CHAPTER 1
A woman’s haunting scream reverberated through Kelsey’s head. The windshield spiderwebbed, bowing inward against the pressure of the water outside. She gasped as cold water surged onto the floorboard and splashed over her knees. Metal creaked and groaned overhead. The car’s roof caved in, slicing Kelsey’s forehead and sending warm blood dripping into her eyes.
She screamed and ducked down, trying frantically to release the seat belt, but she was trembling too much. The pressure on her chest increased. She couldn’t breathe.
Out! Out! She had to get out before the water rose too high or the need to shape-shift overwhelmed her. Her wolf form would be trapped in here, panicked, unable to release herself. Finally, the stubborn buckle gave way, and the seat belt released.
The baby whimpered in the backseat, and Kelsey’s sister-in-law screamed again.
Kelsey jerked awake. Great Hunter. Would she never be free of that nightmare? Groaning, she wiped her sweaty hands on her blanket and tried to catch her breath.
A weight still pressed on her chest.
Her breathing sped up again, and she struggled not to kick out her legs in blind panic. Calm down. You’re not trapped. But the weight was still there. She peered down her body and into the gleaming eyes of the cat perched on top of her, digging in his claws to hold on.
“Will!” She growled and shook herself, nearly dislodging the cat. “Damn cat!”
He was definitely getting too bold. Other cats avoided her, but for some reason, the orange tabby loved all Wrasa, even wolf-shifters like Kelsey. “Just because I sleep on the couch doesn’t mean I’m your new best buddy, understood?” She tapped the cat under the chin, but when he began to purr, she grudgingly gentled her touch to a light scratching. “I’m a Saru soldier, here to protect your human, not to serve as a kitty bed.”
She sat up and set the cat on the floor, keeping her hands wrapped around the small body until she was sure Will was safely balanced on his three legs.
Heart still pounding, she listened into the darkness.
Everything was quiet.
Just a dream. You’re safe.
Her skin still itched, warning her to calm down if she didn’t want to scare Will with a panic-induced shift into her wolf form.
She breathed in Jorie’s coconut scent that still lingered in the living room. In the six months since she had become Jorie’s bodyguard, she had come to associate the scent with the safety of a pack. See? You’re not in the car. Finally, her heartbeat slowed and the itching of her skin stopped. She shoved back the sweat-dampened blanket, got up from the couch, and padded to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
The clock on the microwave showed three o’clock.
She leaned against the kitchen counter, pressed the cool glass against her forehead, and closed her eyes.
A scream from the bedroom made her jerk.
The glass slipped out of her fingers and shattered on the floor. Cold water and shards of broken glass hit her bare feet, and for a few seconds, dream and reality tangled in a moment of frozen horror.
Instinct took over.
Kelsey raced to the bedroom, ignoring the pain of broken glass underfoot, ready to shift and defend her human alpha.
She threw open the bedroom door and leaped into the room. The smell of coconut and fear hit her, but her nose didn’t catch any scent that didn’t belong there.
No intruder.
The bedroom was empty except for Jorie, who shot upright and groped for the lamp switch on the bedside table. She lifted one hand to shield her eyes from the light and clutched the duvet against her T-shirt-clad chest with the other hand. Shaggy bangs were plastered to her forehead. Her Asian features, distorted with fear, relaxed when she recognized Kelsey. “Kelsey! What are you doing?”
“I...I’m sorry. I didn’t want to—” She took a step back, ignoring the sudden pain in her feet. “Are you okay?”
Instead of answering, Jorie wiped her face and looked to the other side of the bed. As if only then remembering that her partner, Griffin, was away, she glanced at the picture on her nightstand.
Kelsey followed her gaze. From her place next to the door, she couldn’t see the photo, but she herself had taken it just a few months ago, so she knew the frame held a picture of Griffin sporting a liger-sized grin as she wrapped her arms around an equally happy-looking Jorie.
The smell of Jorie’s fear evaporated, and Kelsey wished she had a protector who could chase away her own nightmares as easily.
