Page 77 of Winter’s Teeth

Fox led the march with Shira and Corbin behind me, but the pair of following footsteps became one just before a crow shot overhead.

“What’s he doing?” I whispered breathlessly.

“It’s okay,” Shira answered, voice low. “He’s just going ahead to scope out the scene.”

Fox slowed, bringing our group to a halt behind a cluster of holly bushes choked with brown brambles. Though it was hell on my ankle to crouch for long, we didn’t wait for more than a minute. Corbin glided back to us, his crow’s talons becoming feet as he landed in an easy stride. One blink, and black feathers became bare skin beneath a midnight blue sweatshirt, so fast I thought I missed it.

“Coast is clear,” he said in a normal tone of voice, no longer bothering to stay quiet. “Your friends are alone in the house. Arthur and the others are probably back at the den.”

Relief flooded through my veins, opening up my airways and calming my heart rate. Taking Fox’s offered arm to pull myself up, I asked simultaneously, “Den?”

“This isn’t the biggest cabin on the property,” Fox explained, curt and quick. Not that he didn’t want to share, but now wasn’t the time to get into the lore.

Even if I really wanted to know more... Actually, I was dying to know more. As I limped along behind him toward the cabin, with the immediate fear gone that I was going to find my friends dead, my mind latched onto the new, shiny distraction that was Fox Winter and his unusual life.

Shifter. Snowboarder. Movie and manga connoisseur. Strangely, I was equal parts interested in all of it. I wanted to know his favorite films and hear about the first time he shifted. I wanted to read manga with him while sitting in his childhood room in a den for shifters.

My head cleared the second my foot touched the porch step, the creak of the old wood like a gong to rinse my extraneous thoughts and make room for the more important ones. Exhaustion frayed at every edge of my mind and body, but we had to be in and out of here as fast as possible.

Which meant I had to somehow convince Riss to not ask questions and just do what I say in under ten minutes. With a sleep hangover. And fresh trauma.

This is going to be a disaster...

“Locked,” Shira said after trying the front door. “I’ll ring the doorbell—”

Fox grabbed the handle, threw his shoulder into the door, and broke through the lock in a single stride.

“Or we can just destroy the place,” Shira deadpanned. “Nice.”

At the sound of a shotgun barrel pumping, I threw my weight forward, snagging Fox by the arm to drag him back where I could place myself in front of him. “It’s us! Don’t shoot, Ben!”

Angie came flying out of the living room into the foyer, throwing her arms around my neck two seconds before Riss followed suit. Their combined weight knocked me off my already unstable leg, and I careened backwards. I would have fallen in a heap on the stone tiles if Fox hadn’t been there like a brick wall to catch me.

“Agh! I’m fine. I love you, guys, but please get off me before my ankle snaps in two.”

Riss and Angie extricated themselves at once, the latter sniveling with a red face of tears and the former glaring at the others over my shoulder. Ben rounded the corner next, still holding the shotgun. Loaded. Ready to fire. Then there was Maple, who ran straight up to the new people, begging for pets.

“You’re okay?” Angie reiterated. She ran her hands up and down my arms, looking me over for mortal injuries. “Did you find her? What happened?”

“There isn’t time to explain, so I need you guys to trust me.” I looked dead at Riss as I said it, knowing she would be the toughest to convince. “I need you three to go with Corbin and Shira—”

“Like hell we’re splitting up again!” Riss exclaimed. “Rae, I swear to everything good and holy that if you try to go off on your own again—”

“I have good reasons this time!” I bit back. “I just don’t have time to run all the logic by you right now. Please, Riss.”

Riss planted her hands on her hips and stared me down with a glare that could melt ice caps. It was the look she gave professors right before she wrote a scathing letter to the dean that got them into serious trouble. The look that made strangers run to get out of her way and had caused more than a few baristas to break down in tears after they got her order wrong.

Riss was a menace to society, and a menace that I loved, but I loved her much more when she was on my side with a look like that.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said matter-of-factly. End of discussion.

Angie looked between us frantically like a child caught in the middle of fighting parents, unsure who she should gravitate toward.

Two options came to mind to get past the immovable mountain known as Karissa Zheng. I could lie—tell her I hated her and didn’t want her help. Or I could tell the truth—something Fox and Corbin definitely did not want me to do.

In a complete moment of panic, I blurted, “The Winters can shapeshift into supernatural creatures, Everly is in a cabin in the middle of the woods, and we almost died like seven times last night, so can you please just do what I say since you don’t have a clue what is going on here!”

As the echo of my outburst faded, I opened my eyes after closing them without realizing. My hands trembled in twin fists at my side, every inch of me shaky with a cocktail of fury and fear. Through it all though, Fox’s radiating heat didn’t leave my back. He stood stalwart behind me, even after I spilled his family’s darkest secret to people he barely knew or trusted in the slightest.