Page 5

“Did you have another nightmare?” she asked.

Timmy nodded and looked down. “Yes. I didn’t want LaTrisha to hear me. She gets worried.”

She nodded and wiped a fresh tear from his face. “Yeah. I know how that feels. I used to get them after Robert died.”

Timmy looked up. “Does it get any better? I miss Momma so much. LaTrisha says that the hurt will get easier, but I’m scared she just means I’ll forget about her.”

“You won’t. It does get easier—in a way. You won’t forget your momma,” she promised.

Timmy looked at the fire. “Sometimes I hear LaTrisha cry. I think she misses Momma, too.”

“Are you hungry?” she asked, hoping to take the little boy’s thoughts off of his sorrow.

“A little. I’m eating the cookies that Tracy gave me. Would you like one?” he said, pulling a bowl out from under his blanket.

Jayden smiled ruefully. Sweet treats from the Others. Things had certainly changed. “No, thank you.” She pulled a palm-sized bundle out of her bag and held it out to him. “Would you like some dried fruit to go with your cookies? I have more than I can eat.”

Timmy’s eyes lit up with delight. “I bet it would taste good with my cookies.”

“Yeah. I bet it would. Listen, I need to go check my traps. Can you…. Well, I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone,” she confided.

“Why don’t you want anyone to know? You go out all the time.”

Jayden stared at the embers in the firepit uncomfortably.

“I don’t want anyone to worry about me. Mitchell and the elders have a lot going on now that the shifter is here,” she said.

Timmy looked over toward Mitchell and Tracy’s sleeping area. A shifter’s tent was set up along the wall. It stood out among the more familiar, human arrangements in the cavern.

“I won’t tell no one unless they ask. Momma said I wasn’t supposed to fib,” Timmy said.

Jayden ran her hand over his messy hair. “You don’t have to fib. I’ll probably be back before anyone notices I’m gone—well, except for you.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a cookie to take with you? They are really good.”

“No, but thank you for asking,” she said, rising.

Jayden did not want, and would never want, the shifters’ cookies, or their cages, or their friend-stealing magic spells, or their sexy dreams?—

She waved goodbye and silently headed for the entrance to the cave. Timmy’s offer of the shifter cookies had actually been sweet. A slight pang of guilt and shame made her angry all over again, this time at herself. She had met two shifters in person in her life so far, and neither had resembled those of the stories the elders told about them.

She pulled her white fur cap further down over her ears when a shaft of freezing air swirled around her. The snow had finally stopped, leaving the world encased in a glittering white wonderland. She paused to slip on her snowshoes, tying the leather straps over the top of her boots and pulling the slip knots tight on each heel before stepping out.

The path down from the cave was covered in two more feet of snow than what was there a few days ago when they arrived. The wide brims of her snowshoes kept her from sinking into it. Scanning her surroundings, she thought about Tracy, Mitchell’s shifter, the shifter Jayden had been studying for the last few days.

Tracy Bearclaw acted like she genuinely cared about humans, and as for how she was with Mitchell, she certainly seemed to be in love.

A pang of loneliness struck Jayden. First Ella and now Mitchell. How could life change so quickly?

The only thing that is constant is the mountains. That thought brought her some measure of comfort, and it was what she had been thinking about when she told her clan she would take her chances in the wild. Tracy had just offered the clan a compound designed for humans, explaining that the shifters’ plan was to bring humans out of hiding in a safe way so humans could eventually live alongside the Others, fully integrated into their society. Mitchell and the elders had decided to accept.

It left Jayden reeling with resentment, anger, and fear. It also caused memories of the two wolf shifters to rise to the surface of her mind, along with a sense of panic.

Would I see them again?

That thought flustered her. She was still haunted by dreams of the men, dreams where they would hold her and do things to her that she knew happened between a man and a woman. Even though she couldn’t remember the details, she remembered the feelings left behind when she woke.

“I won’t let it happen. I won’t give into whatever magic they think they can cast over me,” she growled under her breath.