“I’m fine,” Jorie said. She dragged trembling fingers through her midnight black hair and looked up at Kelsey. “What about you? You look a bit disheveled too.”
“It’s nothing,” Kelsey said. After all, she was there to serve Jorie, not the other way around. “Just some stupid nightmare. That’s all.”
“Yeah, me too.” A sharp breath escaped Jorie. “God, what a dream.”
Dream? Kelsey flinched. Oh, no. I woke her from a dream. As a member of Jorie’s protective detail, she had to follow just three simple rules: Protect Jorie with your life. Don’t chase the cats, even if they taunt you. Never wake Jorie because she could be dreaming. Since Jorie was the Wrasa’s only dream seer, each and every one of her dreams could be vitally important.
Congratulations. You just broke rule number three. “I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her gaze. “I didn’t realize...” Kelsey bit her lip until she tasted blood. What if she had compromised the Wrasa’s safety by interrupting an important dream vision?
“Hey,” Jorie said.
Kelsey glanced up, then away again when Jorie swung back the covers and slender, naked legs appeared.
“Don’t look so guilty,” Jorie said. “If you hadn’t come in, I might have woken myself up with my screams. Besides, it has happened before. Griffin once woke me in the middle of a dream vision by kneading against my belly.”
Ugh. Kelsey resisted the urge to press her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear any details about what her alpha pair did in bed, even if it was just kneading. It was like thinking about her parents having sex.
When Kelsey looked up again, Jorie had slipped on a bathrobe. It dragged across the floor as Jorie circled the bed, much too long for Jorie’s slender five-foot-six frame. She snuggled her nose against the fabric, and her eyes fluttered shut as she inhaled.
A whiff of liger musk and Griffin’s favorite body lotion hit Kelsey’s nose. It’s Griffin’s robe. Kelsey grinned. Just one night apart and she’s missing her already. Like a pair of mated wolves. She found their behavior almost comically endearing. Not that she’d ever tell them that, of course. As the lowest-ranking member of the pack, she had no business commenting on their private lives.
“How about a cup of—?” Jorie stopped and rushed toward Kelsey. “Oh my God! What happened to your feet? Stay still. Don’t move.” She almost stumbled over the bathrobe’s excess length before she caught her balance and sank onto her knees in front of Kelsey.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Didn’t you notice? You’re bleeding!”
Kelsey glanced down. Blood dripped onto the carpet. So that’s where the pain is coming from. She had ignored it while she made sure Jorie was okay. When she lifted one foot, she discovered that tiny shards of glass were embedded in the soles of her feet. “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m ruining your carpet.”
“Don’t worry about the carpet.” Jorie produced a tissue from the bathrobe’s pocket and dabbed it against one of Kelsey’s feet.
“Um, Jorie...” Pinpricks of pain shot up Kelsey’s leg, but the heat in her cheeks had nothing to do with pain. She reached down and tugged on Jorie’s upper arm, trying to get her to stand. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Sure I do. You’re hurt.” Jorie continued dabbing.
Kelsey squirmed. This is wrong. She’s a maharsi. She shouldn’t kneel in front of me. She tried to shuffle back, but Jorie’s grip on her ankle held her in place.
“Stop that. You’re dripping blood all over my carpet. Sit down.”
Following orders was in Kelsey’s nature. She hobbled over to the bed and sat on the very edge of it.
“Stay here,” Jorie said. She gathered up the bathrobe as if she were a queen in a ball gown and strode from the room.
Dazed, Kelsey stayed behind. She shot up when she remembered the state of the kitchen. “Please be careful in the kitchen,” she called after Jorie. “I dropped a glass. Let me clean up.”
“No, I’ve got it,” Jorie said from the kitchen. “You stay where you are.”
Kelsey sank back onto the edge of the bed.
One of the kitchen cabinets banged shut. Glass clinked, and the bristles of a hand brush rasped over the floor. Within minutes, Jorie returned. “Do you want to go out and shift? That would heal the wounds faster than patching you up.”
