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He catches the movement and shoots me a look.

"Stay back."

"Not a chance."

The scraping stops.

The kitchen holds its breath.

Then a voice comes through the door. A woman's. Soft. Warm. The kind you'd trust from someone's grandmother.

"Maren."

Every drop of heat leaves my body.

The doorknob turns. Slow. Testing.

Sid arches beside my ankle, ears flat, a growl too big for him rolling out of his chest.

And something about Gage physically changes.

Just his eyes. The gray goes bright, then brighter, then turns to something that was never gray at all. Something that belongs in a tree line at night. His lip peels back from his teeth.

The sound that tears out of him is not a human sound.

The woman on the other side of the door laughs, low and delighted.

Then she whispers, close to the wood, close enough that I hear her smile.

"Found you."

6

GAGE

STILL ELEVEN DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

The voice slides through Maren's back door soft as a lullaby, and my wolf throws himself at the inside of my skin.

Mate. Now.

I'm already moving.

I put myself between Maren and the door and have the dead bolt open before she finishes saying my name. Cold pours in.

The yard past her step lies gray and wet under the last of the dark, her decorations hunched in the mist, and no one is standing on the other side.

It was here. Smell it.

I do. Rot, sweet and wrong, the way meat goes when someone's dressed it up with flowers. Under it, ash. Burned herbs, the kind the old covens grind to walk through wards. The same thing circled the shop last night and slid off into the trees when I snarled it back. Now it's come for a different door.

It knows I can't stand in front of all of them.

"Stay inside," I tell her.

Of course she doesn't. She shoves her feet into boots and follows me onto the frozen grass in nothing but a sleep shirt, arms wrapped around herself, shivering, and my wolf forgets searching the trees entirely.

Warm her. Cover her. Mine.