Taking a deep breath, holding it, and gritting my teeth, I held out my left arm.
She didn’t hesitate. Her jaws closed around my forearm and pain exploded through me as her teeth sank deep into my flesh.
My breath escaped in a strangled grunt of pain.
Lacey released me and stepped back.
I looked down at the wound. Blood dripped from my arm, soaking into the dirt. But even as I watched, it began to slow. Whatever magic the wolf bite possessed, it didn’t allow the recipient to bleed to death in the process.
A few moments later, a sensation like liquid fire began at the wound—as though the edges of the bite had become white-hot—and started seeping outward. It felt like heat burning every cell it touched to ash. That was probably the magic Emma had mentioned. And yeah, she hadn’t been wrong.
It hurt like hell.
The effect on the rest of my body was almost immediate. My vision blurred. My hands started trembling. Paradoxically, because my body felt like it was on fire, a chill ripped through me and I shuddered.
“I’m ready,” I said, my voice rough.
Daniel stepped forward, holding a torch. He spoke a spell under his breath and the flames flared bright gold. He handed it to me. “The flames won’t go out until sunrise. Use this to burn the Algea’s body.”
I took it, the heat from the fire almost soothing against the fever burning through me.
Then I turned to face the others, already feeling unsteady on my feet. “If Reed and I aren’t back by sunrise, we’re probably not coming back.”
Emma nodded, her expression solemn.
I turned and began walking toward the edge of the forest. Lacey, Hunter, and Lee fell into step around me, their paws silent on the ground.
I paused at the tree line and pulled out my gun. I blinked in surprise at the weight of it—my muscles felt weak and useless. But I managed to keep it at the ready.
Then we walked into the darkness together.
* * *
The forest was different now—or maybe the fever was distorting it. The trees loomed taller, their branches reaching in all directions like skeletal fingers. The underbrush was thick and tangled, catching at my boots with every step. My vision swam, my legs felt like jelly, and every breath took more effort than the one before it.
But the mate bond was a thread pulling me forward the moment I focused on it.
I followed it deeper into the woods, letting it guide me to Reed. The wolves stayed close, a tight circle of protection around me. The golden glow of the torch cast enough light to see by, but barely. The shadows all around us seemed to shift whenever I focused on them.
Time lost meaning as we walked. Minutes or hours. I couldn’t tell.
The fever climbed higher, and my heart started behaving strangely—skipping beats, fluttering.
And that was when I started seeing things.
Reality itself seemed to shimmer around me, the air rippling like water. I could see threads of magic now, golden and silver, weaving between the trees, connecting this world to something else. The Otherworld.
Or maybe it was just the fever.
I stumbled and caught myself against a tree trunk. My vision doubled, then snapped back into focus.
I forced myself to keep moving.
At last, I stopped. The mate bond told me I was close.
I recognized this clearing. The same place I’d dragged Sally out of the night before. The same place Reed and I had been attacked.
And then I saw it up ahead. There was a wound in the fabric of reality itself, barely visible but unmistakable once I focused on it. Like someone had taken a knife to the flow of power between this world and the next and sliced it open, leaving a jagged, half-healed wound.
