The Thing About Weres

time—it was a brilliant yellow-orange, and so full and close it felt like it was going to fall and smother us with its weight.

I hate the moon.

Then the Fae pivoted, small fists still curved around the bars.

A girl, I thought. Small fingers. Slightly chapped. Nails chewed down to the quick.

“Merciful Goddess,” I heard her whisper, “don’t let them eat my body before I’m dead.” Her gaze roamed, offering me a glimpse of an elaborate grandstand—the type you see in period movies, where knights tilt lances and ladies favor them with secret smiles. Behind that, a palisade. Many smooth pine trunks, stripped of bark, aligned vertically. The fence of wood went as far as she could see—too tall to scale.

She’s in a pen within a pen.

The girl swung her head, and I realized that she was not alone in her cage. A large male lay facedown, unmoving and half hidden by shadow. His calves were muscled swells below the tattered edge of his trousers, and his torso—though striped with blood—was well developed.

He’s been lashed.

She watched him for a count of three, then turned back to press her forehead to the bars. Her breath rasped in and out of her chest. I studied the woods as she did and was rewarded for my vigilance when a shadow parted itself from a tree. And then I understood, before a howl pierced the night, exactly what she feared.

Wolves. Lots of them. More than twenty, less than fifty.

One of them broke from the cover of the trees and loped along the forest’s edge, ears pricked forward, nose lifted to scent the wind. He stopped and turned. A flash of amber eyes telegraphed a predator’s message: “I know you’re there. Soon.”

I want to wake up now.

There was no horn. No general call. Just the clattering of swords and the drum of feet. The guards lined themselves up in front of the grandstand’s lowest tier then stood at attention, their weapons crossed over their chests.

The fine ladies of the Court entered on the cue of laughter. They mounted the stairs, filing into the seating on the second tier. All of them wore light gray cloaks of the same material and weight. The girl’s gaze—and thus mine—clung to one woman whose beauty was carefully cultivated. Uncomfortable under our scrutiny, the lady glanced at the empty seat beside her and then took particular interest in the arrangement of her sleeve.

She will not rescue you.

Next, the men. Again, wearing cloaks. Why? They filled the topmost tier by order of seating. Most wore a look of haughty privilege, but it was the fifth man who caused a chill to run along my spine. How well this realm fits him. The Black Mage’s hands were long, and white, and when they rested on the arms of his chair, they hung over the edge slightly curled, like the talons of a hawk as it cruised the sky looking for defenseless prey.

He has such pitiless eyes.

Our gaze moved along the rest, indifferent, searching for—

Lexi.

My brother stood aside from the rest, on a landing between the first and second tiers. Wearing the same bowler hat and boots. No cloak. His expression blank, neither filled with anticipation nor boredom. Beside him, a lever. Our gaze moved from it to follow the pulleys, the hemp rope, the line strung between the grandstand and our pen.

A male moan, low in the throat, from behind us. We spun—so fast, the bars a passing blur—as the man in our pen rolled onto his back. His foot scraped the earth, his leg bent at the knee.

Carefully—oh so slowly—we bent.

Our glance flitted anxiously between him and the dirt floor. A quick impression of small white hands— fluttering like frightened doves—searching, patting, feeling the ground for—ah! A small rock. She folded it in her fist.

“Merciful Goddess,” I heard her murmur. “Please let my aim be true.”

I woke from the dream with a gasp, heart hammering against the walls of my chest. Merry warmed against my breast.

“You okay?” Lexi asked. “Bad dream?”

I thought of the pen within the pen and my brother standing beside a lever. Whose dream had I been in? One of my own? Created by my anxieties? “Yes, I had a nightmare. Did I wake you?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about a way out of all this.”

What did he mean by that?

Out of what? He was home. Trowbridge was home.

“Get some sleep,” he added. “I’ll stay awake.”

I rolled to my side. Merry stiffened in the cup of my bra and then went limp. I placed a cold hand over her. She issued up a spark of warmth, the comfort of which made my eyelids feel heavy. But despite it, my brother and I were both half awake when the trailer’s door creaked open an hour later.

Chapter Fourteen

“What in God’s name has been done to my front door?” Cordelia asked, each word a miniature iceberg in the sea of her cold wrath.

“Not now, woman,” grumbled Harry. “Move back for the Alpha.”

Anticipation held the air captive in my chest, told my heart to get ready, get ready. Please, Trowbridge, find the right thing to say. Just this once. Make me believe that we can work this out.

Crash! Door met floor.

My eyes flew open as his hero leap into my trailer ended in a four-pawed skid. That can’t be right, I thought, tilting my head. Nails clicked on linoleum as My One True Thing made his way past my kitchen. Oh Goddess. Karma must be clutching her sides, bent over for a belly laugh. He hadn’t changed back into his human form at morning light? For the rest of my life, I’ll be buying dog chow. Making sure he’s had his shots. Picking up—

Another dip of the trailer, as another set of claws entered my home.

The bitch was with him? In my home? My hands tightened into fists on my pillow. Trowbridge’s scent was sharper than ever, woods, wild, and him—that thing I could never find a name for that always stirred me right down at gut level, and perhaps a little below that, as well. It floated down the short corridor toward me. You, me, us, it said, seeping under my bedroom door, speaking of destiny, and futures, and all of that stuff that I couldn’t stand to think about—not now with Anu’s stench slyly slithering in the wake of his. I squirreled deep into my sleeping bag until there was nothing above its open mouth but my tangled rope of hair. Yet still—still—a finger of his scent tunneled through the zipper’s teeth to touch my skin, soft as a kiss. A film of him was on my hair, an invisible lick of him on my flushed cheek.

A pause. What’s he waiting for? I peeked through the slit in my bag. Ah, the bedroom door. That shouldn’t represent a problem. Look what he did to the last one.

Hurry up, Balto. Come rescue me.

A long, impatient scratch down the faux-wood panel. The handle turned and— Bang! My bedroom door swung back with a thud on my closet.

Lo, the citadel has been breached.

The King of the Creemore wolfpack entered my boudoir slowly. I resealed my eyes and made like I was invisible. Just part of the mattress. A lump of something that should not be disturbed. Unless, of course, you were