The back of the car seemed unscathed, but the front was a wreck. The driver’s side.
Steeling himself for what he would find, he trotted forward, circling the car round to the far side. His eyes locked onto his mate, scrabbling in the snow, trying to get her feet under her.
She was hurt, but he knew pain alone couldn’t cause what he sensed down the mate bond. At least, notphysicalpain. His mate was too tough for that. The fur on his hide prickled.
As if to answer his unspoken thought, Hailey drew in a ragged breath and threw her head back.
“Riley!”
Panic flecked his eyes and he craned his neck, searching for the boy…but there was no sign of him. He wasn’t hurt. He was gone.
And that was when he spotted the second set of prints in the snow. Adult footprints. Someone else had been here. And they’d taken the boy. The scent assailed his nostrils like a weapon. He’d smelled that before. That was the man he was out here hunting.
He moved closer, needing to see the extent of his mate’s injuries, even though the scent of blood wasn’t thick in the air. He needed toseeshe was okay.
Snow crunched under his hooves and she whirled round, her eyes widening as her gaze landed on him.
Dammit, he should have shifted first.
“Get away from me,” she whispered, her voice cracking, and his heart broke all over again to hear her fear. He wasn’t small in his reindeer form, and to a traumatized and panicking mother, he must have seemed overwhelming, and there was nothing he wanted more than to comfort her right now.
He moved forward carefully, head lowered in the most unthreatening manner he could manage, wanting to show her he meant no harm. But this only seemed to make things worse. She stumbled back a step, then stooped to grab something from the ground, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
His answer came a second later, when a long object nearly hit him in the face.
“Get away from me,” she shouted, waving the branch at him again, and again, he ducked aside. This wasn’t helping, that much was clear. He backed off a step, eyeing her warily.
Hailey continued to swing wildly, and Chase wondered what he should do. He needed to go after Riley, because every second they wasted was one the kidnappers had to get further away. Should he go into the forest to shift and come back human? The thought sent painful spikes along his spine. He couldn’t leave her in this state, not even for a moment. Besides, he’d left his clothes a couple of miles away, and he wasn’t about to run back and find them. It wasn’t like he could pass himself off as being out for a mid-afternoon stroll in the nude.
It didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter if she knew, if she thought him a monster. The only thing that mattered was helping her get Riley back—else he truly would be a monster.
He drew in a breath of the icy air, and shifted back to his human form. He rose from his crouch to find Hailey’s eyes wide open, and her face pale as the branch hung limply from one hand.
“I—I don’t…” she stammered. “Who are you?”
“Hailey,” Chase said softly, “It’s me. Chase. I know this is a lot to take in, but—”
“No, whoareyou?” she snarled, swiping the wood through the air. “Whatare you?”
“I’m a shifter,” he said, raising his hands as she brandished the makeshift weapon again.
“A shifter? You mean like…a shapeshifter?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she shook her head. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Riley’s gone. I screwed up, Chase, and Michael took him.”
Her eyes searched his face, and then she firmed up her grip on the branch and turned for the road. He realized her intentions in a flash of panic and lunged forward to grab her arm.
“Hailey, wait.”
“I can’t wait! Riley’s out there, and this is all my fault, and Ihaveto get him back. You don’t know what Michael is capable of.”
But he did. Because if Michael was in league with the man who’d taken Riley, then it meant Hailey’s ex was the missing piece of the puzzle. The mastermind behind the kidnappings. The shadowy head of the Corbyn operation.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll get him back. Just tell me what happened.”
With trembling hands, she palmed tears from her eyes.
“I-I got hit by a car again. This time it ran me off the road. It was the s-same person that hit me before; I recognized it. He t-took Riley. I was in too much pain, I couldn’t m-move. Oh, God. They probably work for Michael. What am I going to do? It’s all m-my fault…”
