The Wolf fights me. It wants to run. It wants to hunt the thing that disrupted our patrol. But I can't pull a driver out of a sinking wreck with paws.
I push the change. It hurts. It always hurts. Bones snap and reform, muscles tear and knit back together in seconds. The pain is a familiar friend, a sharp, blinding heat that scours my mind clean. I rise onto two legs, naked and covered in swamp slime, gasping for air that tastes of wet decay.
"Dammit," I growl, my voice raw.
I slide down the embankment, mud slicking my skin. The water is waist-deep where the car went in, black and smelling of gasoline and duckweed. I wade out, the cold biting at my skin, but my internal temperature is running too hot to care.
The car is listing to the left. The driver’s side window is shattered—punched in from the outside, looks like.
I grab the top of the door frame. The metal groans.
"Open up," I grate out, bracing my feet in the muck.
I haul back. The hinges scream, sparks flying even in the damp air, and the metal shears. I rip the door clean off and toss it into the reeds.
I reach inside.
The dome light is flickering, casting a strobe-light effect on the interior. There’s a woman slumped over the steering wheel. Blonde. Small. She looks fragile, like a bird that flew into a window pane.
I don't feel pity. I feel irritation. If she dies on my territory, the paperwork with the Sheriff is gonna be a nightmare. And if she’s one ofthem—a human pet for the leeches up at the plantation—this is a trap.
I grab her arm. Her skin is cool, damp with sweat and bayou water.
I yank her toward me, intending to drag her onto the bank and shake some answers out of her before I dump her on the roadside for the cops.
Then the wind shifts.
It hits me just like a sledgehammer to the temple.
Scent.
It’s a complex, chaotic mess of olfactory data that shorts out my brain. First, the top notes: Ozone. Old dust. Dried roses.Vampire.
My lip curls back instantly, a growl vibrating deep in my chest. She smells likeBelle Rêve. She smells like the rot that lives in that house, the cloying, ancient stench of things that have been dead too long. Enemy. Threat. Kill.
But then, underneath the chemical stink of formaldehyde and fear... there’s something else.
Something rich. Something spicy, like burnt sugar and copper.
Mate.
The word isn't a thought. It’s a biological directive. It slams into the back of my skull, overriding the logic centers, bypassing the hatred, and wiring directly into the Wolf.
I freeze. I’m standing waist-deep in freezing water, holding a woman who smells like my worst enemy, and my soul is trying to tether itself to hers.
"No," I whisper. The word is a plea. "No, that ain't right."
The car shifts, sinking deeper. The water laps at her chin.
The instinct to kill wars with the instinct to protect. My muscles lock up. I’m paralyzed. If I save her, I’m bringing a vampire—or a vampire-lover—into my den. If I let her drown, the Wolf will tear my mind apart from the inside out. You don't let the Mate die. It’s the one law that supersedes the Truce.
She moans, a soft, pained sound.
That breaks the deadlock.
I snarl, cursing the Fates and their twisted sense of humor, and haul her out of the car. She’s light, dead weight in my arms. Her head lolls against my bare shoulder. Her wet hair plasters to my skin, and the scent is stronger now. It makes my mouth water. It makes my stomach turn.
I drag her up the embankment, my feet slipping in the mud. I don't stop until I reach the hard-packed earth of the road. I drop her—none too gently—onto the grass.
