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  The wolf’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Instead of snarling at me, the animal put its ears back, struggling to crawl away from me. One of its hind legs dragged uselessly behind it. Jade-rimmed, golden eyes remained fixed on me.

  If the small wolf wasn’t the woman from the photograph, I’d be astounded—unless someone other than the Inquisition had been out hunting unnatural canines. Despite everything I’d been told about injured Fenerec, she didn’t attack me, which I considered to be a promising sign. Maybe she wouldn’t try to rip my face off.

  I kept still and said in as soft a tone as I could manage, “I’m not going to hurt you.” While my voice wasn’t particularly deep, my words rumbled in my effort to stay quiet.

  She froze, staring at me with widening eyes. The jade rimming her pupils brightened in the moonlight.

  I murmured a prayer of thanks for my good fortune. With the Fenerec woman with me, I wouldn’t have to head deeper into the forest and closer to the den, which was likely ground zero of the battle between the rogue Fenerec and the Inquisitors.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll get you out of here safe and sound.” With slow, exaggerated movements, I shrugged out of my suit jacket. When the wolf didn’t react, I draped it over her. She whined when I touched her. Wincing at the thought of hurting her more, I hesitated. I’d be whining too if I had a hole in my leg. I couldn’t see the injury, but her fur matted where she bled. “Will you please let me take a look at your leg?”

  The wolf’s gaze met mine, and after a long, tense moment, she nodded. Like my movements, hers were slow and deliberate. With a click of her teeth, she closed her jaws. Her docility alarmed me almost as much as my close proximity to an injured Fenerec. I’d been warned about the nature of injured Fenerec. My orders had been clear in that regard; if any of them were hurt, they rode in the back, even if all nine ended up there instead of up front with me.

  If a Fenerec went on a pain-induced rampage, I’d be a mauled corpse by the time they were finished. Injured didn’t mean helpless, although I had a hard time believing the she-wolf was much of a threat.

  The little wolf whined at the pressure of my hands on her leg, but she kept still. I worked my fingers into her matted fur, finding the entry wound by touch. She snapped her teeth at me though she didn’t bite. The thought of her tearing a chunk out of me birthed a cold sweat on my brow.

  Shifting my grip on her, I ran my hand over my jacket towards her head until I reached her neck, taking hold of her scruff so I could pin her down. With my other hand, I searched for the exit wound, instead finding the lump of a bullet under her skin.

  Swallowing back my desire to curse—one simply didn’t spew vile epitaphs in front of a lady, Fenerec or otherwise—I said, “I’ll need to cut it out. I don’t know if it’s silver.”

  If she’d been shot by the Inquisition, the bullet was silver-forged, a hollow point with enough of the metal coating the jacket to ensure a struck Fenerec would eventually die. I’d done the final ammunitions check for the team since I was the only one who could touch them without being burned.

  She whined, her eyes widening.

  The pocketknife attached to my keys made a poor tool for surgery, but it was all I had. I hoped she’d forgive me and that I wasn’t about to give her an infection trying to save her. Mumbling to myself, I adjusted how I knelt, pressing one of my knees against her shoulders and neck so I could free my hand to work on her leg.

  “Please don’t bite me, ma’am.” Once I was certain I had her as pinned as possible without hurting her further, I took hold of her leg, clenched my teeth, and sliced my knife over the lump, hoping I wasn’t driving the silver deeper into the muscle in the process. Blood—too dark to be red—gushed from the cut. Tossing aside my keys, I considered the bullet. Digging it out would hurt her, and there was nothing I could do to ease her pain. If the Fenerec were like other animals, she’d be howling before I finished.

  The last thing I wanted was to attract unwanted attention, so I risked wrapping my fingers around her muzzle to keep her jaws closed. She thrashed beneath me, her yips and growls muffled by my hold on her.

  Focusing on her leg, I located the bullet with my index finger and thumb, pinching beneath the projectile to force it out of the muscle. Her muffled cries grew louder as I worked the silver out of the wound. Blood spurted as I forced the round out. It fell to the ground, disappearing into the fallen leaves.

