Page 86

All of that is true.

Also true: I don’t know how to walk away from Mia Reyes. I didn’t know two years ago when I honored a vow I should never have made. I know even less now.

Those two things are going to have to find a way to coexist. But that’s a problem for after. Right now, there’s a hex witch embedded in this city and a super alpha with sixty wolves at his back, who thinks he’s already won, and a fledgling new pack that deserves better than what’s coming for it.

“After this is finished,” I say heavily, “I’ll figure it out.”

Marcus looks at me for a long moment. I know he wants to argue, but he knows me too well for that. Instead, he nods once.

And leaves me alone with the afternoon light and the folder and my own thoughts.

My phone is still showing no messages.

I pick it up anyway.

Put it back down.

Go find Crow.

18

MIA

My wolf is demanding today. Pushing at the surface of me in a way that makes it hard to think about anything else for more than thirty consecutive seconds. I tell myself it’s panic over the stolen Null. Hers and mine. But by the end of breakfast with my dad—where it takes everything in me to act normal even when he tries asking me about Nash—I know it’s more than that.

His nose wrinkles as he hugs me goodbye. “You smell different today.”

“New shampoo,” I lie.

He studies me for half a second too long before letting it go. But my heart thuds, and by the time I close the door behind him, I’m sick to my stomach.

The Null is wearing off.

I’m trying hard not to think about what it will mean if I don’t find more before it’s completely out of my system. I’ve faced down dozens of predators with the strength to kill me, but I’ve never felt more vulnerable than I do now.

The east quarter of the city is quieter than downtown at this hour; residential streets bleeding into the older commercial blocks where the storefronts run to dry cleaners and small grocers and the occasional smoke shop with a neon OPEN sign in the window that only shows three of the four letters lit.

I bypass them all and head for the one at the end of the block. The sign above the door says The Pharmacy, but it’s a half-assed attempt to cover for their real merchandise. I usually avoid coming here and instead pay a courier to bring my order, but there’s no time for that today. Besides, Ramsey burned my courier when he used him to bring me that first pitch trying to get me to join him.

I pull my jacket tighter and walk faster and tell my wolf to settle down. She ignores me completely, which is more proof I’m so fucked.

At the corner of Ardent and Voss—not Lena Voss, just a coincidence of street naming that I notice and immediately wish I hadn’t—a wolf I vaguely recognize from one of the patrol rotations passes me on the sidewalk. Asis, I think his name is.

We nod. He starts to walk past. Then he stops.

Cringing, I look back.

He’s backed up three steps without seeming to realize he’s done it. His eyes are slightly wide. The particular expression of a wolf whose instincts have just told him something his brain is still catching up to. That he’s just encountered a predator where he didn’t expect one.

Merda. My dominance.

I’ve always had it—less than an alpha but more than any normal wolf should have. The kind of dominance that invites either challenge or submission, though you never know which you’ll get until it’s too late to avoid either one. It’s actually the reason I started taking the Null. If Vincenzo or Franco had ever sensed it on me, they would have immediately treated me like a threat. So would a thousand others in this town.

So, I hid it.

For years.

“Sorry,” I say to Asis, already backing away. “That time of the month. My wolf gets cranky.”