Raul fell into step beside me, his long legs easily keeping up with my clipped pace, one arm tucked against his side to pin a manilla folder there. “Do you mind if we walk along the beach? There are a lot of prying ears around here,” he said.

  I heard a low distant growl I knew was Ty’s. Partly out of irritation at his overprotectiveness, and partly because Raul was right, I said, “Sure.” It wasn’t just that I was uncomfortable with Ty overhearing me clear things up with my maker. The Caninus and Alpha Councils were both too close for my comfort.

  We soon veered off the sidewalk onto a path that led down to the dreary beach. Gray sand met with a foamy gray ocean that disappeared into a gray sky. Wind howled along the rocky hillsides thrusting up from the beach, whipping my hair around. I was in desperate need of a set of rose-colored glasses. This entire trip had put me off my positive vibe in a huge way. The multitude of greens, browns, and blues of Montana had never been more appealing. I couldn’t wait to get back.

  When we reached the beach I slid my boots off and sank my toes into the soft, cool sand. The sensation made me sigh as it eased some of my tension. As much as I loved Montana, I did miss the beaches of Washington. We walked in a silence pregnant with the anti-Christ—or maybe anti-Thor would have been a better way to put it. Ty would love that. The thought made me smile, until I remembered why I was here. Holding my boots in one hand, I crossed my arms beneath my breasts as I walked alongside the rocky hillside that rose up to our left.

  “I like Elexis. I’m not sure what she sees in you, though,” I said.

  We had to walk a lot closer than I liked so I didn’t have to yell over the wind, but the need to keep quiet made it necessary.

  Running a hand through his brown-black hair, he shot a wistful look at me. “Yeah, me neither.”

  That threw me for a minute and all I could do was stare at him, mouth agape. “You really care about her,” I finally managed to get out.

  He smiled like a love-sick puppy as his eyes went all distant and dreamy. “I love her with every part of me and some parts I didn’t even know I had.”

  Something in me wanted to get jealous, or angry, but I couldn’t. I had Ty, and I wouldn’t trade him for anyone in the nine worlds, not even Thor himself. It surprised me that Raul finding happiness didn’t scratch me all kinds of wrong ways.

  His expression turned serious when he looked over at me. “The offer of support is genuine, I promise. It really isn’t out of guilt for what I did to you, though I will always be very sorry for that.”

  I let the sound of our soft footsteps in the sand fill the breezy morning as I considered my words. The wind whipped my long, dark hair back from my face, filling my nose with the heady scent of the ocean. “I know your sister manipulated you into thinking she was in danger from Bane. I get that she forced you to bite me in without asking, and I forgive you for that.”

  Something darkened his eyes. Rage, self-loathing? I couldn’t quite tell. “You shouldn’t. I don’t.”

  I uncrossed my arms and turned toward him. “I’m serious, Raul.”

  “So am I. I betrayed your trust. I took your choice. Those things are unforgivable. And all for someone who was never in danger in the first place.”

  The tired sound of his voice tugged at my sympathy. “You didn’t know that. If I had a sibling, I’d do anything to protect them. I get it.”

  He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “You’re a good person, Sonya, too good, maybe. There are some seriously dangerous people that will try to take advantage of you. You have to be careful in our world.”

  “People in the Caninus Council?”

  “Everywhere, but yes, particularly there. As alpha predators, canine shifters are territorial, and they feel like you’re invading, challenging their authority.”

  A little growl slid from me. “I noticed, but I have no interest in their damn territory, only in helping those who need it. If they pay attention, they’ll realize that.”

  Sighing, he bent down to pick up a shell as we walked. “Fear prevents them from seeing the truth.” He took a step closer and lowered his voice, despite the fact that we were alone on the beach. “Whoever is biting skinwalkers in as ma’ii might be trying to continue Calder’s work.”

  The chill that shot through me perked me right up. “What makes you think that?”

  For a long moment, he sniffed the air and tilted his head up as if listening. Knowing he was checking to make sure we didn’t have eavesdroppers, I waited. “Our contacts among the AVW hear rumblings, talk that some still want us to reveal ourselves to this world,” he said so softly I barely heard despite our proximity.