  The Fenerec moaned, shuddering beneath me.

  “All done, ma’am,” I whispered as soothingly as I could. Stabbing a Fenerec in order to remove a silver bullet topped the list of crazy things I’d done in my life, most of which I had accomplished within the past twelve hours. Driving my brother’s Red Beast like a sports car came a close second, leaving my black market racket, all done on behalf of the Inquisition, for third place. At least my illegal business dealings paid well, considering the risks involved.

  While I didn’t want my hand anywhere near her teeth, something unavoidable if I wanted to let go of her muzzle, I loosened my grip, hoping I moved slow enough to avoid stirring her ire further.

  The Fenerec moved lightning fast, I had to give her that much. Before I was aware she had struck, her jaws closed around my left hand. Instead of biting, her silky tongue curled around my fingers, coating me with slobber.

  I stared at her, a lump in my throat choking off my breath. While her fangs didn’t penetrate my skin, I was aware of each and every one of them pressing into me. Maybe she didn’t weigh much, but I had no doubts she was warning me what she was capable of.

  When our staring contest began was a mystery, but I couldn’t force myself to look away, something I should’ve done. Fenerec didn’t like humans challenging them. My brother had made a point of mentioning that fact several times while surrendering the keys to his precious monstrosity of a truck. Don’t meet their gaze had been rule number one. Lower my head and look submissive had been rule number two. If I played their game as they wanted, I’d walk away intact, without so much as a scratch to show for my interactions with my volatile teammates.

  Her gold and green eyes held mine, drowning my awareness of anything besides the feel of her fur under my one hand and her fangs and tongue on the other. The need for air burned my lungs. I should’ve done something other than gawk at her like an idiot, but I couldn’t. Like me, she seemed equally powerless—or too stubborn—to look away.

  That both comforted and pleased me, and I didn’t know why.

  A bright flash accompanied by a concussive blast broke my concentration. My ears rang while balls of light burst and danced in my vision.

  The Fenerec’s fangs tore into me.

  Chapter Two

  I wasn’t sure why I was lying on the ground.

  The Fenerec had stopped using me as a chew toy in favor of crawling all over me, her paws pressed against my chest with her cold, wet nose pressed against my throat. She huddled close to me, shivering as though it were deep winter instead of late spring.

  Within fifty feet of me, the underbrush smoldered, but recent rainfalls kept the damp foliage and leaves from igniting. Farther into the forest, where I suspected the den had once been, were the burning ruins of fallen trees, filling the air with smoke. The scattered bits and pieces of my memory fell together.

  There had been an explosion.

  I shook my head, and at my movement, the Fenerec’s ears pricked forward. My ears hurt worse than my hand, and the ringing in my head deafened me to any other sound. I felt more than heard the little wolf’s whine. She wiggled, shoving her head under my chin.

  If it weren’t for the jade in her eyes and the fact she seemed to understand what I was saying, I would’ve suspected her to be a regular dog, not a Fenerec. Fenerec weren’t supposed to be cute, cuddly, or friendly—especially not when hurt. The blood of a prey species, humans included, was supposed to bring out the predator in them. While I was well aware she was a predator, I didn’t feel like prey.

  I couldn’t bring mysel
f to fault her for mauling me. The explosion had caught us both by surprise. I tried to piece together why I was lying against a tree. Had we been close enough for it to knock me over? I remembered the flash-bang of the detonation, but nothing afterward. Wincing, I lifted my hand to inspect the damage. The gashes, both on my palm and the back of my hand, had already stopped bleeding for the most part, although a few of the deeper wounds still oozed blood. Bracing against the pain I was about to subject myself to, I flexed my fingers.

  All of them moved. The wounds pulled and hurt about as much as my throbbing ears, but the Fenerec hadn’t done enough damage to impair my movement. With luck, I wouldn’t need stitches. How long did it take gashes to cease bleeding? I couldn’t remember. I estimated longer than twenty minutes, but less than an hour.

