My pulse sped up, and for the first time, I heard my heart beating. It thundered in my ears, in time with the blood whooshing through my veins.

I slammed my hands over my ears, but it did nothing to drown out the sounds.

“Tala? What is it, colantha? What’s wrong?” The hunter’s muffled questions came through my lousy attempt at stifling these new sensations.

Gods, when had they grown so strong?

But I already knew the answer to that. They’d been growing steadily stronger during the last two weeks, ever since I’d drunk his blood. My body was slowly adjusting to its first shift that would apparently happen tomorrow night under the full moon. And now, as though recognizing what was imminent, the sensations had increased a hundred-fold.

Kaillen still stood by the window, the glowing night sky at his back, as the snowy white moon beckoned me to join it.

Trembling, I stood on shaky legs on the other side of the bed. “I think I’m gonna shower or maybe get something to eat.” I shook my head. “Or not. I just don’t know about anything anymore. Maybe I should go home.”

I still had an apartment in Chicago and a comfy bed to sleep on, even though my life in the windy city felt like it was eons ago. My trembling increased. The last time I’d slept in that bed, I’d nearly been abducted.

“You can’t go home,” Kaillen said softly, reminding me of something I already knew. “It’s not safe there. You’ll stay here in Montana . . . with me.”

“Right, ’cause here is so safe.” I didn’t even care when his face fell, because I was so sick of surprise after surprise being sprung on me.

I was supposed to have been safe in Oak Trembler, Ontario, but then Cameron—Kaillen’s sadistic oldest brother—had betrayed me and handed me over to two sorcerers who worked for Jakub. Even though that wasn’t Kaillen’s fault, this was all so much. Too much.

I sighed in defeat. “Fine. I’ll stay here, but can I have some privacy?”

His face wiped clean, the guilt, anguish, and anger disappearing in a veiled mask of nothingness.

It was a look I’d seen so many times on the hunter. He was a master at hiding everything. Or, at least, he had been. I supposed I had an edge now since I could scent what he was feeling.

I snorted bitterly at that thought.

Kaillen walked on silent footsteps to the door. I watched him go, wondering if I would eventually be able to move like that—so silent and still—the walk of a predator.

“Answer one thing for me,” I called to him.

He stopped at the doorway and turned, his broad shoulders tensing.

“When did you begin to suspect that I was transitioning into a female werewolf?”

He didn’t reply, but instead simply watched me, and I knew he was aware of my anger and distrust. Who knew what those emotions smelled like. “About ten days ago.”

That statement slammed into me with so much force that I actually stumbled back onto the bed. Ten days ago we’d been training my new awakening power daily. We’d been together every single minute of every single day, and he’d still kept his suspicions from me?

My chest lifted in a shaky breath, then another, as cold hurt washed through me. Another coating of tears filled my eyes. “Were you ever going to tell me? Or were you just gonna let me shift and figure it out?”

He pushed away from the door.

“Don’t come any closer.”

He stopped mid-stride. “I was hoping I was wrong.”

“Right. You hoped you were wrong.” I shook my head. “Goodnight, Fire Wolf.”

He stiffened, those words no doubt casting a blow. I hadn’t called him Fire Wolf since that night in his bed, when I’d nearly slept with him and he’d asked me to start calling him Kaillen.

His face tightened, before he snapped his spine upright and all of his emotions vanished. “Good night.”

He dipped out of the room and closed the door.

I sighed again, but instead of getting up to shower and eat, I lay down on the bed.

Too much. Too much. Too much was happening.

In the past twenty-four hours, I’d admitted to the hunter, while we were still in Ontario, that what we had between us wasn’t real because his feelings were all mate bond driven. It was something I’d known ever since his wolf had shown an interest in me. So that conversation had been bad enough, even though we still hadn’t finished it. But right now, I couldn’t stomach even the thought of another heavy emotional discussion, so who knew when or if we would broach that subject again.

My shoulders fell when I remembered that contentious conversation. Gods, was it really only yesterday? Kaillen had disappeared after I’d told him we could never be together because his feelings for me weren’t real, that his interest in me was manufactured by his wolf. Following that, I’d escaped to the bathroom, and Kaillen had stormed off. So when Cameron had come calling, I’d been easy prey since I’d been so distracted.

I didn’t blame Kaillen for that, though. My distraction wasn’t his fault. Nope, that was one hundred percent on me. I shouldn’t have let my guard down around Cameron. It still infuriated me that he’d tricked me so easily.

The only good thing that had come out of my abduction was that I’d possibly met Jakub, the fucker who was after my power. I’d also learned that I could combine my witch powers with my otherworldly ones to be hella strong, something I hadn’t known I was capable of. And that was all before I’d been knocked unconscious by some ax that was bound to hell and which I’d only just woken up from.

I crawled under the sheets again. Any burst of energy I’d felt earlier had vanished.

I lay there and tried to sleep, but that feeling, that tug, that pull throbbed again in my chest. Don’t do it. Don’t look.

But I was helpless to resist it.

My gaze coasted again to the moon, to that beautiful heavenly body that hung in the sky. It owned me now, commanded and called to me.

Without a doubt, I knew that tomorrow night, I would be the first female in the history of the world to shift into a wolf.

“Fuck my life. Seriously.” I pulled the covers up and slammed a pillow over my face. More than anything, I just wished all of this would go away.

∞     ∞     ∞

I must have fallen asleep at some point because the next thing I knew, bright sunlight was spilling into the room and sharp scents were assaulting my senses.

Without opening my eyes, I already knew that the hunter was awake and in the house, because after a sharp inhale, it wasn’t just the smell of coffee, bacon, and eggs that hit me. I also smelled him.

His citrusy cedar fragrance wafted into my room, not as strong as the sizzling food cooking downstairs that I could not only smell—as if it were being cooked in the same room as me—but also hear.

The scrape of a pan. The flickering flames of a gas stove. The crack of eggshells. All of it swirled together, yet I could detect all of those sounds individually too.

So last night wasn’t a nightmare.

I jolted upright in bed, the movement so fast that for a second, I wondered if my actions had been blurred.

I brought a hand to my head. My head ached. Absentmindedly, I scratched my arm, then realized I felt itchy all over, and something felt off in my chest, like there was something inside of me.

I tentatively felt around within. My witch magic was there, swirling as it always did in my chest. And deeper and lower, near my navel, was my forbidden power—my power that enhanced another supernatural’s magic. And just to the side of it, in the dark, invisible cave that I’d come to recognize as a void that wasn’t actually a void, was where my new awakening power lay—my newly born power that sucked another’s magic from them and gave it all to me.

But now there was something else.