“Later,” Kelsey said. Since Griffin was in Boise to meet with the council, Jorie’s protection was Kelsey’s responsibility. Leaving her, even for just a few minutes, was out of the question. “For now, I’ll just put a Band-Aid on it or something.”
“All right. You stay here. I’ll get it.” Jorie entered the bathroom and reappeared with a first-aid kit and a small basin filled with water. She pressed her hands against Kelsey’s shoulders. “Lie down. I need to reach the soles of your feet.”
Two instincts warred within Kelsey. Following this order meant invading Griffin’s territory even further. Some days, she got the feeling that Griffin barely tolerated her presence in the house and in her Saru unit, and she didn’t want to give Griffin another reason to mistrust her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. This is Griffin’s side of the bed, isn’t it?”
Jorie gave her shoulders a firm shove. “Instead of worrying about Griffin, worry about not making me mad. I’ll explain it to Griffin once she gets home. Right now, taking care of you is more important than staying away from Griffin’s side of the bed.” When Kelsey sank onto the bed and dangled her feet over the edge, Jorie knelt down and opened the first-aid kit. “So,” she said, “what happened?” She tilted her head toward the kitchen and then nodded down at Kelsey’s feet.
“I got up for a glass of water, and when I heard you scream, I dropped the glass. I’m sorry I made such a mess.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Jorie used a pair of tweezers to pull needle-sharp pieces of glass from Kelsey’s skin.
Kelsey winced. Now that she wasn’t distracted by a possible danger to Jorie, the tiny cuts started to hurt. Oh, come on. Don’t be such a puppy. The pain wasn’t nearly so bad that it would trigger a shift into her wolf form.
Jorie washed out the cuts and then dabbed antibiotic ointment onto them. “So you had a bad dream?” she asked as if to distract Kelsey from the pain.
Little does she know that the nightmare and my memories are much more painful than the cuts on my feet. Kelsey just nodded.
“Me too.” Jorie’s breath brushed over Kelsey’s bare feet as she exhaled. “A woman attacked a boy. He struggled and tried to break free, but she pinned him down with her full weight. He was drenched in sweat, and his face was a mask of pain, but the woman showed no mercy. God, the poor boy was terrified. I could smell his fear.” Jorie paused and shivered. “He groaned and I think tried to talk to her, but she pressed her thumbs against his throat and choked him.”
Kelsey’s lips pulled back in a silent snarl. “She was human.” It was a statement, not a question. No sane Wrasa would ever hurt a child. But then again, Jorie would probably say that no sane human would either.
“Yes.” Jorie put the ointment back into the first-aid kit. “The boy wasn’t, though. For some reason, I saw that quite clearly. He was Wrasa.”
Every muscle in Kelsey’s body clenched. She sat up abruptly. “She was trying to kill one of us?”
Jorie glanced up at her. “I thought we finally made it past the ‘us versus them’ stuff.”
Kelsey looked away and licked her lips. “I’m sorry. It’s just...”
“I know. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” Jorie sent a smile up at Kelsey and dabbed at the cuts until the bleeding stopped.
“Do you think it was just a dream, or was it a vision?” Kelsey asked.
“I don’t know. Some of it didn’t make any sense, so maybe it was just a dream. I mean, the boy wasn’t a small child. He was a teenager, almost as tall as the woman. Why didn’t he just fight her off? Wrasa are usually stronger than humans, so it’s not like he was helpless.”
“Unless...” Kelsey gritted her teeth at the thought. “Unless he was going through his Awakening.”
“Awakening? What’s that?”
“Basically, puberty. That’s when the mutaline kicks in.”
The pressure on Kelsey’s feet increased as Jorie covered two of the deepest cuts with Band-Aids; then Jorie closed the first-aid kit and settled on the edge of the bed next to Kelsey. “That’s why Wrasa children can’t shift, right?”
Kelsey nodded. “Right. Their adrenal cortex will start producing the shifting hormone only after they reach puberty.”
“But don’t Wrasa teenagers become stronger when they can finally shift into their animal form?”