  Using my elbow so I wouldn’t put my hands at risk of another bite, I fended her off so I could sit up. She sprawled on my lap, pressing her head against my stomach. The back of my head ached, and when I reached up to touch it, I discovered a tender lump behind my ear. I had no recollection of hitting anything, though judging how I was sprawled against the trunk of a tree, I must have smacked into it one way or another.

  If I had been close enough for the explosion to knock me flat, why wasn’t I dead? My ears hurting I understood; concussive bursts could easily rupture eardrums. It didn’t take much to damage someone’s hearing. But if I had been close enough for the blast to flatten me, I should have been hit with a lot of debris.

  I couldn’t remember any of the details. Making a frustrated noise I couldn’t hear, I pinched my nose, drew a deep breath through my mouth, and attempted to pop my ears. Pain lanced through me, but after shaking my head, sounds began filtering in.

  “Well, isn’t that just wonderful,” I muttered, thinking of all of the unsavory words I wouldn’t utter in the Fenerec’s presence. My voice sounded muffled and distorted thanks to the incessant ringing in my skull. “We better get out of here.”

  The Fenerec rolled over, tucking her paws close to her belly and stretching out her neck in what I thought was supposed to be a submissive position. Her behavior baffled me, and uncertain of what I had done to either alarm or worry her, I risked working my injured hand under her neck to scratch her behind her ears. If she decided to take another bite out of me, at least I could limit the damage to my left hand. “It’s all right,” I murmured, keeping my tone as soft and gentle as possible. “It’s not your fault.”

  The blame was mine for having put my hand near her teeth in the first place. The explosion hadn’t helped matters any.

  I didn’t know if blowing up part of Oconee National Forest had been part of the plan; I hadn’t been briefed on the details of the operation, and I hadn’t asked. I left the fieldwork to the trained Inquisitors. I had limited my involvement to driving the truck and checking their silver ammunition. Considering the fact my team was dead, they had either set a timer or someone else had come along behind them and cleaned up. That worried me almost as much as the fact I was going against the Inquisition in order to help the Fenerec sprawled over my lap. She was still lying on her back, her belly and neck exposed, with her tail tucked as though expecting me to beat her for having reacted violently to the explosion.

  Watching her cringe when I turned my head to get a better look around pissed me off.

  I had no idea what had been used to tear a hole into the forest and destroy the Fenerec den, but it’d been strong; the blast had created a crater in the middle of the forest. Without the typical Georgia spring rain, the entire forest would’ve been aflame from the explosion. My brother hadn’t given me instructions on what to do if the forest burned; then again, I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the den in the first place.

  I likely wouldn’t have heard the explosion if I had followed my orders. I would have been long gone in the Red Beast, barreling towards Atlanta as fast as the truck could go, with a speeding ticket as my biggest concern. But no, I had chosen to stay.

  If I hadn’t, the little wolf would have died.

  I sighed, easing the Fenerec to the ground before staggering to my feet. Hissing at the pain of spasming muscles in my back, I stretched away the worst of the kinks. “I’m going to have to carry you,” I warned the wolf in a soft voice.

  When she made no attempts to flee, I knelt to pick her up. She whined as I scooped her into my arms, wrapping her in my suit’s jacket. Concern overrode my worry at having her teeth so close to my arm; she weighed far less than I thought she should. I clenched my teeth, hoping that her flinching was from the pain of the gunshot wound rather than abuse.

  If someone had given her reason to flinch, I’d make them regret it one way or another. No one hit a lady around me. No one, not for any reason.

  I drew a deep, long breath. Once I got her out of the forest and safe from the Inquisition, I’d worry about nursing her back to health and making certain no one lifted their hand against her again. That much I could do. But first, I had to get us both out of Oconee alive. My responsibility for the death of her pack would need to be addressed later—along with facing the consequences for helping a rogue Fenerec I had been tasked with eliminating.

  Why couldn’t I do anything the easy way?

