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The eyes stared up at me, unblinking. A long moment passed before I could pick out the rest of the furry form, waist-deep in water and… was that a chain hanging from its sharp claws? From Duncan’s sharp claws?

As I’d suspected, he had taken his bipedfuris form. Nearly twenty feet down, he might have fallen or climbed down there after defeating the magical robot dog.

“Are you possessed?” I eyed his forehead, checking the scar there.

In this form, his salt-and-pepper fur wasn’t as long and thick as when he was a wolf, but it did fully cover his muscular bipedal body, including his face. Only when the scar glowed was it noticeable. I did catch a slight hint of that glow, but it wasn’t as bright, as strong, as when we’d been at the perfume factory and Abrams had been pointing the control device at Duncan’s forehead.

An inquiring grunt wafted up, Duncan’s short snout parted to reveal fangs. He didn’t look menacing, despite the earlier roars. Maybe he recognized me .

“I came to rescue you,” I said. “I expected a dungeon and shackles, not a bat cave.”

He grunted again, probably not understanding me fully. I could recognize human words when I was a wolf but didn’t always get their full meaning. And the bipedfuris… Well, I had no experience being one, so I didn’t know how it worked, but that form seemed even more savage—more primal—than that of the wolf.

Duncan thrust his furred hands upward, the fingers curled, the claws long and sharp. Had we been closer, the gesture would have been alarming, but I realized he was showing me the chain. A square medallion hung on it, something silver with green gems—emeralds?—embedded in the center in a tree-shaped design.

“Please don’t tell me I’ve been worried about you for days, and you’ve been treasure hunting,” I said.

He roared and sprang out of the water, landing several feet up, claws finding purchase on the side of the hole. His powerful muscles flexed, and he climbed toward me.

Startled, and not sure if he was under our enemies’ control or not, I skittered back. My heel bumped against the dog head, and it clattered away, its orange eyes flashing as it rolled. Duncan surged out of the hole and stood, his head almost brushing the roof of the cave.

Alarmed all over again, I backpedaled until my shoulder blades hit a stone wall. I still held the sword and tightened my grip, though I didn’t point it at Duncan. I didn’t want to fight him. I’d come to rescue him, damn it.

The bipedfuris stooped to face me, jaws again parted. In this form, he stood two feet taller than I did. When he’d been in the hole, his height hadn’t been that intimidating, but now…

Chain still dangling from his claws, he bent forward, hands dropping to the ground. He lowered his head too. His tail—hell, I hadn’t even noticed he had a tail in that form before—swished back and forth, and his brown eyes glinted. Even though that scar glowed faintly, he didn’t look like he meant to attack. If anything…

“Is that supposed to be a play bow?” I asked.

The tail swished again, and he lay the medallion on the ground, as if offering it to me.

“I’m sure that’s very nice, but it doesn’t go with the collection.” I pointed the sword toward the emerald tree on the front. Now that the medallion was only a few feet away, I could sense magic within it, but there wasn’t any sign of a wolf head, which all the other artifacts Radomir had collected had.

Duncan issued a mournful noise, something between a groan and a growl, then sat back on his haunches. His aura shifted before his body changed and he grew more compact and less furred.

Soon, he crouched before me in his human form. His naked human form.

A pair of puncture wounds in the side of his thigh leaked blood. The robot dog must have bitten him before he’d gotten the best of it.

Sympathy welled in my chest, and I longed to spring forward and hug him, but the faint orange glow on his forehead was more noticeable without fur covering it, and I hesitated.

“It’s good to see you, my lady.” Duncan straightened and bowed. He took a step toward me, lifting his arms, but maybe he understood the reason for my hesitation, because he didn’t come all the way forward. Instead, he stopped beside the medallion. “And you brought the sword.”

He beamed a pleased smile at me.

“Yeah, I’ve had a single lesson with it now, so I’m pretty badass.”

“I knew that to be true the day I met you.” He winked.

“The day you met me, I was carrying a toilet.”

“ Exactly . ”

“So…” I looked around the cave and waved at the destroyed robot-dog pieces. “I came to rescue you.” I wasn’t sure he’d parsed that in his other form. “I expected you to be more dungeon-based and shackles-adorned.”

