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CHAPTER TEN

logan

Earlier

A bear. A fox. Two shifts. At first morph.

And I’d made a promise to keep Emma safe, kissed her cheek, and touched the tattoo on her hip before she’d passed out in my arms. What a load of foolish romantic garbage.

If she remembered this tomorrow, I would have hell to pay for my lapse in judgment, and I didn’t need any more reasons for the woman to mistrust me while she sorted out her destiny.

The quiet in the campsite had grown heavier with each passing moment.

Blood covered Emma’s sides and legs, but her wounds had healed when she had changed forms. It was one of the benefits of shifting.

After she had gone limp, I tried to figure out how I hadn’t recognized her.

Her scent should have clued me in, but she didn’t smell like her .

I took a deep breath, studying her colorful hair in the moonlight. No, that wasn’t true. She smelled like her now, but more… Sure, there was the layer of perfume she wore, but any number of humans wore it.

Even if I’d known who or what she was, I couldn’t very well pop up at her campsite…

naked … to wait around for the prophesied moment—her multi-shifting—to show up.

The magic had to manifest, and she had to shift first. There wasn’t any other way this night could have gone, though the aftermath might still be catastrophic, and it would be life-changing for Emma.

Navigating the next several months would take every skill I had as a negotiator, a leader, and an alpha. Emma Carter, DVM, had shifted into two different animal forms. That made her something special to our kind, and it was up to me to help her understand what had happened to her.

Could she be the multimorph? Impossible . But I couldn’t deny what had happened. I’d watched her shift into two different creatures, right out in the open in Magnolia State Park. The revelation rattled me to my core, even as Emma’s pale face clawed at my heart.

Getting her back to the manor inside our territory was my top priority.

What a helluva fucking night.

A happy thought struck me, but my grin was wasted on the unconscious Emma. At least she wasn’t the poisoned-souled beginning of Acheron’s dark plot. She could be the way we would finally put an end to Acheron. How many times had Dr. Wise warned me about the histories she had been studying?

I grunted as though I’d been punched in the stomach. This had to be the first time she’d changed, or I would have smelled the magic inside her. In Willow Creek or at the bar.

The bar…

She wouldn’t have been able to hide anything from me while my tongue was in her mouth, and her magic had been enormously powerful.

She had to be in her mid-twenties, maybe even late twenties.

If this was the first time she’d shifted, what had held the change at bay? Maybe Dr. Wise would have insight.

In the meantime, I had to get her back to Six-Mile Pack headquarters. No way was I going to leave a walking prophecy out in the woods naked and alone.

Carefully, I eased her more fully into my arms and made my way to her car.

It was the only way to get her back to my place.

The magic would linger in the air for hours, and I couldn’t do anything about that, but I could break down her campsite, get her car back to my place, and try to obscure as much as I could.

The back hatch of her car was still open, and the seats were folded down, so I placed her onto the carpeting and made her as comfortable as I could without staring at the naked parts of her. She didn’t deserve my leering, even as much as I wanted to see what I’d missed out on Friday night.

She stirred. “Please help me. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I know,” I murmured. “You’re going to be okay. ”

Even if I explained how her wounds were healed and the blood loss no longer mattered, she couldn’t fathom it.

She went limp once more, probably for several hours this time. With all the magic that had coursed through her, it would take a long time for her to sleep it off, and she’d feel hungover when she woke up. That was always the way after the first shift.

I scanned the area again, tapping into my wolf senses.

No campers slept in this part of the park, and the mountain lion had fled into the woods.

The fight between Emma and the cat had sent all the animals away, leaving the two of us.

, the tent, the fire, and whatever else I had to clean up.

The keys to her car were probably in the torn pockets or in her backpack by the log near the glowing embers.

I’d use her vehicle to get her out of here.

As I dismantled her tent and loaded everything into the front seat, I replayed her reaction to seeing me staring at her.

After Emma had turned human again, she’d been terrified of me.

She had accused me of stalking her, of wanting to force myself on her, and I had been so shocked I didn’t defend myself or calm her fears.

No, I’d said something cocky, and I kicked myself as I kicked dirt over the few remaining coals of the fire. It should have gone better, though I hadn’t expected to run into destiny while on patrol tonight.

The outfit she’d morphed in was too shredded to use again, but I found a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, along with the car keys, inside her pack.

For a long moment, I contemplated trying to redress her before taking her back home, but Olivia would be better suited to getting her back into something to wear so Emma didn’t wake up confused and naked.

Instead, I unzipped the sleeping bag and tucked the edges around her body.