  The AVW—American Viking Werewolf—was an umbrella pack that anyone could belong to, a sort of pack of all packs with members from all over the state the chapter was located in. Varúlfur could belong to both it and their own pack. Calder had been working with Raul’s sister, trying to force shifterkind to reveal themselves to the world, trying to use Ayra and me to do it. They were sick bastards who didn’t remember the days of mobs toting torches and pitchforks.

  “Asgardians hauling your sister to another world to stand trial for her crimes wasn’t enough to deter them?” I asked with an unhealthy amount of bitterness.

  Raul gave me a half shrug. “Some think that encouraged them, others don’t believe the tale, and even others boast of being proud we got the attention of Asgard.”

  My teeth ground together as I fought the desire to scream. “Are they so stupid as to think we won’t be experimented on, tortured, or used? The people of this world are more fearful than they’ve ever been. We are faster, stronger, and we live a hell of a lot longer than they do. They will fight us, rage against our very existence. But mostly, they will try to use us,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “I think that might be what those who are trying to expose us want,” Raul said.

  “To be used?” I asked. He shook his head, and I knew the answer with a sinking certainty. “A fight.”

  The serious look he gave me sent chills through my body. “A war.” After a long moment, he took the folder he’d been carrying out from under his arm and extended it to me. “I have something for you.”

  I accepted it. “What is it?”

  “Your history, your real history. Elexis uncovered it when she was doing some digging on old bloodlines. We thought you might like to have it,” he said, tone careful.

  “You read it.” It wasn’t a question. I knew from the way he wouldn’t meet my gaze that he had read it. “Before or after you bit me in?” I snapped.

  Now he did meet my gaze. “I didn’t even know this information until Elexis found it, I promise.”

  I stopped walking for a moment to open the folder. It was an official-looking file, the type law enforcement used to keep before everything became digitalized, and it was on me and my parents. My father’s parents’ names were listed, as were my mother’s. Her mother was listed as a half Cherokee woman, and her father was listed as a Navajo or Diné man—and more interestingly, a skinwalker.

  “What the hell kind of file is this?” I hissed through the fangs that had involuntarily extended.

  “The type nonhumans keep.” He took a step closer and kept his voice quiet. “Sonya, I know you might want to try and find them, but I hope you won’t. Skinwalkers are dangerous, and they have never liked shifters.”

  The sincerity and concern in his voice wasn’t enough to dampen my anger. “If this is real, then at least one of them liked our kind enough to knock up my grandmother,” I snapped in a low voice.

  “I’m sorry to give you news like this. I know it might be a shock to you.”

  “Apparently I’m the only one. Everyone else seemed to know before I did,” I grumbled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Unable to stand still any longer, I started walking again. “Stop saying that. It isn’t your fault.”

  We walked on in heavy silence until the breeze carried a sound to me I so did not want to hear while in Raul’s presence: the groan of a man in the throes of passion. I halted, but not fast enough. Around the next rocky outcropping I spied a woman’s sweat-slickened back as she moved and ground atop the lap of a naked man. Long black hair flung around her shoulders as she threw her head back and howled in ecstasy. The profile of half her face revealed her to be Halona, the ma’ii female councilor.

  I looked away and stepped swiftly out of sight before my mind caught up to tell my brain I hadn’t seen what I thought I had. The man beneath Halona wasn’t Bidziil like I had expected. Spiky red hair and sharp angled features marked the man as Gregor, the rӓvar male councilor. For a horrible, heart-thudding moment I wondered if they had heard us talking or approaching. But the wind had been blowing in our direction with enough ferocity that it was unlikely.

  I held a hand out to stop Raul from taking a step around the rock outcropping. He gave me a questioning look, but turned and followed when I shook my head and started back the way we’d come. They hadn’t seen us, and I wanted to keep it that way. Things were uncomfortable and tense enough between Halona and me.