Duncan shook his head ruefully and touched his scar, as if to say the shackles existed in another form. “I understand the compound with the dungeon is for sale.”

“It is. And the real estate agent was extremely rude about giving me information on it. You’re lucky I found you. Though, ah, you don’t look like you need rescuing as much as I believed.”

“That’s debatable.”

“You look like you’re here having a grand adventure.” I waved toward the hole and the medallion.

Duncan touched his wounded thigh. “I’ve been perforated.”

“I know you well enough now to be positive that doesn’t negate my statement.”

“It hasn’t been an unappealing adventure, but I didn’t start upon it of my own accord. I’ve been worried about you. I was fairly certain you escaped after your cousin died with his abode on fire, but I didn’t see you before the call overtook me, the overpowering urge to obey and come to…” He sneered. Had he almost said something like my master ? “That device,” was what he finished with, pointing at his forehead. “You were right that I’m more susceptible to that call when I’m in the bipedfuris form. Maybe I didn’t need to take it that night, but if you’ve ever tried to hurl demolitions as a wolf, you would understand my choice.”

“I’m surprised you had the wherewithal to do something like that while in either form.” As a wolf, I would find explosives a puzzling human thing and probably avoid them. As a wolf, most human things were puzzling.

“The bipedfuris is a little more clever than the wolf.”

“So, you’ve been doing Abrams’s bidding these past few days? While I was worried about you and not sure if you were a prisoner or dead or what?”

“It’s been Radomir’s bidding actually. As I mentioned before, Abrams doesn’t want much to do with me. He has a new werewolf to train up—” Duncan grimaced, probably empathetic to the boy, to the little brother he’d only recently learned existed, “—and he doesn’t trust me for some odd reason.”

“You did burn his castle down.”

“Yes, including the library. I think I was as aggrieved about that as he was. I adore books, you know.”

“Yes, you mentioned that they were responsible for your habit of calling twenty-first-century women my lady .”

“Quite.” Duncan bent and lifted the medallion. “These days, Radomir is the one holding the device and sending me off to do his bidding. Abrams is in their lair researching wolf artifacts. His work led me to check this place out, but I don’t think this is what they hoped I would find.” He pointed at the tree medallion.

“It’s pretty, but it looks more like a druid thing than a werewolf thing.”

“Yes. It has power, but I don’t know if they or any of our kind could call upon it. Perhaps your intern could.”

“I doubt those guys would want you to give it to Bolin to check.”

“Likely not. I don’t think this is technically on the land they purchased, ostensibly for mushroom farming but also because they’d heard rumors about this place.” Duncan’s wave encompassed the cave as well as the treed land out to the highway. “Even so, I’m sure they believe anything they send their… minion to find—” he touched his chest, “—belongs to them.”

“Have you figured out yet why they’re collecting werewolf artifacts?”

“I have not. Neither of them has confided in me.”

“They sound as rude as their real estate agent. ”

“ Ruder . Remember, Abrams ordered me to be dumped naked into a ditch.”

“I do remember that. And that you, somehow, even in such a state, talked a female chocolatier into giving you caramel apples and truffles.”

“Because of my irrepressible charm. It overrides any alarm ladies might otherwise feel about my nudity.”

“Is that so?”

“ You’re here with me and not alarmed by my nudity.”

“Because I’m holding a sword.”

“And the single lesson infused you with confidence in your ability to use it?”

“Well, I now know which end goes in the werewolf, so there’s that.”

Duncan grinned and pointed at his chest—his heart . The amusement didn’t entirely reach his eyes, and I shivered at the reminder of why he’d given the gift to me.

“Thanks for arranging for those lessons, by the way,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome. Anyway, Radomir, it turns out, was irritated with Abrams for casting me into said ditch. He recognized my value and that I’m a true gem.”

“Uh-huh. Do you call him my lady and kiss the back of his hand?

“I call him my lord and, when the magic compels me, drop to one knee in front of him.”

“Gross.”

“It is irritating to be forced to do so. Magic can be a vexing impediment to freedom of choice.”

