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Left without a choice, I pull her into my arms, restraining her before she hurts herself.

“Let go!” she shrieks.

I hold her closer to me, ordering, “Wake up!”

She lets out a weeping sound that has my heart clenching helplessly.

“I don’t want to,” she mumbles now, her eyes unseeing as she looks at me. “I want to go home.” Her tears are those of a child, petrified and helpless.

I tighten my arms around her protectively. “I’ll take you home,” I whisper fiercely. “But you have to wake up.”

She doesn’t awaken, but her body begins to go limp, and then she slumps against me, back in a deep sleep. My heart uneasy, I study her, stroking her hair as she sleeps, still buried in my arms. I let her warmth seep into me and rest my chin on top of her head. I won’t be able to sleep now. Not after hearing her cry like that.

It seems I’m not the only one keeping secrets.

The next morning,Maya wakes up without a single recollection of her nightmare. Instead, she watches me with a guarded expression from the other side of the cabin.

“I don’t care how good-looking you are,” she tells me, pointing a large wooden spoon at me. “If you start getting frisky with me, I’ll smack you.”

I have to hide my smile. Nobody has ever accused me of being frisky. And she thinks I’m good-looking. I feel rather pleased at that, given my current malnourished condition.

“You were trying to attack me in your sleep,” I tell her calmly, but she just gives me a disbelieving shake of her head.

“Yeah, sure, that’s what happened.” Maya seems to have recovered some of her strength, but she is moving a little slowly. “How much longer do we have to be stuck here?” she complains, banging cupboards as she searches for something. “I’ll go crazy locked up in this place.”

“You were locked up in that cell for far longer,” I point out.

She shoots me an annoyed look. “I was plotting our escape. I had something to do. There’s nothing to do here. There isn’t even anything decent to cook with.”

She’s hungry, I realize.

When I walk over to her, she flinches. For a moment, I wonder if she’s scared of me, but when she picks up the spoon, I realize to my amusement that fear is not the issue.

“You stay on that side of the cabin.” She brandishes the wooden utensil like it’s a weapon. I wonder if she realizes I could break it in a heartbeat. But she seems to feel more secure waving it around, so I leave it alone.

Rifling through the cupboards, I take out some items, including a few more packets of the instant noodles the owner of this cabin seems so fond of.

“What are you doing?” Maya asks hesitantly.

“You’re hungry, are you not?”

“Well, yeah, but we can’t make anything out of beans or mushrooms or whatever the heck that is. And we can’t finish all the instant noodles. What if the witch finds out and gets mad? I didn’t escape Cassian and his goons only to spend the rest of my life as a frog. I don’t do well with water.”

I gently take the spoon from her. “Witches can’t do shapeshifter magic. She won’t be able to turn you into a frog. And maybe you can’t cook, but I can.”

“Really?” She gives me a dubious look. “Where did you learn how to cook?”

“My mother. She enjoyed cooking.”

Maya blinks. “I thought you couldn’t remember anything.”

“Bits and pieces are coming back to me.”

It’s not all a lie. My memory is hazy, but since I was able to shift back, I’ve been recalling various bits and pieces of my life. I still don’t know how I was taken by those people and why Quentin betrayed me. Where was I when it happened?

“It must be the drugs.” Maya sounds sympathetic. “The Silver Ring Organization has been kidnapping shifters for years, and you were one of them. They gave you something to break the link between your wolf and your human side. They wanted to weaken you for some reason. But they needed you in your human form.”

I go stiff, my head turning slightly toward her. “How do you know this?”