“Yes, once they learn to control it. Until then, the Awakening is the most vulnerable time in a Wrasa’s life.” Kelsey shivered at the thought of a defenseless pup in the hands of a human woman.
Jorie’s brows drew together. “Vulnerable in what way?”
“Imagine confusing dreams keeping you up half of the night for months on end,” Kelsey said.
A snort from Jorie interrupted her. “I’m a dream seer, remember? Been there, done that.”
Kelsey ducked her head. “Of course. But for our teenagers, it’s not just the dreams at night. During the day, your itching skin is driving you crazy. Your sense of smell intensifies, and the world suddenly looks different, but you can’t grasp what exactly the difference is.” Memories of her own First Change bubbled up: confusing emotions and piercing pain, and above it all, her brother Garrick’s soothing peanut scent anchoring her in reality.
“But surely your parents or someone else in your pack prepared you for what would happen?” Jorie asked.
“Of course. But nothing can prepare you for the reality of the Awakening,” Kelsey said. “It’s like the difference between reading a medical textbook and going through a painful, scary illness. Something profound is happening to your body, and you feel like a tightrope walker on the edge of losing control and falling to your death. Then you go through your First Change, and the pain...” She shook her head and fell silent.
“God.” Jorie groaned. “If Griffin and I ever decide to have children, I’ll have them.”
A chuckle chased away the memories of pain and confusion. “It’s not that bad,” Kelsey said. “We don’t let our teenagers go through it alone. A mentor is there for them every step of the way and guides them through the First Change.”
“No one was there for the boy in my dream,” Jorie whispered.
“Do you think the human kidnapped him, snatched him away from his mentor and his family?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
A powerful urge gripped Kelsey. Her skin tingled with the need to take action. “If it’s a vision, not just a dream, we need to do something.” Then a thought occurred to her and made a lump form in her stomach. “Or do you think it has already happened? Are we too late to help?”
“No,” Jorie said without hesitation. “If a dream vision takes place in the past or many years in the future, the intensity is usually a bit...” She shrugged. “Well, washed-out. But this dream felt urgent. I’m sure the things I saw will happen soon.”
“But the future you see in your dreams is not inevitable, right? We could save the boy.”
“Yes, but we need to find him first,” Jorie said.
“Was there anything in your dream that gives us a hint at his location?”
“Let’s see...” Jorie leaned across the bed and took a notebook from her bedside table.
Her dream diary. Kelsey averted her gaze as Jorie started scribbling.
After a minute, Jorie clicked off her pen and handed Kelsey the open diary. “Read.”
Kelsey pulled her hands away and hid them behind her back. A maharsi’s notes were sacred and not meant for her eyes. “But—”
“Read,” Jorie said again. “If we want to save the boy, I’m going to need your help.”
Hesitantly, Kelsey took the diary and read what Jorie had just written, careful not to let her gaze linger on any other entries. “Gray walls. Dim lights, like a basement,” she read aloud. Images of kidnapping victims being tortured in basement dungeons flashed through Kelsey’s mind. The tiny hairs on her itching forearms stood on end as if preparing to grow into thick fur. “Anything else that would give us a clue to the location?”
Jorie shook her head, lips pressed into a tight line.
“Lanky boy,” Kelsey continued to read. “Around thirteen or fourteen. Dark hair.” She glanced up. “That means he’s not a Kasari. Lion-shifters usually have blond hair. And he can’t be a Maki. He’s not large enough to be a bear-shifter.”
“I don’t know why,” Jorie said, “but I got the impression that he might be a Syak.”
A fellow wolf-shifter... Kelsey swallowed. “Did you see his face?”
“Yes. It was full of agony, but beyond that, he looked like every other teenager. Nothing there that would help us find him. Same with the woman. She was slender but athletic, about medium height, curly blond hair.”
Not exactly a description that would help identify her. There had to be thousands of women like that in Michigan alone.
“Except for her fierce scowl, she looked like the heroine from one of my books,” Jorie said, fiddling with her pen. “One of the good gals.”
“But she’s not,” Kelsey said more sharply than intended.
Jorie shrugged. “Guess not. And she wasn’t alone.”