“I’ll bet. Look. I drove up here in my truck. It’s well-stocked with provisions—Doritos and chocolate-covered crickets that my son gave me for Christmas.” I didn’t mention that the latter weren’t delicious and I’d only put them in my truck to serve as emergency rations in case I ran out of gas. “If I try to finish rescuing you—or maybe I’d be kidnapping you—would you allow it?”

“ I have no objection to you kidnapping me. You could take me all the way to your bedroom in Shoreline, if I had my way.”

“But you don’t?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Well… I’ve chosen not to exert my willpower to its fullest to break away. Not yet.”

I couldn’t tell if that was a lie. Maybe he’d tried to escape their magical control and it hadn’t worked, and he didn’t want to admit it. Duncan had a history of being evasive with me.

“Are you waiting for a dramatic moment?” I asked.

“When Radomir explained this quest to me, I wasn’t entirely against it. As you ascertained, that bauble isn’t what he sought.” Duncan pointed to the tree medallion.

“Yeah, an ancient artifact imbued with magic and embedded with emeralds. What a useless tchotchke.”

“I’m sure it’s not that, but it’s not what he’s looking for.”

“Do you have any idea what it does?” I sensed magic in the medallion but couldn’t tell anything about it.

“For all I know, it’s a fancy paperweight.”

“I doubt that .”

Duncan flicked his fingers in dismissal. “What Radomir hoped I would find is the mate to your mother’s medallion, the version your pack once held that was made for male werewolves to wear.”

“My mom did mention that there is such a thing, but she thought it was lost a long time ago, maybe before the pack even came to America.”

“Radomir believes it wasn’t lost that many generations ago and that it’s still in the Pacific Northwest.”

“Are you sure he didn’t tell you about his nefarious plans for the artifacts?” I asked.

It seemed like Duncan knew more than he’d implied about what those two masterminds were up to .

“I’m sure, but Radomir didn’t deny that they’re specifically seeking werewolf artifacts and also tomes written about and by our people.”

“Were there a lot of books penned by werewolf scribes in the past?” Other than Jasmine’s computer-geek father, I’d heard of very few scholarly-inclined werewolves in my life. Sadly, my cousin Augustus had been a more typical representative of our kind.

“Not that he’s discovered. Hence the focus on artifacts. As I was saying, I would have been delighted to find the male version of your family’s medallion. I don’t know what it does, but I thought if I located it, I might then test and break the magic of the compulsion and come to you. Together, we could visit your mother and lay the medallion at her feet.”

“I do need to visit my mother.” Recalling Lorenzo’s request, I felt guilty that I’d driven up the highway, passing not that far from Monroe on the way, and hadn’t stopped in.

“If I was responsible for finding it, I figured she might think kindly of me and allow me to visit without siccing your pack on me.”

Only my cousins had attacked him. Mom hadn’t had anything to do with it.

“She already thinks kindly of you,” I said.

“Ah, yes. She did bring up… the offspring.” Duncan’s expression didn’t suggest he was into that notion.

“Yeah, sorry about that. She gets ideas in her head, and she’s a stubborn woman. But you don’t need to bribe her with medallions to visit. The ones who attacked you… They’re all gone now.”

“All? The brute who jumped me on the porch wasn’t one of Augustus’s followers, was he?”

“You mean Rocco? Whom you smashed face-first into the log wall? You couldn’t have been disturbed by that ineffectual display of aggression. ”

“I suppose he wasn’t egregious to deal with, but it would be nice…” As Duncan trailed off, looking past my shoulder, his expression grew wistful.

“To have a family?” I asked, aware that he’d never had that, not in his youth, growing up in Abrams’s castle laboratory, and apparently not in the decades he’d been a nomadic treasure-hunter either. “A pack?”

“Over the years, I’ve occasionally found the notion had some appeal.”

“It might, but I don’t know if my pack is the one you’d want.”

Duncan snorted softly. “Does anyone ever love the family they’re born into?”

“I don’t know. My sons are okay.”

“Even the one who gave you chocolate-covered crickets?”

“ Especially the one who gave me chocolate-covered crickets.”

Austin, after all, had come home for Christmas. I hoped he had a good time snowboarding with his friends—and that Radomir and Abrams didn’t know he existed. He didn’t have any werewolf magic and wouldn’t be able to assist in figuring out those artifacts, so he shouldn’t interest them in any way. By now, they’d probably lost their interest in me too. It wasn’t as if much had happened when they’d lured me up to their base so I could touch the wolf medallion.

