“You trying to break the sound barrier, Noah?” Ruger razzes, and I huff out a wolfy laugh.
“Where are you?” Ellery inquires, his voice calm, but I can feel a hint of edgy unrest at having to ask me that question at all. “Perth and Gannon are having trouble tracking your scent.”
I look around at the crescent of trees in front of me, and a small ravine that’s off to my left. An icy fog slowly unfurls around the small clearing I’m in, languorously folding the boulders and bracken around me into its cloudy embrace. The snow is falling faster and harder. It looks like it’s on the cusp of a full-blown blizzard, the wind and pelting flakes making it harder to see far off in the distance.
I project an image to each of them of my surroundings, and a wave of disquiet crashes into me through our link.
“Damn, you are way outside of the boundaries we talked about sticking too,” Perth points out.
Am I?
The tall trees surrounding me suddenly look more menacing than they did before. Shit.
“Sorry, I just kind of turned off my brain and ran,” I offer sheepishly, knowing—and hating—that I fucked up. “Should I try to retrace my tracks?” I ask, my heart dropping a little when I survey the ground and see my prints are already being wiped clean by the wind and snow. I wonder if that’s what’s making it hard for them to track me.
“No, stay where you’re at. It’ll be easier to find you if you’re stationary than if you’re moving,” Ellery instructs, and I start searching the clearing for a good place to hole up.
A line of maple trees catches my attention, the leaves still clinging to the branches, looking ominously like bloody prints against a canvas of white, green, and brown. I spot a huge ponderosa tree and trot under the shelter of the bottom branches where there’s a gap in the buildup of snow.
The back of my neck prickles with unease, and I warily look around. I can’t believe I screwed up this badly. One minute I’m playing Catch Me If You Can, and the next I’m outside of where I’m supposed to be…alone.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Fuck, I hope they hurry.
28
NOAH
A Gothic-style fog creeps thicker all around me as I scan my surroundings, watching and listening. Adrenaline thuds inside my veins as my vision is obscured bit by bit as this blizzard unleashes.
But it’s not the storm I fear.
Maybe my senses are playing tricks on me, but I swear something is out there.
I can’t hear it, can’t see it, can’t smell it, but I feel it.
My ears prickle, the hairs stiffen, feeling a vibration in the air that doesn’t even make it all the way down to my eardrums. There’s no sound, just a very certain awareness that I’m being watched.
I feel like a sitting duck.
Careful not to make any sudden movements or do anything else that could give me away, I search for whatever pinged my senses.
Please let it be a bunny. A squirrel. A fucking wild turkey.
A growl so low it’s almost lost in the furious noise of the blizzard reaches me. My heart bursts as if it’s been blasted to bits by the sound, and it’s all I can do to remain still and subtly search for the source of the sound without giving away my own position.
That definitely sounded like a wolf.
Shivers skitter down my body, and I reach out to the guys. “Are you close? I think I hear someone but I’m not sure.”
“Everyone, reveal positions,” Ellery immediately barks in my head.
Rapid-fire mental images blast through my mind. A boulder, an open expanse of snowy ground, a few aspen trees. I glance at my own surroundings and none of that looks like it’s here.
Which means the sound didn’t come from them.
“I think someone’s here, and if it’s not you…” Alarm thunders through me; it chases away all the silly unease and wary doubt and replaces it with a raw fear so potent I can taste it. “Do I run? Maybe I can outpace them,” I suggest, not sure if I’m ready to sprint and feel even more exposed than I already do.
“No, stay right where you are. Don’t move. We’re coming!” Gannon orders, a burst of possessive fury lacing his mindspeak.
Cursing myself for getting caught up in my head on my first shift, I back up further until my side brushes against the rough bark of the tree trunk. My heart thuds painfully hard inside my chest as my paws curl tight and claw the wet earth.
Another wisp of a noise emerges from the storm’s din. If I hadn’t been completely focused, I would have missed it, but the faint crunch of a foot or paw on snow rockets every sense I possess onto high alert.
Gannon told me to hunker down, to stay here and try to stay out of sight, but my instincts are suddenly telling me to get up, get big, and face whatever is coming.
I listen to them.
As I step away from the tree trunk and out from the cover of its branches, my entire body swells with anticipation. A deep resonant warning oozes out of me. I know you’re there, my growl cautions, and I step confidently from the big tree and a mound of large rocks so I have room to maneuver if I need it.
Nothing answers me, but I don’t need it to. I know someone’s there.
Intuitively, I know it’s a shifter. Perhaps my magic can sense it, but I can feel the presence as surely as I feel the cold of the fog brushing past my dark, walnut-colored fur. There’s something oddly familiar about whoever is out there in the woods, like I’ve felt them before, but I can’t say when or how.
I watch the trees and the ominous shadows beneath their canopy.
“Noah.”
My name, spoken inside my head, sets my fur rising with alarm because the voice speaking doesn’t belong to any members of the Arcan den.
Then the hazy forms of wolves slowly separate from the shadows. They step out from the forest, silhouettes like terrifying specters. I count at least three distinct figures—maybe four, as movement in my periphery on the left makes me think someone’s over there too. I don’t turn to confirm it, not willing to take my eyes off the group directly in front of me.
Tension tightens every one of my muscles, and I stop breathing.
They’re far enough away that the snow and fog taint their details. I think one of them has light-colored fur, but whether it’s white, light gray, or blond, I can’t tell. The other two that I see look to be a mix of grays, but it’s hard to be certain from this distance in this weather. The snow creates a beaded curtain of ice between us.
I do my best to control my runaway heart as adrenaline and fear pump through me. The howling wind only mirrors my increasing sense of dread.
“Come with us, Noah.”
The voice beckons in my mind, and I go stiff from the unwelcome intrusion.
A growl is my only answer.
One of the wolves moves closer, head down, gaze intense. All at once, the wolf stops after only a few steps, looking back at the light-colored wolf as though asking a question, one I can’t hear.
I breathe deeply, trying to catch a scent in the hope it will pull up my wolfy contact list and tell me who these interlopers might be, but cruelly, the wind is snapping in the other direction, leaving me upwind, robbing me of the chance to identify them.
Dammit.
“Come with us. You’re ours,” the voice orders, the tone more domineering and frustrated than before.