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Pants came from right behind me, and I didn’t have to look to know Duncan had reached me, his claws raised to tear into my flank. The iron bent a little more. Was it enough?

I released it and pushed through the gap and out the gate. I glanced back as I snatched the human garment from the ground, reminded of the valuable magical things inside.

Duncan stood right where I’d been, his clawed limbs raised, as I’d imagined. He could have gotten me, but he’d hesitated.

That didn’t mean I was safe, so I backed away. The bipedfuris had the power to bend the bars, if not rip the gate entirely from its mounts.

But he pressed the heel of a clawed hand to his forehead, to the still-glowing scar there. With his legs trembling, he fought the magic coercing him. His battle with himself was buying me time. I turned and ran into the fields. Only once did I pause to look back, just before the gate would have disappeared from view.

Duncan knelt on the pavers, his head bowed. I paused, tempted to go back to check on the one I’d almost made my mate. But the human scientist walked into view, stepping fearlessly up to the bipedfuris, his magical device in hand. He touched it to Duncan’s forehead, to the scar.

With a feeling of lament, I realized Duncan was theirs now, that man’s new minion. No, hisoldminion, returned to serve again.

Security men appeared in the courtyard, powerful flashlights in hand as they shined them between the bars in my direction. Atop the courtyard walls, floodlights came on, brightening the fields.

I dared not stay. I turned and ran into the night.

23

The next day,I drove through Monroe on the way to my mother’s cabin. After the chaotic night, I hadn’t heard from Duncan, and I doubted I would. He belonged to that scientist now. Lord Abrams.

The thought of him serving them, and of them sending him after me, made me shiver. I’d been contemplating if there was any way I could return and help him escape, but they seemed to have programmed him to attack me. I couldn’t overcome the bipedfuris. I’d barely escaped with my life.

After fleeing the night before, I’d run hours in my wolf form, despite the pain from my wounds. The magic hadn’t subsided until I’d made it south of Everett, miles having passed under my paws. But there’d been miles more to go, and the jacket, with my phone and artifacts in the pockets, was the only clothing I’d escaped with. Once I’d been barefoot in my human form, my modesty barely covered, I’d called Jasmine to pick me up. Traveling miles through suburban streets as a wolf wouldn’t have been daunting, but as an almost naked human with numerous wounds? No, thanks.

Once we’d reached the apartment complex, I’d thanked her for her help, let her bandage my bloody gouges, and then gone straight to my bedroom. I’d collapsed unconscious for more than ten hours.

When I’d woken, with afternoon drizzle dampening the lawn outside my window, I’d been shocked that none of the tenants had come to my door, looking for assistance. Maybe they had, and I hadn’t heard them. Maybe they’d been too scared after the battle in the parking lot to wander out of their apartments at all. I grimaced at the thought and vowed that whatever happened to me in the future, I would do my best to keep it from affecting the people here.

Would that be possible? I hoped so, but Radomir and Abrams were still alive. Unfortunately. And I’d messed up their place and taken the artifacts. Only the ones they’d stolen from me and my mom, but… did that matter? They might feel vengeful anyway.

And what of Duncan? They could send him after me at any time. Unless he could escape on his own and get out of range of that device. He had once, hadn’t he? Maybe he could do so again.

“Let’s hope,” I said softly, turning into my mom’s driveway.

Right away, I hit the brakes. A white wolf stood, waiting for me, as if I were expected. Jasmine must have told them I would come by today.

I rolled down the window. “I have something for my mother.”

Though I didn’t know how many in the pack she’d confided the loss of the artifact to, I assumed Lorenzo was in the know, so I picked up the velvet-covered box and showed it to him. I trusted he could sense its magic, especially in his wolf form.

He padded to the side of the road. An invitation to pass?

When I drove by him, he sprang into the back of the truck. That startled me, and I barely avoided clipping a tree next to the winding driveway. In the rearview mirror, his tongue lolled out. Amused, was he?

“You’re spry for an older gentlewolf,” I called out the window.

He tilted his head back and howled.

That howl was familiar. He’d been the one to catch Duncan and me hunting to the east of the city, but this particular vocalization reminded me of the day we’d been talking and eating brisket at the Ballard Locks.

“Were you in Seattle recently?” I drove slowly as the cabin came into view between the trees. Only my mom’s Jeep was parked out front.

Lorenzo’s tongue lolled out again. I didn’t think I would get an answer, but after I parked, he jumped down from the back of the truck, not as a wolf but as a man. He was lean and fit, despite the creases at his eyes and whiteness of his short hair.

“I’m not spying on you,” Lorenzo told me, “but your mother is concerned that your cousins might still be plotting, so I am…” He turned a weathered palm toward the cloudy sky.

“Watching me?” I debated if that was the same thing asspying. I supposed not if he’d had protective rather than nefarious intent.