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“And then what did he say?”

“That he’s happy he chose me,” Misty said in the mushiest voice Jess had ever heard from her.

Jess grinned at the screen in her car. It said Misty’s name on the caller ID. She dragged her attention back to the road. The land around Sister’s Edge was flat in general, but she was an hour away and on a mountain road that dropped off steeply on the right side. The shoulder was only a few feet wide. This road had always given her the creeps for some reason, and driving at night made it worse.

“Do you think that discussion will make things easier on your relationship now?” Jess asked. Misty and Samuel had been fighting like cats and dogs lately but for reasons she didn’t understand. It was all over small, petty things, and Misty had been leaning on her for support.

“I think it will make me want to try more again,” Misty said softly. “I was ready to leave. Your brother…well he’s not the most empathetic.”

Jess pursed her lips and nodded as she rounded another curve. “I think that happened in the years he was separated from me. He wasn’t like that when we were younger.”

“He also won’t talk about the time after you two were put in different homes, so it’s hard to understand. Most of the time, he just feels mean, and cold, and uncaring.”

“Well, him opening up tonight is a good sign.”

“Yeah. Hey, have you seen what Kade has been doing?”

“Kade?” Jess asked, distracted by a deer on the side of the road. How had it even gotten up here? It would have to travel down the road a ways to find a safe place to head down the mountain.

“Yeah. You know that tall guy. Kind of new. Really, I didn’t notice him much, but he’s been Challenging.”

“Really?” she said, snapping back to the conversation. “I’ve only seen him a few times. I don’t know much about him.”

“Yeah, well, maybe study up. He’s making a run at Third. He just Challenged Arthur. He nearly killed him.”

Jess’s eyebrows shot up. “Arthur lost a Challenge?” He was a freaking lion. “What’s Kade’s animal?”

“A mother freaking rhinoceros!”

“Holy shit!” Jess exclaimed, rounding another curve. A car passed, and the headlights were bright, so she winced against them and waited for the car to pass before she dug back into the conversation. “Aren’t those rare?”

“I’ve never known a rhino shifter,” Misty said.

Jess shook her head in disbelief. “I didn’t even pay attention or register him as dominant.”

“He has a quiet presence at the meetings for sure. Boy can fight though. Samuel sent me a video of the Challenge. He’s the size of a freaking house when he’s Changed. I wouldn’t tangle with him. Well, I mean maybe if I wasn’t with Samuel, I would tangle with him,” Misty said in a wicked tone.

“If he’s a rhino taking out lions, he could probably kick Samuel’s ass.” Sometimes she thought Samuel needed someone to put him in his place. She didn’t like how he treated Misty, or her, or the way he talked to anyone, really. He just had a mean streak in him that hadn’t been corrected in a long time. It got worse the older Samuel got.

Headlights ahead said another car was coming toward her, and she prepared mentally to take a face full of the high beams again. Out on these quiet roads, sometimes drivers forgot to dim their lights after a while of driving without seeing anyone else.

“Hey, Jess?” Misty said in a small voice.

“Yeah?”

“If I tell you something, will you promise me you won’t talk to anyone in the Crew about it?”

“Of course. You can tell me anything,” Jess said, confused.

The car’s brights were definitely on, and Jess flashed her lights at him to try and tell him to dim them.

“You know how Samuel and I haven’t been doing very well for a while?”

“Yeah,” Jess said, taking the curve carefully. There was a steep drop-off on her right-hand side, and barely any shoulder. Just the metal railing to keep her from falling into the abyss.

This dude had freaking UFO lights or something. She squinted, shielding her face to try and keep her eyes on the road. “Geez, my guy,” she muttered, her eyes watering as she focused on the outside line of the road.

The lights were getting so bright though, and something felt off, and when she forced her attention to the brights, they were aimed straight for her. “Shit!” she screamed, slamming on her brakes, but it was too late. The pickup truck slammed right into her. Time slowed as glass flew in front of her face, and her car blasted through the railing. She screamed as her stomach dipped with no ground below her. It was a three second hang-time before her car hit the trees below.

