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“Stop it,” she bit out, her breath an arid raspy plea against the new-spring mist. “It has to be just a little farther.”
Within Clara’s mind, her wolf howled her encouragement. Good, the she-wolf heard the water, too. With one final push, Clara heaved herself fully over the mounded earth and crested the hill by ungracefully collapsing onto a nearby boulder, hugging the thing as if it was a long-lost relative coming to greet her. Then a soft sad chuckle escaped her despite her efforts to squash all emotion. The cold stone against her heated cheek wasn’t terribly far off in terms of the tenderness she was used to. The abrasive surface eerily mimicked the bristly rasp of her father’s beard the few times she recalled him showing physical affection when forced to do so under public scrutiny.
It was the only time he was ever forced to do anything.
The memory jolted another spike of adrenaline into her aching body. She craned her head up and over the boulder, measuring the descent of the embankment ahead as best she could.
How much farther could she run? She couldn’t tell which was more tightly wound, her nerves or her muscles. Did it matter? Both screamed in anguish, but staying still was as much a death sentence as what awaited her in the stronghold.
Unless she could reach the human lands.
“Up,” she barked to her straining limbs. “Onward. One foot in front of the other. The stream. We start there.”
It nearly took an act of the Moon Mother herself, but Clara managed to straighten her spine and anchor herself enough to review what the merchant had told her.
“Once the stronghold fits into the L of your hand, follow the stream west until its waters churn into the river. When the runoff reaches the stone circle, look above and find the bridge that will take you to the humans.”
At the time, they’d seemed like simple enough directions. Now, however, with her paranoia poking holes in her mind’s cognitive functions and her body dragging a white flag behind it, the old female’s words felt as murky as the fog around her and just as aimless.
Clara lifted her gloved left hand, bit the fabric at the tip of her trembling middle finger, and yanked the garment free, lest it skew what she was looking for. Well, here goes nothing. Sinking into that eternal hope, she formed the shape of an L with her index finger and thumb and turned to the direction she’d come from. Silence met her stance, and the tension that had taken up residence in her shoulders and spine relaxed slightly. Taking advantage of the stillness and terrified of how long it would last, she shot her hand up in front of her. Once raised, her extended fingers cradled the massive stone stronghold that now appeared no larger than one of the stones she’d almost rolled her ankle on a moment earlier. The sloping roofs barely reached the tip of her index finger’s fingernail, while the expansive gardens stretched no farther than the fleshy pad of her thumb.
Relief perfused her aching muscles like water through a parched sponge.
“I made it!” But the joy of solving one problem was short-lived. A low howl stretched through the dark trees, blanketing the night with an ominous warning. Foreboding tension returned, coiling around the base of her spine and tugging her into a frozen shell of herself. Her she-wolf fought and scratched at the surface of her mind, urging her to run, begging her to shift into her wolf form.
And Clara would have. On any other day, she would have given herself over to the wolf and cowered in her mind, content knowing the stronger part of her lycan makeup would carry them far away from any physical threat. However, even as the howl grew, becoming loud enough in its echoes that the stream vibrated with its own fear, it couldn’t sway her. Not in this.
Clara whipped her glove back on and crouched low, ensuring the boulder blocked as much of her body and scent as possible. Then, with one unsteady foot, she tested the steepness of the embankment and nearly crumpled with exhaustion. By the moon, her thighs were shot! She had no idea how many miles she’d run. Couldn’t even recount her exact progress if someone put a knife to her throat demanding the answer, which would soon wind up being a truer statement than she’d like if she didn’t move fast. But she had to try, had to get her bony backside down that hill and use the water to mask her scent. They’d know she came this way, of course, but once she hit the water, all bets were off. The lapping stream would do its job of dispersing whatever descended into it. All she had to do was get there safely.
She dipped lower to the ground and gritted her teeth against the trembling in her thighs. All too quickly, her legs boycotted what she asked of them and dumped her onto her knees. The stinging pain of the impact shot through her kneecaps and wrenched her mouth wide, preparing her body to release the sharp cry that sat poised at the base of her throat. Her palm caught up her wincing sob before it was set free into the night air around her.
Shift! Shift now, before they find you!
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes, but she shook them away, wondering, not for the first time, where this surge of bravery came from. It certainly hadn’t been taught to her, nor had she observed any true acts of heroism from the males in her father’s employ. The most experience she had with the rebellious emotion had been the occasional time or two she’d insisted on fewer chaperones during her garden walks or, Moon Mother forbid, an extra hour’s curfew extension.
Bravery was not a concept that had been readily available to her. Her flight from the stronghold had as much to do with courage as a rat’s plight to the upper decks of a sinking ship had to do with wanting to get a better view of the skyline.
“No,” she whispered through the pain. “I can’t shift.”
Her clothes, the relic, all of it would be left behind if she shifted, and she needed that relic. It was the only thing that would identify her as who she was. Once she reached the human lands, she’d need that relic to prove what she feared her words alone could not, which would be absolutely nothing if she didn’t reach the bridge first.
Clara lifted an aching leg out from under herself and made to rise?—
Her foot lost what little purchase it had against the slick leaves, dragging her down the embankment. Limbs followed her loss of balance. Arms pinwheeled out around her while frantic fingers scrambled for purchase on anything. Dirt and forest debris filled her vision before the tail of her cloak rose up and blocked what was left of the meager moonlight. Any remaining hope was tossed among the wooded detritus along with her tumbling body. The world spun out of control faster than any of the events she had set into motion, faster than the panic gripping her heart and freezing her extremities into commandless weights that whirled around her.
Useless. Everything was useless.
Icy water caught her, welcoming her into its numbing embrace. Chilling prickles nipped at her cheeks and lips while her clothes swelled with an even more exhausting weight. She thrashed and fought against the churning water, but her weak legs had already become tangled in her sopping cloak. Her wolf whined, and Clara tried to kick out again, but her jerky movements caused her temple to smash against a protruding rock along the stream’s bed.
Her protesting mind stilled into a serene calmness before her topsy-turvy world sank into an ocean of black.
Chapter 2
There was something about slicing a heated blade through demon charmer bone that put an obscene amount of pep in Bronze’s step.
And wasn’t it a sad state of affairs that those were the fantasies he looked forward to as of late? Long nights on patrol with a whole lotta nothin’ doin’ when it came to hunting the soul-sucking bastards had given him more than enough time to analyze—and hyperfocus—on anything else other than what had been rattling around inside his brain for the past several months.
Normally, he’d be in Aurora with his brothers, volunteering for reconnaissance duty over the sleepy New Hampshire town that had no idea just how bad its demon problem had become. Charmers, despite their name, had about as much charm as a venereal disease and were about a thousand times more pervasive and exponentially more deadly.
