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“I just don’t see why we have to leave,” Zara said. She winced as her voice seemed to make everyone in the clearing go suddenly silent, even the new alpha, Colton.

She was the only female left in their stallion herd after human poachers found their people in their shifts in the clearing they had claimed as their territory in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia and captured many of them. The alpha had wanted to plan the rescue to get their people back without revealing to the humans that shifters were real. But Colton, his son, saw it as an opportunity to prove his dominance. He’d underestimated the danger, and many of their people lost their lives in the melee—including his father and the human poachers.

When Colton returned to the clearing where they lived in a few small, rustic cabins cleverly hidden in the thick woods, he had only three others with him. Together, the six of them were the last of the Shenandoah Valley Herd.

Now, she was the lone female in a herd that didn’t prize females as anything but broodmares, cooks, and maids.

Lucky her.

Colton gave her an icy look. “Because the humans are hunting for whoever killed the humans.”

“You,” she pointed out.

Colton’s younger brother Weston rolled his eyes. “The humans needed to die. They couldn’t know why we set our people free.”

Zara hadn’t been there for the rescue, of course; she’d been tasked with preparing a victorious feast for their return with their people, and only Asher, one of Colton’s lackeys, had stayed behind.

There had been no victorious return, though.

Everyone was dead save for the six of them.

And now Colton wanted to leave the valley because he thought that somehow human investigators would figure out that horse shifters were real and were the ones behind the deaths of the poachers.

But she didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything.

Colton didn’t care what she had to say and wasn’t interested in her comments, so she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t have anyone to advocate for her with the males who ran the herd now—no family, no alpha female, no close friend to have her back.

She’d always felt alone in the herd, but she’d never really felt the isolation quite like she was now.

Talk about being at someone’s mercy.

She let her shoulders droop and lowered her head enough to make it appear that she was acknowledging his authority.

There was a tense moment where she actually held her breath and wondered if he might punish her for speaking out in the first place. But instead, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m going to reach out to my second cousin, Avi. He lives with a herd in New Jersey.”

She lifted her head and listened as they discussed packing up their lives in a few vehicles and going to another state to join up with a herd.

“What if their alpha doesn’t want us there?” Levi asked.

“They won’t turn us away,” Colton said with a confident smile that made Zara think about car salesmen. “I’ll call him and ask for a meetup. I’m certain they’ll extend sanctuary to us considering we’ve lost our territory to poachers. Plus, no alpha worth his salt would turn away another herd in distress.”

There was something off about the way Colton was talking about the other herd, but she couldn’t figure out what was bothering her. She didn’t trust Colton as far as she could throw him, but she really didn’t have a choice. He wanted them to leave for New Jersey so he could ask for sanctuary from his second cousin’s alpha, so they were going to go. All of them.

Perhaps this new herd was a silver lining in the darkness that had surrounded them in the days since the massacre with the poachers.

Perhaps this new herd would offer her a chance at a life where she could thrive.

Even if Colton and the valley herd didn’t stay in New Jersey, maybe she’d find her soulmate among the new herd and wouldn’t be beholden to Colton and his antiquated ideals any longer.

Of course, the other herd could be just like hers—stuck in traditional, old-fashioned ways that left her feeling like she wasn’t worth anything.

When she knew she was, deep down inside.

Fate wasn’t really her friend, though.

She hadn’t found her soulmate and she wasn’t sure she ever would given the way their people remained so isolated and fearful of discovery by humans.

She rather doubted that traveling to New Jersey and meeting with another herd was going to do anything but get them out of Virginia. She didn’t think the other herd’s alpha would want a blowhard, egotistical male like Colton hanging out for long, and Colton wasn’t the sort to join up with another herd and abdicate his authority to another.

So what the hell was the point?

“Pack one bag each,” Colton said, snapping Zara back to the present from her wandering thoughts. “Leave nothing behind that would point to us in any way. We’ll leave in one hour.”

Zara made her way to the tiny cabin where she’d grown up; the single-room structure had never really felt like home once her parents died when she was a teenager, but it was all she had.

And now she was walking away from it.

She knew she couldn’t stay behind. Colton was alpha and she was required to follow him no matter what or face punishment. He clearly expected her to go along with his plans.

In the house, she packed a bag with clothes, shoes, and the few toiletries she enjoyed, and then she filled a small cooler with her foraging supplies: dried leaves, flowers, and fruit that she used to make salves for healing, along with teas and preserves to sell to humans to make money for the herd.

The few photos of her parents went into her bag, along with the burner cell phone each herd member was given. After grabbing her favorite books from the bookshelf, she took one last look around the tiny house and then stepped outside.

“Move.”

She startled and nearly fell off the step at Silas’s harsh tone.

The second-in-command was another Colton loyalist.

She was beginning to think she was the only one who believed Colton was an asshole.

She glanced at his hand and saw a gasoline can.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re leaving no trace behind.”

“But won’t fires bring humans here?”

“They’ll assume it’s a forest fire. Don’t ask stupid questions.”

He shooed her toward the three waiting vehicles and she walked away, glancing over her shoulder to see him walk into the house, the sound of him pouring gasoline on the floor loud in the quiet morning.

She got into the SUV driven by Weston, who was the least asshole-like of all the males in the herd—although he thought the sun rose and set with Colton, so he wasn’t really any better than any of them.

“Got everything?” he asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Not much but clothes for me,” he said. “We’ll be at the meeting place in about six hours. I hope you like indie music.”

She didn’t really care what played as they drove away, leaving the tiny cabins alight with flames that glowed brightly in the dense woods. She wondered how many trees would be ruined because of the fires, how many small animals killed in the destruction that would follow a fire in August when the weather had left them with a terrible dry spell. Couldn’t they have simply left the cabins? Until the poachers had stumbled upon their midnight run, they’d never been discovered by humans.

But it wasn’t up to her. She watched in the side mirror as the flames grew larger, and then she focused on the scenery out the windshield. There wasn’t anything for her in Virginia anymore.

But what was waiting for her in New Jersey?