was the same person as that blond Kami even though I wore a different face. How the people who’d drugged me back at the horse show showed every indication of hunting for a pelt.

  “One of them said Strip her,” I recalled aloud, “and I woke up naked. But Ambrose had my pelt stashed in the car, so there was nothing for them to find. I’m guessing that’s why they dumped me. Did you manage to track down the kid who gave Jack the card?”

  Honor shrugged. “Yeah, but it didn’t do us any good. Some guy the boy couldn’t describe paid him ten bucks to deliver it. And the website the card linked to has been shut down. We’ll show up at that time and place, but I’m guessing the auction will be moved or canceled.”

  “Jack wanted to keep his brother out of the mess with Ambrose,” I observed after a moment, breaking the thoughtful silence, “but I could call Drake. The Executioner would be able to walk into the O’Connell mansion and plant cameras. We could confirm whether my suspicions about Mariana hold water.”

  “No need.” For the first time since our video call connected, Honor smiled, her impish expression making the family resemblance between her and her niece obvious. “Planting cameras sounds like just my cup of tea.”

  During the days and weeks that followed, Honor and I kept each other updated. She offered suggestions for dealing with Ambrose, none of which worked any better than the ones I’d come up with solo. And I offered what little information I had about Mariana’s personality to go with the lack of evidence the planted cameras had turned up.

  Mostly, though, I filled my time waiting for Ambrose to nap then seizing upon Jack’s fleeting presence. We enjoyed plenty of kissing and caressing between cell bars, each moment overshadowed by the knowledge that Ambrose could pop back up without warning. We also talked as much as we kissed, shared words somehow feeling just as necessary as physical contact did.

  “You’re thinking about Tru again,” Jack observed one night when the moon had dwindled down to the thinnest crescent, a phase during which Ambrose seemed less inclined or perhaps less able to make his presence known.

  “How can you tell?”

  “You get a line right here.”

  Handcuffs prevented him from tracing the spot between my eyebrows with his fingers, the physical restraint something Jack continued to demand whenever I came within arm’s reach. But he’d gotten quite adept at using other parts of his body to perform the role of fingers. Now, his nose caressed my skin almost as lightly as his breath feathered across my cheekbone. “Tell me,” he suggested.

  So I did. I told him how ruminating on my crimes as a full-on kami woke new feelings inside me. Remorse but also something more solid. An urge to remedy past harms.

  “I can’t bring people back from the dead,” I continued. “But I stole so many memories, from Tru especially. I devoured most of them—they don’t exist any longer. Her first kiss is still inside me though. And now that I understand what losing that memory means...”

  My voice trailed off. Jack had lost our own first kiss, would lose his knowledge of another tonight if that enticing dimple’s attractiveness was anything to go by.

  “So give it back to her.”

  “I can’t,” I countered, remembering how I’d tried returning a memory to Jack a week ago. I’d pushed it toward him rather than yanking it away, then had watched as the tiny glowing orb bounced off his skin and popped out of existence. Spirits might be able to steal energy from each other, but Jack had never been a disembodied spirit. The memory I’d tried to return to my mate was gone now, no longer something even I could turn over and consider inside my own head.

  Tru had been a disembodied spirit for a century though. And the body I now inhabited was as much hers as it was mine. Perhaps that made memories more likely to transfer between us?

  Plus, if Tru’s kiss disappeared into the void, was that really any worse than hoarding it as my own?

  I was already separating Tru’s first kiss from my own memories when Jack asked, “What can I do to help?”

  There was nothing he could do, and no way for me to know whether the transfer would work either. But it was the right move. I knew that now with the surety that came from inhabiting my own human skin and watching Jack fumble his way around lost memories.

  So I experienced Drake’s lips on Tru’s skin for the last time while wrapping the memory gently in glowing swirls of my own energy for protection. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the parcel away from me, hoping it would travel toward Tru.

  Something wrenched out of my body as the memory left. Something that emptied my vitality as surely as if I’d run a marathon. And when I opened my eyes at last, panting deep inhales through a throat raw and dry, Ambrose was the one peering out from behind Jack’s eyes.

  “Do you really think that makes you better than I am?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “But it makes me better than I was.”

  Disaster didn’t strike until mid December. It arrived at a time when I hadn’t seen Jack’s dimple in over a week, when Ambrose had been unaccountably sluggish despite the moon swelling larger and larger in the sky every evening. Now, though, he was smug as he nodded his chin at my ringing cell phone. “Bad news,” he observed.

  “You can’t know that,” I countered. Weeks ago, after Ambrose messed with me one time too many, Jack had set my mind at ease by searching himself and the cell thoroughly and repeatedly for any transmission device. Turned out Ambrose had no contact with the outside world, just a fortuneteller’s facility with guessing and spinning those guesses to match my facial expressions.

  Now he shrugged and went back to the push-ups he used to pass time while stuck in such a small space. “You’ll see.”

  I accepted the call and immediately forgot Ambrose as I heard Honor’s voice on the other end of the line. “Merry’s pelt is gone,” she sobbed.

  My memory of the girl I’d last seen bantering with Ambrose morphed and twisted. No longer did Merry have eyes full of mischief. Now her eyes were empty while her finger pointed at me.

  I’d made a choice to stay here with Ambrose, trying to save Jack, rather than leaving to hunt down the pelt stealer. I didn’t realize I’d sunk to the ground until I felt cold tiles beneath my fingers. “Gone? What do you mean by gone?”

  “She can’t find it anywhere. And, yes, I know she’s just a kid and kids lose things. But woelfin don’t misplace our pelts.”

  “I believe you.” Of course I did. At this moment, I knew exactly where both my pelt and Jack’s were stashed. Mine was under the pillow in a house that I’d walked through only once while sweeping each residence to ensure it was truly abandoned. Jack’s was in an attic found during the same reconnaissance mission, hidden inside a dusty old trunk.

  Honor’s voice firmed up a little as she continued but she still didn’t sound like herself. “We’ve locked down our territory and are searching everywhere, but my gut says the internet predator tracked Merry back here. It’s time to stop waiting for Mariana to make a move and...”