Page 85 of Shifters Reckoning

“Nothing,” I lied, forcing a jubilant smile onto my face.

It was the most hated lie I’d ever told in my life.

Thunderclouds built in his bright blue eyes. Somehow, he knew.

It took me until the wee hours before dawn to get free.

Logan wouldn’t leave my side while the camp needed rallying, and the camp needed a morale boost badly. We helped reinforce a fence, convinced the warriors that tossing the enemy back into the forest counted as a victory, and triaged and healed the wounded.

I let him alpha while I stood at his shoulder in the moonlight. We made rounds through Six-Mile, making promises I’d never forgive myself for making, saying ordinary things to people who were about to feel abandoned. Their trust in my decision-making had to carry them through to the end. Whether that was when I returned or when Acheron won, I didn’t know.

We ended up in the study.

Logan sank into the chair at his desk and leaned back, studying the map on the wall. “Need to update the pins.”

“Want me to get Olivia?”

“Sure.” The adrenaline in Logan had finally dwindled, and he covered a wide yawn. “I’ll wait here.”

I dragged my fingernails along his forearm. “I’ll be right back.”

“Mmmm,” he answered. “I’ll… be… here.” Emma.

A sputtery snore followed. When I glanced over my shoulder, Logan was already slumped in his desk chair, his chin to his chest, guarding a war he thought I was still standing in the middle of. He was fricking exhausted, and I should have made him spend an hour or two in our bed, getting real sleep.

Logan still slept in his chair, his dark hair fallen over his forehead, the scar in the center of his muscular, hairy chest rising and falling under his shirt. I stood over him and let myself look for as long as I dared.

My mate. My home, for as little or as much time as we were granted. “Mine,” I whispered, hoping he’d hear a hint of it in the air when he woke.

Logan’s slack hands twitched beside Torbin’s snowflake doily. I was running out of time to get out of here without interference from the alpha of Six-Mile. If I woke him, he’d suss out the truth, and Acheron couldn’t be allowed to see even the smallest glimpse of our plan. I refused to be the crack that let the monster in.

I found a pen, and on the back of one of Logan’s site-plan sheets, I wrote him the only true thing I allowed myself to leave behind.

There will always be an after. Trust me, love.

I placed it against Torbin’s doily where Logan would see it as soon as his eyes opened, and mentally, I pressed my hand to the partition in the bond one last time. Goodbye.

This was my only chance, so I blew my mate a kiss and left to find my two clean souls. I trudged out of the manor house and into the last of the dark, hoping desperately that I would make it back. However, my escape had to happen now, or it wasn’t going to happen before another day rolled by.

Jasper was awake in his home away from home, Olivia’s cabin. Thankfully, Logan’s beta was nowhere in sight. After I knocked, he threw open the door. “Why, ’ello, lass. How…” His words died away as he read my expression. “It’s like that, then?”

I offered one decided nod. “It is.”

Jasper didn’t answer with a single joke.

“Let me see your arms,” I commanded.

He stuck his arms straight out and pushed them toward me without asking why. When he’d shadowed Logan across the boundary, the Void had torn him open there, and they’d both barely gotten clear. His torn forearm had been half-healed at the Red Tail dens.

Now I laid my fingers over the slices and reached into him the way I’d reached into nineteen wounded on a bad night, hunting for the soured flavor I’d found in each one of them, the cold gray-black fingerprint, the shadowy rot, the mark that meant Acheron had touched a soul and might be able to tug it open… like the end of a feed bag.

Miraculously, there was still nothing marring Jasper’s mind or his inner self. A shift or two of ordinary healing over ordinary hurt. Whatever had grabbed him in the dark had only ever grabbed his body, and his body had shrugged it off the way shifters do. His inner self was his own and unmarked.

“Well?” he asked quietly. “Did ye find the droids ye’re looking fer?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not his,” I said. “You never were, never have been.” Then I dropped my hands. “How do you feel about a very long walk you can’t tell anyone about? I need every ounce of loyalty you’ve ever had toward me, Jasp.”

“Aye.” A smirk worked its way onto his freckled face. “I wondered when ye’d get around to askin’. Flynn’ll skin me. Olivia’ll skin me twice more before she ever lets me back in her bed.” He studied me. “Where to, lass?”