‘Do what, shift?’I asked, trotting after him.‘Like when you and your brothers scared me into shifting? Because that experience sucked.’
‘No, love. I meant you getting undressed in front of me.’
Oh.
‘You like that?’I teased.
‘Just a bit,’he said with a chuckle.
We raced across the snow, and once we cleared the trees, I took the lead until we arrived at the single-room cabin about a mile or so away at the very edge of our property.
I shifted back to my human form, dressing quickly, and kicked through the snow until I found the hide-a-key rock. The main room had two cots near the far wall, and the couch was a pull-out. There was a wood-burning stove that served as a hot plate as well as the heater. No running water unless one counted the stream out back, and I had vague memories of peeing in the snow.
How had Lona raised two babies out here all alone?
‘That Lona is my hero,’Rage said, shaking his head and clearly thinking the same thing.
‘Right?’I wanted a moment with her later, to thank her for everything she did for me, but it would have to wait.
Rage strode past me, letting his fingers trail over my skin on his way to the woodstove. Then he piled wood into the box and adjusted the flue. By the time Grandpa Geoff and Reyna arrived, Rage threw another log on his well-stoked fire.
Justice closed the door, sighing as he looked at his watch. “Thirty-five minutes.”
Halle-frickin-leujah. We were totally getting Honor back.
“Soo.” The high mage of spirit looked around the sparsely furnished room and frowned. “Where’s the body?”
We all froze. Justice swore and punched the wall. Noble sank onto the couch’s dusty sheet and dropped his head into his hands. Rage facepalmed himself, and I groaned.
If ever someone needed a “time turner” thing, it was now. Instead of Rage and me getting hot-and-heavy, we should’ve been locating a body for Honor! Between killing Surlama and finding out the true story about my mother, I’d completely forgotten. We all had.
“We … forgot that we needed a body,” I told my grandfather. “Today has been rough … we were fleeing for our lives from the king, and then my dad dropped a truth bomb on us.”
Rage met my gaze, and I saw guilt in his eyes, mirroring my own.
Grandpa chewed at his lip, looking at the three Midnight brothers. “I cannot bring a soul back from the Realm of the Dead without a form for it to go into.”
Rage swallowed hard and consulted his watch. “We have thirty minutes.” He looked at me. “Is there a morgue or hospital or something else nearby? Maybe we could get a body that way and—”
Grandpa waved his hand. “We’re too far from a main town for that, and I’d need to know exactly where to find a body to make a portal there. We don’t have time for me to hop from place to place and have me teach Nai how to navigate in and out of the Realm of the Dead.”
Justice cursed again and delivered another frame-shaking blow to the wall and then apologized when my gramps shot him a stern look.
“There must be another way,” Noble pleaded, looking up from the couch, his expression haggard. “We’d do anything to get our brother back.”
My grandfather narrowed his eyes, regarding each of the brothers before he reached up and stroked his chin. “Anything?”
Chills danced down my spine, and my skin prickled as Rage and Justice pressed around my grandfather, but Noble remained dejectedly on the couch, his entire frame quaking with emotion.
“Anything.Ask, and we’ll make it happen.” Rage placed his hands together in supplication.
The high mage pursed his lips, and hope sprang into my chest when he nodded.
“Each of you has two forms, your human body and your wolf. If one of you is willing to give up your wolf, I can bring him back.”
My jaw dropped to the floor. What the what?
Rage sucked in a deep breath, and Justice stumbled backward.
