“I’ve got to return to the station for an hour or so, but I’ll be back on guard duty later tonight.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s your day off—Jaz and Mac can handle the reports, surely?” I paused. “Or is this more a shower thing? As in, you hate ours.”
His lips twitched. “That might or might not be a good guess.”
“It’s not that bad, seriously.”
“I like a shower big enough to party in.” He glanced at me, his blue eyes gleaming with mischief. “There’s definitely no room in yours to do anything interesting.”
I tsked. “A werewolf with no imagination is a very sad thing.”
The gleam became heated. “Imagination is not a problem. I shall prove it to you once the current situation has been dealt with.”
“I do wonder how, given the already mentioned party dimensions of your showers.”
“There are small places aplenty in my house. We just haven’t explored them.”
“Then I look forward to doing so.”
“Excellent.”
I smiled and glanced out the window… and caught sight of a figure on the ridge of the hill several paddocks across. My stomach clenched and, for a second, I couldn’t even breathe.
But it wasn’t Clayton. Aside from the fact it wasn’t tall enough to be Clayton, the figure on that hill had flowed from one form to another.
“Is there any reason for a werewolf to be running around up here?”
“No, why?”
“Because I just spotted one on the ridge several paddocks over. He’s now running downhill through the tree line.”
Aiden leaned forward and then frowned. “How the hell can you see that? I can barely see him, and I’ve wolf eyesight.”
Once again unease stirred—as did the sudden desire to go talk to Katie. These changes—the sharpening of at least some of my senses—had only started happening since she’d inhabited my body. Maybe she—or even Gabe, whose soul now haunted the wellspring where he’d fused Katie to the wild magic and in the process lost his life—could tell me whether it was a temporary or permanent situation. Although given the time that had passed, it was looking more and more permanent. Which meant the real question was, how far would it go?
“The rising moon is fairly bright; I caught the glimmer of his coat more than anything.” Which wasn’t a lie, because that’s what I was currently seeing.
He grunted—a sound that somehow managed to convey disbelief. “My first instinct is to go after the bastard, but the distance between us gives him the advantage.”
“Against you. Not against magic. Keep driving.” I quickly created a tracking spell and then wound down the window. The night air snapped in, cooling the cabin instantly.
The moon chose that moment to come fully out from behind the clouds, silvering the coat of the running form.
Aiden swore. “It’s a goddamn O’Connor.”
“Probably not from your pack, though.”
“If he is, there’ll be hell to pay.”
As the moon’s glow started to fade, I flung the tracking spell out of the window. It flew toward the running wolf, a small, tumbling mass of threads that shimmered in the moonlight. Our target obviously wasn’t wearing much in the way of protection against magic, because the spell hit him dead center and instantly began tugging at my directional instincts.
“Got him,” I said.
“Good.”
He swung the truck off the track and accelerated across the paddock. As the wolf’s speed increased, the spell’s threads spooled out across the night, leaving a faint but shimmering trail for me to follow. I did wonder how in the hell he hoped to escape, given no wolf could outrun a vehicle—not over a long distance, anyway.
Then I spotted the truck near an open gateway. “I don’t suppose you’ve spotted that man or the vehicle following us?”
“No, which means he’s probably placed a tracker on my truck. He would have had plenty of opportunities today.” He glanced at me. “If that is the case, then it’s worth checking your SUV, too.”
I rubbed my arms, but it did little to chase the chill that gathered once again. Aiden might be talking about physical trackers, but magical ones were easy to do and easy to conceal. Getting me—or Belle—cornered on our own would certainly be something Clayton would prefer. It’s no doubt the reason I’d been drugged on my wedding day—it meant he didn’t have to put in the time and effort required to seduce the unwilling.
The question that had burned in me since that dark day was whether my parents had been party to that drugging. While I could totally believe my father would have turned a blind eye, I really, really didn’t want to believe my mother would have condoned it. I might have been a great disappointment to her, and she might have been a somewhat distant parent thanks to my lack of magical ability, but she’d never been deliberately cruel or uncaring.
As the wolf ahead neared his vehicle, he flowed back into human form and jumped into the SUV. I couldn’t see the plate number from this distance, which was annoying because it meant we had no means of finding him if my tracker stopped working for some reason. Seconds later, he was speeding away from us. Aiden followed, gradually gaining ground as his truck bounced unsteadily over the rocky pasture. My grip on the grab handle was so fierce my knuckles glowed.
The wolf’s SUV smashed through a gate, sending it flying as the truck spun to the right and barreled toward the road.
“You know,” I said, as we hit another pothole and the truck threatened to topple. “It might be worth letting him think he’s gotten away.”
Aiden shot me a glance—something I felt rather than saw. “Are you sure the tracker threads won’t snap or something if he gains too much distance?”
“I can’t give you an ironclad guarantee, of course, but I’m pretty sure it won’t.”
He instantly slowed, and I eased my death grip on the handle. The SUV crashed out