  Shifting the Fenerec in my arms, I twisted my wrist to check my watch. In less than an hour, my brother would be expecting me with his very, very expensive truck. I needed to figure out how to deal with her before he sent someone after me—or find a way to make him look somewhere else for me until I had a chance to hide the little wolf.

  I twisted around to stare at the destruction; I could feel the deaths of the trees, animals, and Fenerec as a chill. I shuddered. Dread cramped my stomach, and I turned away before I caught glimpses of the final moments of the Inquisitors and their victims.

  I had more important things to do, which included dealing with the Inquisition and my twin. The Red Beast had more GPS transponders on it than I could easily remove. Even my Inquisition-issued cell was tracked. All I had to do to bring a lot of unwanted attention was break it, which would notify the Inquisition of the phone’s last recorded location. If I wanted to escape my brother’s watch, I’d have to dump the cell and the truck. Until I found a place to hide the Fenerec and make her safe, I couldn’t let my brother find me.

  The cell was easy enough. I’d drop it near the truck for someone to find.

  But how could I make it so the Inquisition wouldn’t come looking for me right away? That was the real problem. If my twin was being cautious, he was probably aware I hadn’t left the forest.

  The first thing I needed to do was make it back to the Red Beast. From there, I’d make a plan. Hopefully, the blast hadn’t been the result of an Inquisition cleanup crew, but rather a planned detonation to make sure the den wasn’t used again. If it was a cleanup crew, we were already in a lot of trouble. They’d know the names and appearances of everyone on the team, myself included.

  They would know I had, against orders, left the truck. If there was a second team out in the forest, what were their plans for me? I didn’t want to believe my brother would have me eliminated, but it was always a possibility.

  Forgive and forget was not a concept practiced by the Inquisition.

  Biting back my desire to curse, I marched towards the truck. I needed a little luck, the sort of luck that would ensure there wasn’t a team of angry Inquisitors waiting for me at the Red Beast. Too many questions rattled about in my head as I retraced my steps, setting the Fenerec down every now and then to check the GPS so I wouldn’t get lost.

  One possibility worried me more than the rest: would my twin actually betray me to the Inquisition? With a sinking feeling, I realized I didn’t know, not for certain. We didn’t see each other for more than a few minutes each year. I didn’t want to believe it. He’d been grinning with boyish enthusiasm as he had bribed me with the prospect of driving the Red Beast.

  The Inquisition itself was a more likely risk. The higher ups serving my brother didn’t like me;
they probably feared that my witchcraft would infect my pristine, Normal brother, who couldn’t use any form of magic to save his life. While I had outed myself as a witch at age five, I hadn’t told anyone other than my brother that I could sense the names of the dead. Was my ability enough to warrant my execution?

  Probably.

  After all, they had sent nine heavily armed Fenerec to kill a rogue pack, including the frightened wolf I carried. Sure, she had given me a nasty bite, but it hadn’t been her fault. The explosion had taken us both by surprise. There was nothing either one of us could have done to prevent it.

  Once I made it back to the Red Beast, I’d figure out what to do.

  ~~*~~

  All was quiet when we made it to the Red Beast. Kneeling down beside the truck, I gingerly set the wolf down. With a quiet whine, she licked at my fingers. Several of the gashes still bled, resulting in my hand being so caked in blood it looked like I wore a glove.

  Before I could deal with her, I needed to make sure I didn’t bleed to death.

  “There are bandages inside,” I informed her. “I’ll get them, take care of this mess, and then I’ll wrap your leg.” There was also a laptop stashed away under one of the seats, but I wasn’t certain if I wanted to risk using it; like every other electronic device the Inquisition owned, it was riddled with tracking software, GPS, and God-only-knew what else. I didn’t have the time to sterilize it.

  After I took care of our injuries, I’d decide what to do. Unlocking the truck, I clambered inside, wincing as I managed to pull open another one of the bites. It didn’t take me long to smear blood all over the leather interior. By the time I finished crawling into the backseat of the cab, I had managed to leave several handprints on the cushions, the back of the driver’s seat, and even on the window.