Page 94 of Shifters Reckoning

“It’s not over yet,” I finally answered, and I stood up. I let the light return to the seam where it lived, still torn, still bleeding, still mine to close whenever I chose to stop being Emma.

I turned my back on them… for now.

You will come back to us, they said, but they didn’t drag me back. They whispered with what sounded like… approval. You will return.

“Oh, maybe,” I said, “but not today. Not here. Not yet. I’ve got to work on an after. I promised a guy…”

To mend, or to end. The way will open whenever you’re ready to pay.

“I’m the multimorph,” I told them, climbing, human, empty-handed, and lighting my own way. “I’ll decide what it costs and when. That’s the whole secret, isn’t it?”

They didn’t answer, but the way up was easier than the way down, and I chose to take that as a yes.

Iexited Wolf Moon Cave into muted daylight, and Jasper was there. Of course he was there, red, rumpled, and upright in the frost, exactly where he’d sworn he’d be.

He took one look at my face and didn’t ask. “Ye’re changed,” he said, which was true. “Ye’re still ye,” he added, which was also true.

Dr. Wise rose from the roots of the old oak, her satchel already on her shoulder, reading me over her spectacles.

“Well?” she prompted.

“They showed me the price.” My voice came out strong and steady. Behind me, the mouth of the cave breathed its old cold breath, patient, in no hurry at all. The spirits inside knew I’d be back. “And you were right. The other ending’s been destroyed because this one is mine to create.”

“Mmmm,” she said.

I peered north and west, back toward Six-Mile, a horde, and a man I’d left sleeping at a desk. “We’re going to go write a different one all the way to the last page.”

Then the three of us turned north, toward home, toward the war, toward the after I had promised Logan would always come. I went the whole way with the cost laid quietly in my chest like a name at the top of a list I fully intended to cross off.

Trust me, love. I’m working on our after.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

logan

Inside the Void

The Ritual Hour

We executed our strike at the blind hour, the time chosen by Marcus.

Forty of our alliance’s best moved through dead country, their jaws set in determination and their eyes flashing with deadly intent. Ville Platte was the tip of the knife because I’d promised Garrick and the whole camp that the Steeles would risk their own bodies on the whisper we trusted. Della ran point for the cats with Marcus a pace off her flank, one hand resting on her shoulder.

The clouds boiled overhead, dropping low over the heavy fog in the Void. Lightning flashed, barely illuminating the forest around us. Thunder cracked two seconds later. The earth rumbled beneath our feet, and I wished I could glimpse Emma through our bond.

Behind us, Torbin held Six-Mile. Olivia ran at my side, where she’d been for years.

I’m making sure you have a home to come home to… I pressed the thought toward Emma, but my bond with her had disappeared. Not closed. Gone. My insides churned.

Shit. She must have run herself to the end of everything I could sense, into some deep warding. There wasn’t even the wall between us left to find. Just distance, and the echo of where she’d been.

Trust me, love.

I trusted her, and I went to war to make sure there’d be a world left when she climbed back out of whatever hole she’d dug herself into.

“There they are,” I barked.

Della bared her teeth and hissed.