Then I balled up the clothes and placed them under her head as a pillow.

I eased the back hatch down until it clicked, started the car, and slowly made my way toward what would become Emma’s new home. Each pothole and bump made me wince, but she didn’t stir again.

I had a feeling it would take some work for her to think of my home as her home. She’d eventually see the sense of it. She had to.

My determination didn’t have anything to do with what had happened on Friday night. Sex wasn’t a part of the equation. Eventually, she’d see the truth of it.

She had everything to do with saving our shifter world.

O livia met me in front of the alpha house, no doubt notified by the guards stationed at the entrance to our acreage.

Disheveled blonde hair matched the haphazard way she’d gotten dressed.

Fury marred her expression, and she turned her rage on me the minute the driver’s door opened, and I slid out of the vehicle.

“What’s the meaning of this? Unlike you, I had company,” she snapped. She crossed her arms and glared at the car. “And whose vehicle is this? It doesn’t belong to the pack.”

“It’s Emma Carter’s.”

Her eyes went wide, and she froze. “It belongs to Emma Carter? The vet?”

“Yeah, she’s in the back.”

She peered in through the rear window and gasped. “Is she sleeping?”

“She passed out.”

“Unconscious?” she echoed.

“Yep.”

She dropped her hands, and her head swiveled toward me. Then she pointed her finger at my chest. “What did you do?”

“I rescued her from a mountain lion attack.”

“You what?”

“Well, I watched her rescue herself from a mountain lion attack.”

She said nothing, but her scowl deepened.

“By shifting into a bear,” I continued.

“She’s one of us?” Her strangled words came out raspy, and her eyes bulged.

“And then she promptly shifted into a fox.”

Her mouth dropped into a silent O as every bit of ire drained from her. “There’s no way. The vet is the multimorph?! The same one you’ve had a long-distance crush on for the last six months?”

I ignored her jab. “Based on the amount of magic she wielded, she’ll be out for hours. ”

“I don’t believe it.”

My chest swelled as I took a deep breath.

“Olivia, I believe it because I saw it with my own eyes, and that’s why I brought her back here.

We’ve got to keep her safe while she figures everything out.

Maybe we can train her and teach her to harness her powers.

Hopefully, we can keep her under wraps. If the rest of the clans discover her… ”

My voice trailed away as the silence stretched between us, and the night sounds pressed closer. I’d had a couple hours to process what happened, so I gave Olivia time to work through what had to be her own racing thoughts.

Finally, Olivia shook her head and scrubbed her hand over her face. “If the rest of the shifter clans find out about the emergence of Emma as the multimorph, it’ll upend the delicate balance between us. So, maybe I forgive you for waking me up.”

“I thought you might.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. You didn’t give two shits.”

I moved to the rear of the car. “We need to get her into bed.”

“Which room?”

Mine! Put her in my bed!

Instead, I said, “Guest room at the top of the stairs.”

She peered at me, her eyes narrowed to slits. Shadows marred her expression, and I couldn’t read her mood by smell .

I didn’t ask for her thoughts. It wasn’t her business if I wanted to put Emma in my bed.

“Can you get the stretcher and a couple of others to help us?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Four other shifters soon made an appearance and gently transferred Emma to the stretcher. After we moved her into the bedroom, Olivia shooed us out. She let me back into the room when she’d finished changing Emma into her T-shirt and shorts.

Emma seemed so small and pale in the large bed and basic white sheets. Her rainbow hair stretched across the pillow underneath her head, and her rainbow tattoo peeked out from the upper edge of her shorts. Fuck if I didn’t want to kiss it.

“She’ll be out until sometime tomorrow, so I’ll take the first watch.” I settled in the love seat beside the bed, casually placing my leg along the length of it. “She’ll be famished when she regains consciousness.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Olivia shot a pointed look at my crotch. “Now don’t you think you shouldn’t be naked when Emma wakes up? She probably doesn’t want to see you freeballing the minute her eyes open.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “I don’t see why not. It’s nothing new.”

Olivia frowned and turned back slowly. “What do you mean?”

“Emma Carter has already seen me naked.”

“She what ?” Olivia’s shriek echoed through the house, accompanied by the bark of my laughter. It didn’t matter that she’d only seen me naked after I shifted, when I found her at her campsite. For the moment, everything was right with the world.

No sense in worrying about hell descending on us until it showed up, and it would the minute the rest of the clans discovered the truth about Emma Carter.

No matter how hard we tried, secrets never stayed secret for long.