Page 3

Olympic National Park: Washington State

United Species of North America

Six months later

“ W here ya going?”

Caught while sneaking out, Jayden grimaced and peered through the gloom toward the hushed voice.

She huffed out a sigh when she saw small, thin, six-year-old Timmy near the central fire, sitting with a patchwork blanket wrapped around him.

Her eyes softened, however, when she noticed the streak of dirt along his cheek that was still damp.

She walked over to the firepit and sat down next to him, pulling her bag around until it was resting in her lap.

“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.

She was still locked in a fierce battle with her emotions after two-and-a-half hours of walking in the mountainous forest. She had spent the time imagining various scenarios, playing out different strategies to outsmart the men in case she ever crossed paths with them again.

Her imaginings ranged from amusing to breathtaking, leaving her alternating between laughter and catching her breath as she trekked across the snow-covered landscape.

She stooped down to pick up an empty snare.

“There are probably tons of shifters out there. Just because I saw them once with Ty and Ella doesn’t mean that I’ll see them again. They could be anywhere by now,” she muttered.

Feeling comforted by that thought, she carried on with her duties.

When she reached her last trap, the sun was high in the sky, painting the surrounding landscape with a comforting warmth.

She had checked every trap, but they were all empty of any catch.

Perplexed, she scanned the snowy landscape, searching for any signs of disturbance in the pristine powder.

The forest was devoid of its usual sounds, as if nature itself was holding its breath in anticipation. It was an eerie atmosphere.

She straightened and carefully stowed the twine she had used as a snare inside her bag, her eyes scanning the dense forest. There was a strange stillness that she’d failed to notice earlier. Unease built inside her, and the overwhelming desire to return to the cave pulled at her.

There are others searching for you.

The memory of Tracy’s warning swept through her mind.

Fear propelled her back along the path she had taken hours earlier, moving much faster than she had in the early morning light, though she carefully studied the ground, searching for tracks other than her own.

She kept her breathing even as she exited the forest and began the climb up the ridge.

She didn’t let her guard down as she searched the landscape for anything out of the ordinary.

When unfamiliar tracks leading toward the cave appeared from the southwest side of the ridge, her breath caught.

She stopped and crouched by a set of the footprints, running her fingers along the unusual grooves in the snow.

They differed from anything her people would wear.

They were more like the boots Tracy wore, only larger.

There was no fresh snow in the tracks, meaning they had arrived after she had left this morning.

The Others!

She rose and slowly advanced, keeping a wary eye open for any movement.

Her heart pounded when she saw unmistakable droplets of blood in the snow.

Swallowing down bile, she prayed that none of the specks were from someone inside the cave.

She continued forward, moving with caution and holding her spear out in front of her.

As she approached the outcroppings of rocks that helped conceal the entrance to the cave, horror threatened to choke her when she saw a large pool of frozen blood covering a section of compacted snow.

She frantically scanned the path, trying to discern how many footprints there were and whether any of them belonged to her people.

Confusingly, she only saw tracks from one shifter.

She expanded her search and found a duplicate scene on the other side of the trail, near another line of boulders.

Whoever, or whatever, had been there had also met a grisly demise.

Following the splattered trail of blood as far as she safely could to the edge of the drop-off, she discovered that whatever had attacked the shifters must have deposited them over the cliff.

“But how?”

There were no tracks of the perpetrator nor of a dragged body—only blood. The closest she could safely get to the edge was twenty feet. It was impossible to tell how stable the snow was.

“None of this makes any sense!” she mused, turning back to look toward the cave.

Whatever had happened, she needed to find out if everyone was safe. Retracing her steps, she climbed the last two hundred feet to the mouth of the cave, silently praying she wouldn’t find the same evidence of death inside it that she had discovered outside.

A short time earlier:

The team lead of Charley 1 crept forward, following the shallow impression of footprints in the snow. He held up his hand and motioned to the soldier across from him. The soldier nodded and crouched behind a snow-covered boulder.

A sneer curved his lips. “It looks like there’s a cave up ahead.”

The second soldier chuckled. “This is like herding lambs to the slaughter. We’ll be home before nightfall.”

Charley 1 nodded and spoke quietly into his mic. “Team 3 is moving up.”

He motioned for Charley 2 to follow him.

He went first, detouring around the boulders, stopping several yards up the trail before taking cover behind another boulder two-hundred yards out from the entrance.

Charley 2 fell into position across from him again.

They both lifted a pair of binoculars to their eyes.

“Target sighted,” Charley 1 murmured.

“Confirmed. Target sighted,” Charley 2 concurred.

Static on his com made him grimace. He kept his eyes glued on the entrance to the cave. From the markings on the woman standing just inside the opening, it was the shifter. According to their Intel, there should only be the one.

“Team 3 report.”

“Confirmed visual on a cave entrance. One target is visible,” Charley 1 responded into his mic.

“Charley 1, do not engage until we are in position,” Alpha 1 ordered.

He held up his fist to show they were ordered to hold their position. The neck gaiter he wore concealed the fog from his breath as he breathed out a sigh. Charley 2 must have felt the same frustration.

“Don’t know why we needed eight men. We could take the humans with one hand tied behind our backs,” Charley 2 muttered.

“Don’t forget that grizzly shifter,” he replied.

Charley 2 lifted the gun in his hand and made an inaudible sound of gunfire.

He shook his head and silently laughed before turning to look back at the mouth of the cave.

Tracy Bearclaw was pacing just inside it, talking to someone.

That could complicate the mission, if her people arrived before their team evacuated.

I always did love a challenge.

Just as he was about to lift the binoculars, Alpha 1’s voice came through the mic, causing him to pause.

As soon as he heard the urgency in the team commander’s voice, a sense of impending danger washed over him.

Lowering the binoculars, he pressed his hand against the mic to confirm the accuracy of what he was hearing.

“Charley 1, be advised there are hostiles in the area.”

He lifted his arm to alert Charley 2 that there was an issue.

Intense pain, followed by a surreal sensation struck him.

He watched in horror as the arm he had extended fell to the snow, detached from the rest of his body.

His lips parted on a hoarse scream that remained frozen on his lips.

He dropped the binoculars he was holding and lifted his hand to his throat.

Warm blood pulsed like a spring fountain, coating his gloved hand and spilling onto his sleeve.

The world tilted as he fell onto his back in the snow.

A shadow blocked the early morning light.

The shadow grew larger as it came closer until all he could see was darkness.

The brief thought that death had wings struck him as interesting, before his head lobbed to the side, his eyes already glazed in death.

“Charley 1, status report,” Alpha 1 requested again and again.