“Something.”
He blinked.
“Something,” I repeated.
“Goddammit. This piece of shit’s not workin’.” He peered at his laptop and swore, scowling as if he was seconds from throwing it. “Lost my fuckin’ eyes, too. The tech’s offline.”
The foul stench of singed ether had faded but lingered. “The magic is pretty strong in here.”
He nodded. “That’ll do it.”
I plucked the useless earpiece out and pocketed it. “We’ll see what we can salvage later.”
A fresh wave of goosebumps sprouted across my arms. Only an hour and a half south of Seattle, I was further than I’d ever been from home and in a completely different world. One with gargoyles, magic, and a predator that even Rust feared.
My alpha had sent me here.
My pack needed this artifact.
Without the tech, I’d be going in utterly alone.
Panic nipped at my heels, but I couldn’t run home empty-handed. “What do I do?” I asked.
A light breeze caressed my cheeks.
And in the name of all that’s holy, what is that smell?
Desperation to run and hide struck me with enough force to make my heart race and my legs tremble.
“Ziara, look at me.”
My eyes snapped to my mentor’s, and his wolf demanded my undivided attention. “You know the cost of failure.”
“Yessir.”
“You can do this, so get your ass in there, but be careful. Nab the artifact and come right back. That’s an order.”
Rust had never been an alpha, but he’d been my father’s right-hand man forever, and wielded a lot of power within the pack. His voice held enough command to cut through the alarm bells ringing in my mind and remind me I was, first and foremost, a soldier in my father’s army.
And the alpha’s soldiers always followed orders.
I had to see it through. There was no other choice.
“Yessir.”
PEACOCKY AS HELL
Ziara
With a deep, steadying breath, I turned to evaluate my surroundings.
At first glance, the scene inside the hedge looked much like the forest outside it. Nothing but the dark shapes of trees as far as the eye could see. Needing to get the lay of the land, I tentatively stepped away from the hedge and sought out a tree to climb. Scaling anything that could hold my weight was one of the first skills Rust ever taught me, and I was damn proficient at it. It took only a moment for me to spot a massive bigleaf maple with well-spaced branches. I scurried right up it until I towered well above the ground.
Being up high had always felt natural, and right now, it helped calm my racing heart and ease my erratic breathing. I took in a lungful of fresh air and slowly expelled it. It didn’t matter that this plan had more holes than my training dummies because I could think on my feet. I’d prepared for this.
Patches of moonlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the bizarre world I now found myself in. The hedge stretchedaround me as far as I could see, encircling the area. I was near the end of the tree line, and beyond it, I could make out farmland, gardens, fenced pastures, and outbuildings. In the center of it all stood the giant castle that held my target. Mentally mapping out a route that would keep me mostly hidden, I climbed back down the tree and took off on silent feet, careful to stay in the shadows.
I made excellent time skirting crops, gardens, and pastures, but the outbuildings gave me pause. Like the structures found in my pack’s Seattle territory and along the roads we’d taken to get here, vegetation had overrun the buildings, but there was something different about these plants. Intrigued, I crept up to what looked like a storage shed to investigate. Everywhere else, magic-enhanced nature was aggressively eating away at the buildings and reclaiming the land. This shed was undamaged. The ivy and moss appeared strategically woven around the structure, concealing without destroying. Fascinated, I touched a vine only to have magic lick at my fingertips and make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
