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Yet, the simple fact was that none of us could go up against more than one or two other shifters at a time. We were the underdogs in this messed up game, and unless we played our cards right, we were never making it out of here alive.

I had to be smart. I had to think like Riss. No charging in blind. No throwing caution and plans to the wind.

My teeth clacked together, an uncontrollable chattering starting up.

The sooner we got to the cabin to see where we stood in this game, the better.

Fox let go of my hand to slide an arm around my shoulders, pulling me across the middle of the seat to his side. I didn’t know when it happened, but at some point, he stopped running from me and became the person I could depend on the most.

Without saying a word, he gave me exactly what I needed. Comfort. A trustworthy presence. A person who was going to stand by me no matter what. Even if someone tried to kill him again.

As much as I hated everything that happened on the Winter property, I didn’t hate meeting him. In fact, I would even repeat the hell I went through to get to him.

“When this is over, we’re having a movie date,” I decided.

“Okay.”

“And you’re gonna loan me your favorite manga.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m going to take the rest of the semester off so we can have a month or two of peace and actually get to know each other the right way.”

“Okay, Rae.”

I turned a pleading gaze up to him, making out his eyes in the dark as they glistened with refracted light from Shira’s high beams. “Promise?” I couldn’t lose him too. Not after all this... Everly had been my only tether for so long, but now I had a second anchor keeping me from floating away.

Fox’s arm pulled me in closer to his side that burned with soul-warming heat. “I promise. I’m not letting you go.”

At last, I managed a deep breath that didn’t get cut off by my constricting chest. Sinking into his side, I accepted that whatever came next, he had my back, and I had his.

Technically, I had been the dynamite that blew up his already precarious situation. And sure, maybe he would have died if he hadn’t met me a month ago, but maybe if I had backed off sooner, he wouldn’t have almost died over and over again since then.

I closed my eyes, heaving one more deep breath, casting off all the guilt that built in my chest with the exhale.

I would cross those bridges later. I would sort out my blame and make amends when we were safe.

Shira slowed and drove a little past the back road that led to the cabin, opting to back in so we could make a quicker getaway at the first sign of trouble. The first bump over a pothole had my heart rate spiking, reminding me of the last time we came this way with Gavin masquerading as a truck driver. Only tire tracks remained though. No bodies. No shifters. Just the tracks, darkness, and a hollow silence.

We parked a quarter of a mile away from the cabin and jogged the rest of the way so the car didn’t alert any lurkers of our presence.

Corbin turned back, meeting our eyes in the dark. “Remember the plan. Ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes,” I echoed with an agreeing nod.

We stepped out of the car into the aching cold, listening for half a minute for signs of other shifters closing in.

When only silence met our ears, we started running.

Chapter 33

All the lights were on inside the cabin.

If I remembered the time correctly, having last seen it in Shira’s car, it was a little past six in the morning when the sky was somewhere between gray and black, about to either burst with color or choke with clouds that would keep it gloomy all day. Knowing my friends, they had probably stayed up all night to wait for my return, which could be why the lights remained on, but I had a sinking feeling that the lights could be on for other reasons.

An image of the dead officers in the woods streaked across my vision like an intrusive, unwelcome visitor. My throat constricted as I madly tried to push the images away before they could morph into headless pictures of my friends’ bodies completely drained of blood at Arthur’s feet.

Up the driveway we crept, keeping low and close to the edges. It all seemed pointless though. If Fox could shift into an eagle with supernatural vision, then his cousins could, too. With my swollen, lumbering ankle, I was probably the biggest target in the woods within a ten-mile radius.