“That’s not a new preference for you, is it?” Duncan asked. “Because if you adore those chocolates, I could buy you a pallet of them.”

“Don’t you dare. I really would have your van towed. And as it was dragged away, I would pelt it with candy crickets.”

Duncan grinned at me. Did he look… smitten? Nah, he probably had something in his eye.

“I’ve missed your snark,” he said.

Huh, maybe that was a smitten look. I admit it touched me. Most men I’d dated, including my ex-husband, had found my sarcasm unappealing. Vexing was a word I’d heard often.

“You should have called and invited me along on your adventure.” I stepped closer to him, reaching a hand toward his.

“Would you have come?” Duncan wrapped his fingers around mine. “I believe you only joined me at the pond next to the convenience store because you were avoiding people.”

Bolin’s parents, yes. I tried not to think about the problem they represented, one that couldn’t be solved with werewolf magic or anything else that I could imagine.

“The pond full of duck droppings didn’t sound that interesting to me,” I said.

“Such a strange woman you are.”

“Says the naked guy standing amid the remains of a robot dog.”

“It is a romantic setting, isn’t it? Did you see the glowing bats?”

“Yeah, they really set the mood.”

“Quite.”

He must not have been dive-bombed by them.

He leaned closer, eyebrows raised. Asking for permission to kiss me?

The cave was magical and weird, the eyes still glowed on the robot’s head, and the creepy bats might return at any time, but I nodded to him. The setting was not romantic, but he… he kind of was. And I was relieved to see him healthy, aside from the bite marks in his leg. After his help with my cousins, I owed him something too. Something more than a pelting with crickets.

I set the sword aside and leaned toward Duncan. Our lips met, perhaps with more eagerness than I intended. But I’d missed him, and I didn’t mind in the least when he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. His taut naked body was hard against mine, his powerful arms protective and comforting.

As his lips and tongue teased mine, sending streaks of hot pleasure through me, I shifted my grip to his shoulders, grasping him and thinking of more than kissing.

The hard cave floor littered with metal shouldn’t have made me imagine getting horizontal, but it might be worth it to be with him in this private spot. Magically weird or not, we had the cave to ourselves. And despite his cocky arrogance, Duncan was charming. Charming, sexy, and hot. Even better, he thought I was hot, and he kept helping me with my increasingly chaotic and dangerous life. By the moon, I was falling for him. I?—

A muffled honk traveled through rock and the waterfall to reach us.

Duncan broke the kiss and looked toward the exit tunnel. My grip tightened on his shoulders. I didn’t want to stop kissing, but the way Duncan frowned in the direction of the honking made me believe he knew who it was—and didn’t think it was anyone good.

“It might be Jasmine,” I said, though I didn’t want her interrupting our romantic interlude. Besides, I’d left her quite a ways back. I hadn’t known I would end up more-or-less following the logging road to this spot.

“It might be Radomir or, more likely, his henchmen.” Duncan sighed and released me.

“The overly muscled ones hopped up on potions?”

“Yes. We wouldn’t want them walking in on us, and it’s quite possible they could. If I’m not too far away, they can track me through the control device.” Duncan waved to the scar on his forehead. It had stopped glowing, but that probably didn’t negate anything.

“Better than through a burning esophagus, I suppose.”

He looked at me.

“Rue made me a potion to find you. I can’t recommend the taste. Or aftertaste .”

“Worse than chocolate-covered crickets? ”

“Much worse. I wouldn’t pelt a van with it. It might be acidic enough to destroy the paint, if not eat through the frame entirely.”

“Your willingness to gulp down such a thing on my behalf is touching.”

“Well, there wasn’t a warning on the label.” Maybe I would suggest a pulsing red Mr. Yuck sticker to Rue.

More honks sounded. Insistent honks.

Sighing again, Duncan picked up the medallion and my sword, and clasped my hand to lead me toward the waterfall entrance. “Let’s find out if we’re in trouble.”

“I usually am. Especially lately.”

He smiled sadly at me and didn’t disagree.