  Once we had walked halfway back to the trail that led onto the beach, Raul gave me a one-eyebrow raise clearly meant to be a question. Not even trying to hide my stank face, blew out a breath. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  My phone vibrated in the center console of my Jeep for the third time in the last hour. And for the third time, I ignored it and kept driving. The buzz-rattle of plastic on plastic made me cringe. I was late, and Ty had every right to be worried, but I couldn’t turn back yet. According to Gripp’s incessant chattering from his perch on the backrest of my back seat, there was a newly bitten somewhere near this town. Clumsy and menacing though he was, his ravendar had so far proven to be spot-on. The closer I got to a newly bitten in need of help, the more he chattered. The farther away, the quieter he grew.

  Daylight had gone from glaring down on top of my head, thanks to my topless Jeep, to reflecting off my bug-splattered windshield, to fading on the pink, treelined horizon. A serious chill began settling in the air, one that made me roll my windows up despite my hot werewolf blood. Even without a top on the Jeep, rolling the windows up helped a lot. The clean, almost metallic scent of rain carried to me on the strengthening wind.

  “Shit,” I cursed as I cast my gaze up to the cloudy sky.

  True, my Jeep was made to handle a bit of weather with outdoor-rated carpet and drain holes for water. But it took forever to get that musty smell out. I scanned the slightly rutted two-lane road with little more than a sprinkling of gravel left on it ahead with the fleeting hope of finding something, anything. Half a mile turned into a mile, and my anxiety grew. From the scent of the rapidly approaching rain and the feel of it in the air, I wouldn’t have time to drive the forty or so minutes back to Ty’s place, especially since I wasn’t exactly sure about that distance—or how to get back. Even if I’d had a GPS—which I didn’t—it wouldn’t work out here.

  One might think a good sense of direction came with being a werewolf. One would be wrong.

  As I rounded the next bend, I saw a building nestled into the tall pine trees on the right-hand side of the road. I let off the accelerator and shifted down. At first glance, the building appeared to be a red, two-story barn, one of the old-style gabled ones with a massive hay loft above it. The Jeep slowed as I continued to shift down. Gravel turned to weed-infested dirt when I eased into the driveway nature was rapidly reclaiming. Struggling against the waist-high weeds trying to devour it perched a “for sale” sign from a realtor I’d never heard of. The barn wasn’t a barn at all. Painted in red on a wooden sign below the carriage-style doors were the words, “Mo’s Tavern.” Instead of huge sliding barn doors, large windows edged in by moss and grime lined the front of the building. Between them sat a set of double doors with a realtor’s lock on them.

  More weeds choked the gravel parking lot to the point where it was hard to tell where it ended and the grass beyond it began. The massive pine trees bordering the entire thing gave me a decent idea though. I drove around the back, breathing a sigh of relief when I found a lean-to high enough to easily pull the Jeep under. It took some searching of the twelve by forty or so space to find an area that wasn’t missing roofing or riddled with holes. Thankfully nothing crunched under my tires but gravel. The ankle-high grass made it hard to tell if any of the missing boards from above might be lying on the ground, rusty nails just waiting to sink into my tires.

  I hopped out and gravitated toward the one window on the long length of the barn’s back wall. Gripp flew up to perch on one of the roof beams. He chattered at me, but the tone sounded companionable, interested, rather than guiding.

  Years of grime built up on the glass made it hard to see into the bar. I made a fist and cleared a spot with the meaty part of my hand. Some kind of office lay inside with a desk, an old cheap looking file cabinet, and a few chairs. A bone-deep restlessness soon had me wandering the perimeter of the building. Gripp flew up to the roof and hopped around it, keeping me in sight. I needed to do something, search, hunt.

  It didn’t help that my mother wasn’t returning my phone calls or texts. Nothing really unusual there. We didn’t exactly talk. But I needed to break that cycle for the sake of the missing women. A nagging feeling had made me call the rehab facility I’d checked her into months ago. No one had answered, and waiting for a call back was driving me quickly insane. Who knew what was happening to those women in the meantime?

  I had to find out more about them. If they had been bitten in like Yazhi, they needed my help. However, I couldn’t just stroll onto the res uninvited. No one would talk to me. Not to mention, this was a res of not just Native Americans, but skinwalkers.

