He said, “Please.”
I thrust it against his chest. He flinched. “Take it,” I snapped at him.
He did.
I screamed at him, at myself.
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
The door slammed in his face. The violet of the wood pulsed brightly. The house began to split apart.
He stood there for the longest time, listening to the sound of my racing heart on the other side of the door, even as the roof caved in.
Eventually he turned and walked past me, walked through me, and I felt him giving in to his wolf, giving in to—
run must run must put paws on ground hurts it hurts it hurrrts and
—the animal that lurked underneath. But this was different. It wasn’t like it should have been. He was a Beta here, eyes like Halloween, and though he felt himself collapsing, he should have remained that way, should have felt the pull of his pack.
But it wasn’t the same.
I could feel the wild call of the feral wolf, and it’d sunk its claws into him, dragging him by the throat into—
I turned to follow him and—
I stood on the outskirts of the clearing.
Mark Bennett was on his knees, his clothes having been shredded during his shift. His head was tilted back toward the sky, and he held that little box in his hand as he howled at the sun, sang for the hidden moon. It was a song of sorrow, an aria of grief that thundered through the trees as if the very sky was cracking right down the middle.
I felt it coming.
I began to run toward him.
But I was too late.
The gnarled hand of a half-shifted wolf burst through the ground beneath him, wrapping around his bare thigh, claws digging into his skin and causing blood to bloom like roses. Then came another, and another, and another, the last of which was thickly muscled, an entire arm rising from the ground, dirt and grass still stuck to its rotting skin. It reached up and wrapped its hand around his throat where my mark should have been, where the raven should have been from the very beginning.
The hands began to pull him down into the earth.
His eyes were open toward the sky.
They were ice.
Then orange.
Then they flickered violet.
His mouth opened in a silent scream, fangs lengthening as he clutched the box that held his stone wolf, a gift he’d given that I’d taken for granted. That I’d thrown back in his face.
I was halfway to him when I slammed into an invisible barrier, the pain bright and glassy as I fell back. I pushed myself back to my feet, reaching out to find what was keeping me from him, to find what it was that would keep us from each other.
My palm pressed flat against—
Wards.
They were wards.
Unlike any I’d ever felt before.