She crept forward, tried to be quiet, but her feet found twigs to crack no matter where she stepped. She went still and peered around a tree. A yard away the cleared ground began. She must stay here, no closer. Her gaze roamed, searched, and then there they were. The wolf pack. Running together under the moon.
They were the size of men, some smaller, and she strained her eyes to find which of the younger wolves might be Quinn. They were different colors, different shades and mixtures of black, brown, blond. One was bright red, one silver-white. Their long loping strides covered a startling amount of ground. Their fur rippled and gleamed. They were running past her on the other side of the clearing, and Ember almost didn’t see the deer. It dashed before them, zig-zagging in its terror. One and then another wolf broke from the pack until they had surrounded it, herded it away from the fence perimeter as if they knew the deer would escape them if it crossed into the trees. They moved individually, yet they moved in perfect cooperation.
Ember was about to watch a wolf pack bring down a deer, and she couldn’t turn away, not even from the blood soon to spill. She had stopped blinking, mesmerized by their terrible splendor.
One of the pack broke away with a long howl, distracting several others, and the deer crashed through the trees, but none of the wolves noticed. Each of them changed direction and began to run…directly at Ember. She backed away into an overgrowth of stiff brush, and a sharp twig tore across the back of her free hand. A drop of blood fell to the ground, and several wolves snarled as if in response.
Run. Climb a tree. Blind them with the flashlight.
She was frozen.
The first wolf, brown with lighter face and chest, was nearly upon her. She held up her hands as if she could ward off the fangs, but her feet would not move. On her right one of the young, lanky wolves bolted from within the pack, running full out, body low to the ground. It was a brown wolf too, with darker ears and tail, and it snarled as it collided with the larger wolf, as both of them careened off their feet toward the tree line.
The larger wolf yelped and dashed a few paces backward. The smaller wolf let out a high, long whine, and Ember’s frozen body thawed at last. She surged forward two steps to comfort the small wolf. But he swiveled on all four feet toward her, and his growl ripped through the night.
The larger wolf was on its feet, coming for her again, while down the line of the clearing multiple wolves stood within one or two feet of the fence, growling and howling. The sounds echoed around her. A scream welled in her throat, but some miniscule bit of sense warned her to be silent. Again the smaller wolf jumped and skidded between its pack-mate and Ember. This time, instead of both wolves, only the smaller wolf was thrown against the fence with a loud yelp.
Oh, Quinn, don’t.
Then a howl came from far to her left. A wolf alone, its fur shiny black, rippling with the movement of muscle beneath skin as it threw itself forward…and was thrown back. A separate fence, one that held only this dark wolf. It lifted its nose and howled, and the sound held pain.
The wolves went still. A few turned toward the dark wolf, then swung their noses back toward Ember, staring her down, baring their teeth. But with another howl and another rush at its fence, the dark wolf seemed to change something.
Or maybe it wasn’t the dark wolf at all. An enormous wolf with ginger-tipped blond fur paced close to the fence line. It snarled into the face of the first brown wolf when that one did not immediately retreat. The brown wolf lowered its head and padded backward.
Through the panicked shutting down of her body, Ember knew the desperate black wolf. Knew the golden wolf to whom the other submitted. And another piece of knowledge sank into her mind with fangs of its own: by putting himself closest to Ember, Malachi must be claiming her as prey.
The great body pivoted on its hindquarters to face her. The head lowered, and the wolf padded toward her, teeth bared. The eyes were amber still.
Running from a wolf invited chase. Yet Ember ran.
The howls echoed around her as she dashed, hands stretched out, twigs tearing her palms, her arms, her face. She was screaming after all. She would die tonight. The alpha would escape the fence, run her down, and tear her to pieces.
At last she stumbled, fell, and could not rise. Her lungs and heart felt about to burst. She lay in the dirt beside one of countless tree trunks and curled as tightly as she could, shielding her face, her throat with her arms on either side of her head.
Slowly her body began to calm, too exhausted to maintain the terror. Moonlight shone down on her, illuminated the forest. She jumped at every whisper of leaves for what must have been an hour. At last she stretched her back and limbs, pushed to her feet with the aid of the tree, and noticed her empty hands. At some point she had dropped the flashlight. A howl sounded far away, and sweat broke out on the back of her neck as her pulse climbed again. She pressed her hands to her mouth to muffle her whimpers, but the howls increased. They could still hear her—her every breath, no doubt.
She had no idea where she was.
For hours Ember staggered through woods that all looked the same, cast in silver light. For hours the howls of the wolves echoed around her, eventually growing less frequent. Then, without warning, she stepped out of the trees into a well-groomed yard. A row of vehicles, her own car among them, two women standing nearby arguing in loud tones… It was Malachi’s yard. It was some kind of miracle. She dropped to her knees and began to sob.
One of the women gave a shout, and both jogged to Ember. It was Sydney and Nicole.
“Ember?”
“What are you doing out here?”
“She’s shaking. Nic, you don’t think…”
“Oh no. Ember.” Nicole knelt beside her and wrapped her in a firm embrace, more stabilizing than comforting. “Shhh. Pull yourself together. This is important.”
Ember swallowed hard, fisted her hands against the shaking, and breathed deep. Once. Twice. The third time, her lungs opened a little farther. “I’m okay,” she said.
“We’re out here because the wolves sound different tonight. I’ve heard them sound that way before, when they’ve scented a human.”
“Me,” Ember whispered.
Nicole gripped her shoulders hard. “You went to the paddock?”