There was agonizing pain, and then everything went black…

Jess blinked her eyes open. Every cell in her body was on fire. The pain in her face was fading, and she didn’t understand what she was looking at. There were metal slats right in front of her face, and beyond, she could see the woods.

She lifted her hand to her cheek, where her face had been disfigured in that awful accident all those years ago, but it wasn’t bleeding. It had just been a dream. She wasn’t stuck in that car for hours. She wasn’t even alone. She could hear voices outside. Someone was yelling, “Stay with me!”

Chills rippled up her arms as she pushed up and looked around. She was in some kind of animal hauling trailer, but it was on its side. The slats she could see out of belonged to the roof of the trailer. What the hell?”

Jess’s limbs tingled with a strange half-numb sensation, and she pushed against the back door. It had been damaged and fell open without much effort. Slam! The metal sounded deafening as it hit the asphalt.

In shock, she climbed out onto the road. Her hands had been cut up, but as she looked at them, they were healing right before her eyes.

“He’s almost here. Stay with me!” The voice sounded familiar, but it was as if she was hearing him from underwater. The words slurred and distorted.

“…with me…”

“…fight!...”

“Come on, Kade!”

Kade.

Hyper awareness hit her in a moment, and she jerked her attention to the sound. Cash was here, in the middle of the road, by the front of Kade’s truck that had jack-knifed, and separated from the trailer, and was sitting destroyed on its side.

Cash was doing CPR.

No.

Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum…

The locket was in the truck. She could sense it as she bolted past it. It was bragging. This was its victory lap. It had done its job again. It had destroyed again.

A sob escaped her as she reached them. Kade was staring up at the sky with empty eyes.

She fell to her knees beside him.

“He’s going to be fine,” Cash said as he did another round of chest compressions.

“Kade, Kade, Kade,” she squeaked out, tears streaming down her face as she hugged his head and pressed her cheek against his. “Kade, I’m sorry. I love you and I’m sorry.”

He wouldn’t ever understand.

“He’s going to be fine, Jess. Give me room to work.”

“You don’t understand,” she screamed. “I did this to him! I cursed him!”

“He’s going to be okay,” Cash said, and then leaned down to breathe into him.

She wished he was right. She wished she could believe him, just to hold onto hope for a few more seconds, but she could feel it—Kade had faded.

Cash did chest compressions again and glanced up to the sky. “Come on! Kade, he’s almost here. Stay with me. We have a plan. We have a fucking plan! Stick to the plan.”

Plans. Kade had a plan with her before too. She slipped her hand around his and held onto it, beside herself with crying. She would never be okay again because he would never be okay again.

“He’s dead,” she whispered, absolutely shattered, never to be put back together again.

She’d killed the man she loved.

Cash looked up at her, and there was a strange excitement in his glowing gold eyes. “I know.” He grinned. “We gotta go.”

“I…” She frowned down at Kade’s still form. His eyes were glossing over. “I don’t want to leave him.”

“Trust me, you do!” Cash yelled over a sudden roaring sound.

A great wave of power whooshed over them, blasting her backward, but Cash was there trying his best to hold her upright. Terrifying green flames were rushing straight down the road toward them. Toward Kade.

“Dragon,” she uttered in warning. Fucking Tawk! What was he doing?

“Not a dragon,” Cash said, yanking her off the ground. His grip was steel as he pulled her behind the trailer and covered her eyes as the green flames hit Kade’s body. “Phoenix,” he whispered.

Phoenix?

Jess pried Cash’s hand away from her face and stared in horrified awe as Wreck emerged from the green flames beside Kade. Wreck looked up at her and his eyes glowed with power. He knelt beside Kade and lifted his hand into the air. Kade elevated, burning with those green flames. The air smelled like a power she didn’t recognize, and threatened to choke her, but she couldn’t look away. Kade’s body hovered twenty feet above them, and Wreck swung his gaze toward the truck. He lifted his other hand, shot green flames at the front windshield, and pulled the locket out of there. It was small, and embraced by the flames, but something strange was happening…

Dark tendrils of black magic were leaking from it and floated up toward the sky.

She didn’t understand the wind, or the whooshing sound until she realized they were wings.