  Above me the dark gray sky held its payload back as if waiting for something. Excited cronking suddenly sounded from above me. It turned to urgent beak popping noises punctuated by gurgles. Adrenaline shot through me. I looked up to where Gripp perched on the roof. Chattering nonstop, he hopped off to glide over to a pine tree a few yards away.

  Starting for the trees, I pulled my T-shirt over my head. Inside the tree line, I found a stump and piled all my clothes on top of it. I let the desire to shift rise. My atoms vibrated for a moment, then flowed from the form of a woman into a wolf. I gave myself a good shake from nose to tail, fluffing up my black fur. A million scents amplified like the sound of a rock band concert assaulted my nose: wet earth, growing things, rotting stuff, the trails of innumerable animals. A profound tickling inside my nostrils made me sneeze twice, hard. Rather than obsess over all the smells like my wolf side wanted to, I dampened the sense down until it was tolerable.

  Letting out one more excited cronk, Gripp took to the air, skimming low to stay in my sight. I jogged through the ferns after him. Soon, the rhythmic slap of my paws on the forest floor soothed me into a relaxed state. Birds sang subdued songs in the branches overhead, and the game on the ground had mostly found little hidey-holes to escape the approaching weather. The wind that played with my fur increased, and the scent of rain overtook all others like a blanket descending over the forest. Huge drops plopped onto my back and head. While a big part of me wanted to dance in the storm and see if the lightning wanted to play, I had no time for it. Plus, I had no idea if this area was secluded enough to be free of prying eyes. It seemed like it, but a werewolf couldn’t be careful enough.

  But mostly, I was out here for another reason. Someone needed my help. I let the sense within that felt newly bitten reach out. In wolf form it was easier since it was an instinct-driven ability more than anything else. Focusing on it, I followed Gripp.

  There! A pulse of bright shifter energy speckled through with darkness lay not more than a hundred yards to my right. I trotted in that direction, letting the pulse guide me. It remained stationary. Trees passed in a green and brown blur as I picked up speed. I stepped easily over ferns and brush that grew belly high in spots. Then I smelled them: a human male scent tinged with something pungent and distinctive, something I remembered—fox. My steps faltered. I nearly tripped over my own paws in my attempt to come to a quick stop. Emitting several loud cronks in a row, Gripp landed in a tree above me.

  The trees and underbrush gave way to a clearing of glistening green grass. The haze of falling rain outlined a man walking toward the opposite tree line. At maybe five-nine, he didn’t stand much taller than me, and his build appeared that of a wiry person in maybe their late teens. Dark red hair on the long side for most guys stood out starkly against a green jacket. My wolfy seeker sense homed in on him. This was the newly bitten, without a doubt. That he was a fox shifter—or would be after his first turning—didn’t matter. He needed my help. I started into the clearing.

  Gripp let out a cronk so loud and piercing that I would have jumped out of my skin if such a thing were possible.

  Something barreled into my side. In a confusing tumble of fur and fangs, I rolled to the wet grass along with a red form that felt like muscle wrapped in fur. Claws raked down my side, not deep enough to be life-threatening, but deep enough to hurt like hell. A growl of promise rumbled from me as I rose and fixed my gaze on a fox shifter. Another flash of red out of the corner of my right eye caught my attention—a second one. It wasn’t the young man on the verge of madness, of that I was certain. No, these were two others. A glance in the man’s direction revealed he had slipped away into the forest.

  The bastards had set a trap for me.

  The rӓvar snarled and snapped at me. Fangs bared, they circled, forcing me to keep turning to see them both. Though they were smaller than I was and less powerful, they clearly had fighting skills I didn’t possess. My heart pounded so hard in my chest it almost hurt. Considering my lack of fighting skills, Gripp and I against two fox shifters were less than ideal odds. Worse, I had been randomly driving, so chances were slim Ty would know where to find me. He could track my phone, but he wouldn’t know to do it until it was too late. I had no idea if Gripp would go for help if I went down or stay by my side.