Kelsey’s stomach twisted itself into knots. “There were others?”
“At least one.”
“What did he or she look like?” The dream diary held no description of the second kidnapper.
“I don’t know,” Jorie said. “I didn’t see that person. I was in his or her body.”
Right. That’s how dream-seeing works. She sees things through someone else’s eyes. “So there’s nothing you can tell me about that person?”
Jorie hesitated. “Sometimes during my visions, when I’m in someone else’s mind, there’s this strange...vibration. As if my body and my host’s aren’t quite in tune and their consciousness is reluctant to admit access to a stranger. That vibration wasn’t there this time.”
The technical details of dream-seeing were giving Kelsey a headache. She rubbed her forehead. “What does that mean?”
“I wish I knew. It’s not like there are any other dream seers around I can ask.” Jorie massaged the bridge of her nose. “Maybe it means there’s some kind of connection between the second kidnapper and me.”
“Maybe he or she is human too, so your mind has an easier time connecting,” Kelsey said. Two humans against one helpless pup... She tightened her hands around the diary until the edges dug into her fingertips. She loosened her grip, not wanting to damage the dream diary. “Anything else that could help us find the boy?”
The clip of Jorie’s pen broke off under her fiddling fingers and ricocheted across the room. “No. I woke up before I could see more.”
Kelsey closed the diary and hung her head. That’s why rule number three exists. Never wake a maharsi. You’re usually so good at following rules, so why not this time? Her own internal voice sounded like her father’s bitter tones.
Jorie dropped the pen and started to pace. “God, those damn dream visions. Why can’t they for once show me enough to help? We have to save the boy from that horror.” She squeezed her eyes shut as if she could again see the images of her dream. “He was so afraid. He tried to stop her. She had him in a death grip. He kept fighting and trying to push her away.” Her eyes still squeezed shut, Jorie waved her hands through the air.
Kelsey’s eyes widened. “Can you do that again?”
Jorie stopped midmotion and opened her eyes to stare at Kelsey. “Do what?”
“What you just did with your hands.”
“I was repeating the boy’s struggle.” Jorie jabbed her index fingers toward each other and then smacked the side of her right hand into her left palm.
Kelsey recognized the signs immediately. She jumped up, ignoring the pain in her feet. “I know how we can find him.”
“What? How?”
“The boy wasn’t just struggling and waving his hands.” Kelsey repeated the two signs. “Hurt,” she said after the first sign, then accompanied the second one by saying, “Stop.” She sucked in a deep breath and looked at Jorie. “He was telling her to stop hurting him. He’s using sign language.”
* * *
Kelsey glanced out the window. Moonlight reflected off snow-covered hills and trees. Dipped in darkness, the forest at the edge of town pulled at Kelsey like a magnet. She longed to go out for a run and leave behind the sense of urgency that vibrated through her since finding out about the boy an hour ago.
“You’re free to go,” Jorie said from the couch. “I can call in another Saru to stay with me if you want to go for a run.”
Am I that obvious? Kelsey turned away from the window. “No, that’s okay.” Running in her wolf form lost some of its joy when she had to run alone anyway. “I want to stay and help find the boy. Should we alert the council and—?”
The faint sounds of a car nearing the house filtered through the walls. After listening for a few seconds, Kelsey smiled. She knew the sounds of that engine. Her tense muscles finally relaxed.
“What is it?” Jorie asked.
Outside, a car door banged shut. Soft steps headed toward the front door, bringing with them the smells of stale turkey sandwiches, nervous humans sweating on a plane, and one liger-shifter longing for her mate.
“It seems Griffin is home earlier than—” Kelsey trailed off when she realized she was talking to an empty room. At the mention of Griffin’s name, Jorie had rushed toward the door.
Kelsey stayed behind, and though she didn’t glance toward the hallway, she couldn’t tune out the sound of Jorie’s moans or the purring that rumbled up Griffin’s chest as she kissed Jorie hello. Blushing, Kelsey escaped into the kitchen to prepare some food for her returning commander.
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