Tawk’s gold dragon dove down right above them, flattening she and Cash to the ground. He opened his enormous mouth and dragged some of those black tendrils into his throat. Tawk roared, and flew over the trees, then circled as Wreck drew more of the poison out of that goddamn locket.

She couldn’t stop crying as she watched Wreck repeatedly feeding the curse’s power to the golden dragon. With each pass, Tawk’s gold scales darkened, and he seemed to grow in size. Wreck fed the power of the curse to that dragon until there was nothing left but the locket, and then he cast that up into the sky for Tawk to devour with the chomp of his razor sharp teeth.

Wreck fell to his knees, and Kade faltered in the air. The Alpha was shaking as he lowered him to the ground, but he set him upright, on his feet, and Kade—her Kade—he stood on his own.

Green flames licked his skin as his eyes opened to behold Jess.

“We had a plan,” Cash said softly from beside her.

And God, she’d never cried harder than she was right now as she bolted for Kade.

She fell into his open embrace and pushed them both back ten feet as she sobbed against his chest. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she murmured mindlessly over and over again. “I thought I wasn’t going to get to tell you that.”

“I already knew you loved me, Jess. Your locket gave you away.” His voice was gritty and hoarse, like he’d been screaming, but it was Kade’s voice. He was really here. He was warm, and talking, and she could hear that gorgeous sound of his heart.

Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum. The sound of his pounding heartbeat had replaced the death chant of the Heichman Curse.

“Wreck are you okay?” she choked out through the heavy, acrid scent of his power. Green flames still peppered the asphalt around them, but Wreck had sagged back onto his bent knees. He heaved labored breath, but he rocked his head back and looked down his nose at her. A slight smile took the corners of his lips. “I will be.”

Kade released her long enough to take a blanket from Cash’s hand, and he wrapped it around her. “I saw your tiger,” Kade rumbled. “She’s just as pretty as I remember.”

“She’s a monster,” Jess whispered thickly.

But Kade’s lips stretched into a smile. “She’ll fit right into Wreck’s Mountains.”

“Wh-what?” she asked, hope filling her chest.

He held out his hand and Cash set something onto his palm. The blood drained from her face as she realized what it was.

Kade held a knife.

Jess clapped her hands over her mouth as the tears started streaming again. “Really?” she forced out.

Kade looked exhausted, but he nodded. “I wanted to do this better. I wanted to ask you in front of the whole Crew, and give you a special day if it’s what you want, but I’m about to have a couple rough weeks.”

“The green flames are a little brutal to recover from,” Cash explained from where he crouched near Wreck. “Kade won’t even want to be in the light for a while.”

“I don’t want to wait that long to ask you,” he murmured, searching her eyes. “When you left, it gutted me. I don’t want to be away from you again. Now you know exactly where you stand with me. I want all of you. I want to be your Promise again. That’s what I want.”

Jess looked around at the remnants of the fading green fires all around them, and the destroyed truck, and the trailer he’d brought to take her home. Again. They were sitting right in the middle of the destruction their love had created.

He’d had a plan, and he’d stuck to it, and he’d ended the curse.

Kade had saved them both.

She wiped her wet cheeks and forced the words past her tightening vocal cords. “Yes.”

“Really?” he asked, wincing as if the volume of his voice hurt his head.

She nodded, and whispered, “Really. I couldn’t name a better place to make a Promise to you. It was always you.” Shaking from the adrenaline rush, she cut his hand again, right over the old scar she’d made, and then she offered her hand. “Over the scar Connor made, please. I’ll take two Promise marks from you. Erase his.”

Kade’s eyes were glowing so bright as he nodded. He made his second Promise to her, and this time, she would cherish it.

He had chosen her right after her accident before, when he’d barely known her, but now?

He was choosing her, knowing all her damage. Choosing her despite the curse. Choosing her despite all her walls and trusting her to lower them for him. And she would. She took this Promise seriously.

“Welcome to Cold Foot,” Wreck said.

She smiled at her new Alpha, and then at Cash, and then at Kade. Her Kade. Her mate. Her other half. Her Promise.

“It’s an honor,” she whispered, and hope they all three knew the depths of what she meant.