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“What is it?” I rasped, fleeing the darkness trying to drag me into unconsciousness. If Acheron wanted me to black out, there had to be something he didn’t want me to see, but there was something… What had Acheron said?

The image of a dark wolf darted through my thoughts.Logan!

“He’s here.”

Sharp pain sliced from one side of my skull to the other, down my brain stem, and into my neck.

His glamour flickered abruptly, and he bentover. When he straightened, a stringy-haired man showed through.

“How is he here?” he rasped, groping on the table beside him until his hand closed around a walkie-talkie. He pressed the mic key twice and tossed it aside.

“Logan?” I whispered, fighting another rush of agony, certain Logan had only been hidden from me. “Are you there?”

“Your body is dying, and he’s not in your head, multimorph.” But his voice wavered, and he trembled.

The sensation of my body being taken apart, cell by cell, filled my mind.

What had Acheron said? I tried to focus on what he had already foolishly admitted but that hadn’t made sense to me at the time.

Now…

Yes!He’d released my magic. That was why I could sense Logan now, and I reached for my mate, dragging him into the center of my mind.

Oh, thank fricking god!

Logan was right outside.

CHAPTER FORTY

logan

Fuck!

Emma’s scent had led us to a one-bedroom cabin in the woods.

A half-destroyed, empty, abandoned cabin in the woods that led nowhere.

And Emma wasn’t here. When I got my hands on the mage, I would kill him.Gleefully.

I cursed the sun peeking over the horizon, fighting the hollowing out in my chest. My toes struck a large chunk of rotting log, and I hefted it over my head, launching it across the overgrowth. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Torbin lumbered around the cabin, nosing the underbrush, grumbling and mumbling as the bells in his fur tinkled pleasantly in direct opposition to the tension pulsing through us all. Flynn, still in his wolf form, trailed after Torbin.

When Jasper appeared, he shook his head. “Ye’re sure the lass is here?”

“She must be.”

She’d led me here, and the smell of her filtered up, as though she were all around us. Had she been… Surely, we weren’t too late.

“Do any of you smell blood in the dirt or in the trees?” I asked.

They all shook their heads.

Relief swelled in my chest. At least I wasn’t completely out of my mind with worry, and I hadn’t missed an obvious clue.

I circled the cabin, not caring what the others were doing. All I needed was Emma. The farther away from the cabin I searched, the less of Emma I sensed. I peered at the broken building somewhere in the wilds of Louisiana. I had no idea where we were. No cell phones had come with us. What good would they do?

I kicked at the leaves on the ground to uncover a bare spot and send any venomous snakes on their way. Then I settled in the dirt, shoving my hands into the soil on either side of me. My eyes slid closed, and the shadowed forest pressed close as I drew on the senses of my wolf. Rustling in the distance meant raccoons or armadillos or opossums.