Boe was found by the One True Mate Rogue, but she wouldn’t be found by thewolvenfor another six months. Boe was alone, fragile, and miserable. She took him home and took care of him.
Abigail tried to put theshiftsegenback into the well but could not move it from where it floated in midair, so she encased it in a metal alloy box held up by magic so it couldn’t see her comings and goings.
Abigail mourned the loss of the ability to collect power directly from the Pravus, and she double-mourned the loss of Ella’sshiftsegenthat she’d gone to such pains to procure, only to have her good-for-nothing husband sell it. She had her eye on anothershiftsegen, and now it was even more important to get her hands on it.
A week later, Ella and Trevor married at a farm just outside of Serenity. Thousands ofwolven,bearen, andfelencame from all around the world to see the lifegiving ceremony. Ella brought a ‘kinetic bursting’ power to the team and joined the fight against the demon, pregnant with twowolfengelyoung.
~
Two weeks after the ceremony, Heather found Graeme flat on his back at the cat doctor’s place, and when she touched him, he regained his will to live. The fiery dragon didn’t think hecould possibly be a suitable mate for the fair, fire-proof maiden, but she proved him wrong. They fought a giant spider, flew to Scotland, then tookdragentravel home through a medieval world, where Heather left her pendant with some kid.
A video of Boe circulated on the Internet, catching the attention offoxencriminals. After they were dealt with, thedragenand the fire-proof maiden bonded in the forest next to a stream, which also signified both of them joining the fight against the demon. They moved into a cabin out in the woods behind Trevor’s place.
Trevor gave Ella her pendant and touching it sent her (naked!) to a medieval world… and she hasn’t been willing to use it since.
~
A week after that, Crew’s life reached a crisis point. He just knew something he’d done or was about to do had sealed his One True Mate’s fate, and the moment he fell for her, she would be found and murdered by the demon. The way he saw it, the only way out was if he never met her at all, and so he planned to escape for good to the world he visited in his dreams, somehow. Instead, Crew met his mate Dahlia in that world and fell for her good and hard and fast.
The meeting was indeed the catalyst that caused the demon to set his long-tended plan into motion. All he needed was an innocent—a human child he could steal and use as a bargaining chip, creating the perfect moment where Crew would have no choice but to watch his mate die.
…
But was it a human child the demon stole?
…
3—Canyon
Serenity Police Department (SPD)
10 months ago
One month after The Escape of Boeson
The day the demon Khain stole the child Paisley White, as seen in One True Mate 3; Shifter’s Echo.
Canyon Wheeling hunched over his desk in ‘the bunker’, the underground office he shared with his brother, and pounded away at his keyboard, writing computer code from scratch. He typed in one last line—
return 0;
then banged on the desk.
Done,he thought, satisfaction filling him.Years of work and Predator is finally finished. Now to test it out.
He opened a computer folder marked ‘Experimental from Chicago University’ containing a new kind of software called a ‘large language model’ that would allow him to talk to Predator in plain language. Canyon took a few moments to interface the two programs, then he typed a ‘plain language’ command into Predator.
‘Predator, turn on your voice equipment and listen perpetually for your name. Respond to anything I say that seems to be directed to you.’
Predator’s response flashed across the screen.
:Yes Creator—
Canyon grinned, then said, “Predator, call me Canyon.”
:Yes Canyon—
“Predator, give me a status report.”
