I climbed to my feet and started toward the door.
That was the exact moment the window behind me shattered.
Glass exploded inward, spraying across the office. Adrenaline cut through the last remnants of my hangover and I spun toward the sound.
The Algea stood in the wreckage of the window, its tattered white gown billowing around it. Its black eyes locked on mine.
And it smiled.
I shifted without thinking, letting the wolf surge forward. My clothes tore as my body changed, fur rippling across my skin, my claws extending.
The creature moved first. Like always, it was impossibly fast.
I lunged to meet it, my jaws snapping on empty air.
It flickered out of existence and reappeared behind me. I felt the claws rake across my spine before I could turn.
Pain exploded through me, ice and fire all at once. My legs buckled.
No. Not again.
I rounded on it and lunged, but the paralysis was already spreading, weakening me.
It flickered away, appearing on the opposite side of the room. Its flat black eyes locked on me expectantly, the eerie smile never leaving its lips.
I took a step forward, a growl rising in my throat. I readied myself to spring at it, already knowing it was useless.
The Algea sailed forward without warning, claws outstretched. The paralysis made me too sluggish to move out of the way.
More icy fire as its talons sliced through my skin, wrenching a strangled snarl from me.
My limbs went fully numb and useless. I collapsed to the floor.
The Algea grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, its claws digging in, and dragged me toward the broken window—toward the forest beyond.
I tried to fight it, to break free of its grasp, but my body wouldn’t respond to me at all.
The world tilted. Trees blurred past. And then, deep in the forest, in the same clearing where my mate had almost died the night before, reality cracked open around us. The air shimmered, peeling back grotesquely.
The Algea dragged me through.
The colors shifted, becoming too bright, too vivid. The trees were taller here, older, their bark slick and black. The sky was the same bruised color I’d seen through the portal, the moonlight harsh and blinding.
And I was alone.
No pack and no Harris. No one was coming to help me.
The Algea released me and I collapsed onto the ground. My vision swam, the venom—twice the dose I’d ever experienced before—dragging me down into darkness.
My last coherent thought was:I’m never going to see him again.
Then the world went black.
CHAPTER NINETEEN || HARRIS
The way down the mountain was winding and dark. The rain had stopped earlier, but it started coming down in sheets again, cutting off my visibility and forcing me to go at a glacial pace around the twists and turns of the narrow road. My headlights cut through the gloom, gleaming off the metal guardrails at the edge of the pavement. Below that was a long, steep drop down the mountain.
My hands were tight on the wheel, even as my mind spun in directions I didn’t want it to go.
