Page 58 of Shifters Reckoning

She was here, alive or something adjacent to it, and she was moving along the vanguard of Acheron’s army where the shapes ran thickest. Acheron hadn’t completely consumed her yet. He was using her—a leash-bearer, a compass, bait. Son of a bitch. Maybe all three.

The premonition he’d burned into my head in No Man’s Land had ended with Emma dead in a dome of her own making, and here was the woman who might be her mother, walking point for an attack that was scheduled to arrive at my gate in time for the holiday my mate had promised her people.

What a fucking tangle.

I had to get the report home, alert Ville Platte, and warn Six-Mile.

The Void is days out. The horde grows as it moves, consuming energy from everything it touches, and Acheron is driving your mother ahead of it like a goad, Emma.

Our undertaking had to continue. Fern had bled for the first half. My unit had flagged the second. The smart alpha, the builder, would take his people and his numbers and escape north. Live to fight another day.

But the report now had a hole in it. Is this woman his creature or his captive?

If she was the leash steering two hundred shadows, then she was also the leash that could be cut. One woman. One tether. Maybe the whole horde stumbling blind in the Void if someone got close enough to see how the knot was tied.

Nobody at Six-Mile could answer that from a map or a recon mission, and by the time we returned with an army, the line would be three parishes north, and the answer might be standing in my front yard.

I studied the mist. My scar burned, and an invisible fattening moon climbed beyond it.

“Fall back to the rally point,” I said. “Olivia has command. You run the flags, the counts, and the pace home to the multimorph. All of it. Get to them as quickly as you can. No rests longer than water. Tell her the line lands in six days, five if it’s eager. Tell her to move the camp behind the warding and call in every clan. Tell her to use those four magic words she loves so well.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

I rolled my shoulders and let the wolf come up warm under my skin. “Tell her about her mother after she’s standing somewhere she can break things. Keep her safe.”

The unit froze.

Olivia went still, but her eyes flashed. “And you,” she said, “will you be delivering part of this report? Perhaps comforting your mate in person?”

“Yes, but that part isn’t written yet. He’s moving her with the Void. I can shadow it for tonight and figure out how she is tied to all this. I’ll be half a day behind you.” I met my beta’s gaze. “If that woman is the lock, Emma will spend herself trying to pick it in the middle of a battle. If the woman’s a key, I’m not leaving her in Acheron’s pocket. Either way, I go look. It’s her mother.”

“It’s a trap. He knows your scent, Logan, and he’s murdered you once already.”

“Then he knows I’m coming, and I’m not inclined to disappoint him.” I softened one degree. “This isn’t No Man’s Land. I’m not going in to burn anything. I’m going in to see. First fox rule.” I glanced at Jasper. “Tell her. We must know.”

I have to know so I can protect her.

“Aye, seein’s the whole art,” Jasper said quietly, and there was no twinkle in him at all. He unhooked something from his tied-down beard and tied it around my wrist—one small brass bell, cold as a creek stone. “It’ll stay with ye now it’s tied. Ye ring that with intention if the seein’ goes wrong, ye great fool. Foxes hear their own bells across a battlefield. I’ll come, and I’ll bring the reckoning with me.”

Olivia peered at me for long moments, doing the same math I’d done… order versus alpha, mission versus mate, the builder versus the man.

“Half a day,” she said. “Then I tell Emma where you are, and God have mercy on the dead zone because she won’t.” She spun on the unit. “You heard the alpha. North! As though our world depends on it.”

They disappeared as one. Wolves, cats, two foxes, and a squirrel worked as one machine in the dark. My mate’s miracle carried the worst news in Louisiana home at a dead sprint.

Levi paused one heartbeat on a dead branch, glanced back at me, and said nothing at all, but he raised a squirrel paw in salute and flicked his tail. Then he was gone, too.

I remained alone at the edge of the Void with a brass bell around my wrist and my heart fleeing north without me.

There will always be an after, Emma.

I pressed my vow into the diminished bond, too far gone for words to carry, and I felt, or wanted to feel, the hint of her flickering in my mind.

Race ya home, she’d said before she’d climbed onto her Ducati.

“I’m taking the long way around,” I whispered, “but I’ll be racing to you as soon as I can, love.”

Then I took a deep breath, shifted to wolf, and stepped across the boundary, and every sound in the world snuffed out.