Something in me whispers a warning, but I dismiss it. This isConnor. He’s been Ty’s right-hand man since before I was born. There’s no possible way that he could wish me harm—and even if he had some kind of personality transplant and did wish me harm, he certainly wouldn’t do something about ithere. He’d be scented in an instant.
Still, I slow my pace a little and keep myself behind him, just in case. He’ll have to turn around to attack me, and that will give me critical moments to shift and fight—
We turn a corner and I feel like a paranoid fool. We’re suddenly in a tunnel that has bright lights blazing. I can hear Ty’s voice in the distance.
I have to force myself to unclench my fists and can only hope that Connor didn’t notice.
Connor leads me into a big, wide room that has a large table in the middle, where Ty and his lieutenants are standing. It feels weird that none of my brothers are here, I think, but I keep that to myself. When I venture closer, I see that they’re looking at a big, blank map of North America.
“I don’t want to make a big fucking thing out of this,” Ty is saying. “Meaning, I don’t want anyone asking questions about it. But I don’t see any reason why we can’t make sure we know what everything looks like these days instead of relying on outside takes on that.”
“Consider it done,” one of his lieutenants says, and the others nod their agreement.
“Initial reports by the full moon.” Ty waits for them to nod to that, too, then continues. “We like how it’s looking, we’ll spread this out farther.”
There are a lot of fist bumps and chin raises at that, and then they all roll out—though not without giving me some kind of acknowledgment on the way. Some incline their heads. A couple murmur a verbal indication that they know things have altered. Beaudry even swats me on the shoulder.
“Like that you two are solid,” he tells me as he swaggers off, and I can’t decide if I’m moved or weirded out that I have his part of the cousin vote.
Ty waves me over, so I go and look down at the map too.
“We’re going to use this as a command center,” he tells me. “I don’t need the rest of the pack trickling in and out of here, so it will be guarded. But I will need to know the actual territory that all the different packs occupy. Especially the more remote packs who haven’t had any oversight in a long time.”
“Smart,” I tell him.
He straightens, running his hands over his hair to shove it back. Then he looks at me with a kind of wonder in his gaze. It makes me feel ... breathless.
Then again, so does the way he reaches over and fits his palm over the nape of my neck to tug me closer. Everything in me hums, even though I can tell that this isn’t about sex.
This is about the vows I made to him. This is aboutus.
“Come on,” he says, low and rumbly. “I need to get out of here.”
We ride into Jacksonville. It’s cold and gloomy outside, a December afternoon tipping over into a foggy evening and that first quarter half-moon set to rise. Yet when I wrap my arms around Ty and hold him close as he navigates the roaring, muscular bike through the hills and down into town, everything feels like sunshine and blue skies to me.
Jacksonville’s main street is more crowded than I expect it to be, but then again, it’s a winter evening toward the end of the year. The sun might be creeping back, but that won’t be obvious to the naked eye—especially the human naked eye—for a while now. What they have instead are these festivals of light.
I can’t pretend I don’t like them too.
He parks his bike and I swing off. Then he takes my hand and we walk together, all the lights from the shop windows and strung up around the buildings gleaming on us. Making everything shine.
There are carolers dressed like they wandered out from some old movie. There’s an actual Christmas tree, with decorations and everything, blazing with light like the Reveal never happened. The people all around us seem happy, almost giddy, and they don’t get too uptight when they recognize Ty and me.
Not always the reception here in the human safe zone, I know.
Ty shifts from holding my hand to slinging an arm over my shoulders, and everything feels ... good. That’s why it feels so weird at the same time. I’m not used togood. I’m used to varying degrees of trouble.
I’m sure that we’ll have more than enough of that. Yet in this moment, on this street, it’s all pretty songs, crisp air, spiced cider, and Christmas cookies that the old librarians I kept safe from random wolves are handing out to the passersby.
“Because it felt like high time to start baking again,” I hear one of them telling a happy customer.
I feel a lot like singing carols myself. Especially with cookies.
Then, suddenly, I see the swirl of red out of the corner of my eye.A flowing cloak,my brain tells me, and my whole body goes cold.
I whip my head around, but it’s just a caroler. A human with a pretty voice singing soprano, not some creep brandishing horrible knives from behind a nasty plague-doctor mask.
Ty looks down at me, his gaze assessing. “You okay?”
