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My hands clenched at my sides, and my eyes bulged. “It’s Emma.”

She’s in pain. I caught the words before they slipped out. They didn’t need to know I could feel the pain coursing through Emma right now. They didn’t need to know flames burned my skin as it did hers. No, I just gritted my teeth.

Olivia frowned. “Emma’s in your head?”

“She’s been there since she passed out in Red Tail, and I bonded with her while she was on the table.”

Jasper let out a low whistle and shook his head. “Ye two are going to be a mess when ye actually get a good fuck in.”

True or not, his comment didn’t deserve a response, not when Emma was close enough that I could now sense where she was.

Slowly, I spun in a circle until I pointed in the direction she waited. “She’s back in my head, so I know we’re close. She nearby, and I know how we’re going to find her.”

Acheron would die tonight.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

emma

Afetid smell filtered into the barely conscious parts of my brain, and waking up already hurt. It was like I’d been tied up and dragged for miles across the ground before passing out. My eyes wouldn’t open, and I couldn’t remember what day it was or where I was, but the mattress underneath me was harder than it should’ve been, so maybe I wasn’t even in my bed at all.

Fuck alcohol. I’m never drinking again.

My hips ached as though I’d been stuck in the same position for hours, and my thoughts slowly dripped into the conscious part of me. Still, my eyes wouldn’t peel open, and my stomach churned so badly I wanted to throw up. Rolling set the room around me spinning and made everything hurt more. Hell, now I wasn’t sure I evencouldroll back the other way again.

I hadn’t felt this messed up since I had crammed for finals and had been convinced I had flunked the exam I’dneeded to ace.No…That had been years ago, and I hadn’t flunked that test at all.

A memory flooded my brain, of Logan, of bonding, of being unconscious and my waking up alone. With him in my head but without his body to make love to me.

Had I been so disappointed I’d gone out to get drunk? What day was it and where had I gone? What had I been thinking last night? Had I gone back to Vixen’s? Devoured too many Animal Doctors?

Fuck me.I had to get my eyes open. Why wouldn’t they open?

None of that made sense. I scrubbed my hand over my face and then smoothed it over the surface underneath me.

I wasn’t on a mattress at all. I’d passed out on a cold—probably concrete—floor.

A muted crackling nearby brought the vague memory of being burned, attacked, bound, and… and drugged?

Shit. I’ve been kidnapped.

I reached for my face again, placing my fingers close to my eyes to confirm my eyelids were open. I blinked once, twice, a third time, hoping to clear my vision.Fuck.My eyes had been open the whole time, and the room I was in was simplythatdark.

I batted the empty air in front of me, the inky black wrapped around me like a shroud. Where the hell was I? If I could adjust on the bed, shift so…

Wait.

Shift…I’m a shifter; I’mtheshifter. Dammit.

I reached for Logan’s corner of my mind but found no trace of him.

Logan. Where are you?

Now that he was gone, I realized how much I’d borrowed from his strength, his confidence, even his belief in me. If Logan trusted me, maybeIcould trust me to save the shifters from Acheron’s threat.

Yet Logan wasn’t in my head anymore, and the scent of smoke now filled my nostrils without any change to the amount of light. For the first time since I’d woken up after the primal energy surge, I felt alone.

Completely and utterly alone.