There was nothing but him. Nothing butthem. His mouth was hot, seeking, and she fell into it, gasping against his lips like a drowning woman in search of air. There was no question of stopping once she had begun. They kissed desperately, wildly, plunging into each other. Dimly she was aware that her legs had gone weak, and they had both stumbled sideways into a tree that was now holding them up.
Baz still had his hand in her hair, cupped against the side of her head, and his other hand had gone to the small of her back, pressed against her waist, pulling her in.
He let her go only because there was water running down both their faces and they needed to breathe. For a minute they just stood there and gasped, holding on to each other.
“That,” Arden began, breathless. “That was ...”
She had no idea how she wanted to finish that sentence, or how she would have finished it, because a male voice said, “Excuse me?”
Baz whipped around, grasping Arden and planting her firmly behind him. He growled, a deep vibrating growl that seemed to awaken something inside Arden. What she felt wasn’t fear, though it was just as primal. Her toes curled.
Standing there in the rain was one of the forest shifters, his long dark hair and furs streaming in the rain. His fur boots were up to the ankles in roiling, muddy floodwaters.
He was carrying Fern in his arms, her long hair straggling with rainwater as she curled up limply against his chest.
BAZ
The instinctive urge tofight that roared up from inside Baz shocked him. He had never felt anything like it.
It was like some other force took him over for a moment.
He had to straighten out his lip from a snarl, fight down the bear inside him. He had never been so close to an involuntary shift before.
Even when he got himself firmly locked down, he could sense his bear inside him, close to the surface in a way he had rarely experienced.
The stranger was the same one who had spoken to them at the campfire the other night. His dark hair was plastered to his face, his fur and leather clothes matted with water and mud. One muscular arm tucked Fern’s head against his chest. He didn’t back down from Baz, instead looking back with eyes that gleamed gold in the way of a shifter who was close to a shift.
Keeping Arden behind him, Baz stepped forward. “Release her,” he snarled. “She is one of mine.”
“Then you need to do better at watching out for yours,” the stranger growled back. He jerked his chin to indicate a direction. “I found her by the old well. She looked as if she had slipped andhit her head. In moments the current would have caught her. She was in danger of drowning.”
“Maybe someone else hit her in the head,” Baz retorted. “You, for example.”
A metallic shimmer flashed in the stranger’s eyes. “If I hurt her, why would I be returning her to you?”
Arden touched Baz’s arm. She remained behind him, keeping him between her and the forest shifter, but she seemed more cautious than truly afraid. Certainly not as afraid as she ought to be. “I think he’s telling the truth, Baz. If he meant any harm to Fern, he could easily have taken her away with him, or—or anything else he wanted to do. I think he’s trying to help.”
Baz glanced down at her. Arden’s hair was slicked down with rain. She was human, soft and helpless against a shifter’s claws and strength.
Except she was far from helpless; he was learning that. Whatever she was running away from, she had gotten herself here, kept herself safe.
And he trusted her judgment. Perhaps more than he trusted his own at the moment. His vicious, protective reaction to the strange shifter still astonished him. It was pure instinct:Get awayandMineandLeave them alone.And he still felt it; he had to struggle to keep his bear contained and not simply fling himself at the other shifter and take Fern away from him.
But part of being an alpha, he was starting to realize, was controlling that side of himself. Using it, channeling it, protecting his clan without becoming an unholy asshole in the process.
He still didn’t like or trust this guy, though Baz supposed that the forest clan intruder got a few points in his favor for standing his ground as Baz approached him, bristling. The stranger held Baz’s gaze a lot longer than was polite for shifters who weren’t openly engaging in a dominance standoff, with the goldenglimmer of his shift animal flickering in his eyes. But he dropped his stare, reluctantly, a bare instant before Baz would have been forced to put him in his place.
First Declan and now this guy.
“Give her to me,” Baz ordered.
The stranger at least didn’t hesitate on that, depositing Fern into Baz’s arms. He looked down at the pale, still face of his not-quite-sister, not-quite-cousin. She felt almost as light as when they were children, even with her dress sodden with water. He could see blood around the edge of her hairline, mixing with rainwater.
“Is she badly hurt? We need to get her inside and warm her up.” Arden had come up behind him, following him as if she trusted him perfectly to protect her from the forest shifter. Which Baz had every intention of doing, but he still didn’t like having her this close.
The other shifter, however, took a few quick steps back, as if understanding that Baz didn’t want him too close to Baz’s clan—his family.
“What’s your name?” Arden asked, and Baz was abruptly aware that he hadn’t even wondered. The only thing he had thought about this strange shifter wasforeignandenemy, his entire self given over to the instinctive urge to protect his clan against an intruder. But Arden, being human, in that moment saw more than he did.
