I shuddered at the thought.

“Where are you staying now?” the commander asked me.

Her direct question snapped me back to our conversation. “With him.” I hooked a thumb in Kaillen’s direction.

She quirked an eyebrow. “Which is where?”

“None of your business,” Kaillen replied smoothly. “You now have my phone number. That’s all you need to reach us.”

Oh, so he’d shared his digits with the SF commander? That was a first. But that also explained how she’d called him while I’d been showering.

The commander’s icy eyes narrowed. “Twice in two weeks, Tala has nearly been abducted. For her safety, the SF needs to know her whereabouts.”

“No, you don’t,” the hunter replied on a low growl. “I’ll keep her safe.”

The two stared at one another, the battle of wills commencing.

I rolled my eyes. “I was told you wanted to see us about Jakub. So, can we, like, get to that?” I was so not in the mood for their pissing contest.

The commander’s lips pursed, but she broke eye contact with Kaillen and opened her drawer. “Very well.” She extracted her magical crystal used for creating digital debriefs. “You know what to do.”

I placed my hand on the crystal globe and let its magic tug at my mind, siphoning out the memories of my kidnapping, Cameron’s betrayal, the two sorcerers commissioned to abduct me, the Philadelphia location, and finally, Maybe-Jakub.

The details flowed across the commander’s tablet, as if being typed by invisible ghostly hands. Pictures appeared too, perfect 3D renditions of Jakub’s face along with illustrations of other details—his vehicle, the blue cuffs he’d intended to put on the hunter, the spell he’d begun to weave that was frightening in its intensity, and of course, my head-butting.

Kaillen’s lips curved when he watched that tidbit as the magical apparatus replayed it before us. The look of surprise on Maybe-Jakub’s face during the replay, when I’d knocked him flat on his ass, filled me with dark satisfaction.

“It’s almost as if you learned head-butting from someone,” the hunter said under his breath.

“Really?” I replied just as dryly. “I wonder who that could possibly be.”

His smile grew, a sparkle appearing in his amber eyes. A new sharp scent suddenly rolled through his natural citrus and cedar. It smelled of pineapple and sunshine. I had no idea what that new emotion was, but with a start, I realized that Kaillen and I had just spoken to each other as we used to . . . again. That made twice in one morning that we’d joked. It was as though I’d forgotten how much this man had betrayed me and hurt me.

I killed my smile even though inside, it felt so good to act as we once had. But I needed to remember what he’d done.

The pineapple and sunshine fragrance vanished from the hunter, and his expression wiped itself clean.

“All done,” I said a second later and removed my hand from the crystal. The one thing I hadn’t shared when my memories had been plundered was the colossal strength of my powers that had smashed through the binding and gag spells despite the magic-blocking cuffs. Call me crazy, but I was still hoping the extent of my powers wasn’t common knowledge. A girl could hope.

Commander Klebus put the crystal sphere away, then picked up her tablet, studying the new report and mugshots that were more accurate than anything Chicago PD could ever come up with.

“So this is who Jakub possibly is.” She stroked her chin as she stared at Maybe-Jakub’s photo.

“Unless he was glamored,” Kaillen said.

“Of course.” She swiped to the sorcerers’ photos, studying them too.

“Don’t you have their bodies?” I asked, since she was spending just as much time studying the sorcerers’ faces as she had Jakub’s.

“No, only bloodstains.”

I balked. “But we left them there, dead on the street.”

The commander’s sapphire eyes cut to mine, her dark hair brushing her shoulders. “As I’ve been informed. However, by the time we arrived, the scene had already been cleaned. But it had obviously been done in a hurry, since their blood remained.”

I frowned at the hunter.

He shook his head. “I notified them within twenty minutes of our escape.”

Commander Klebus nodded grimly, and a startling sense of the power Jakub’s organization wielded made me shiver. How many people did he have on his payroll that he could have bodies removed that quickly? Before the SF even had a chance to arrive?

“Is there human security footage of the area?” I asked hopefully. Not that it would help. Our fighting had been cloaked under illusion spells, but maybe, just maybe, Jakub’s cleanup crew had been sloppy. Perhaps forgetting to initiate an illusion spell or creating one too weak to hide all activity.

“We’re looking into it.”

I raised my eyebrows, but she didn’t elaborate.

“So what are you going to do with this new info?” I interlocked my fingers in my lap, trying to keep my nose from wrinkling. An underlying scent of decay had been tickling my senses ever since we’d walked into the room.

The commander leaned forward, and the stench grew.

Holy shit, it’s coming from her.

“We’ll run the evidence we were able to collect and these photos through our database to see if we can identify these three.” She set her tablet down. “Now, the next question is what do we do with you?”

I began breathing through my mouth. “Actually, the next question is, what have you discovered so far? I’d like to know what your investigation has learned in the last two weeks.”

Commander Klebus narrowed her eyes.

I huffed. “Are you still not going to tell me anything? Even after they tried to abduct me a second time?”

She sighed. “I told you, only if it’s directly related to—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I cut her off with a wave. “I get it. You’re not going to tell me shit. Fine.”

She bristled. “Now, as I was saying, we need to discuss where you stay moving forward. Since you’re no longer safe with Mr. King’s pack, the next obvious option is an SF safe house.”

My stomach dropped, because if I shifted tonight under the full moon with Supernatural Forces members surrounding me that would mean . . .

Nausea churned through me. I couldn’t possibly handle witnesses. To see their surprise, disgust, or possibly fear? I would be a total pariah, or worse, they’d want to study me like a lab rat.

I twisted my hands. “I don’t know where . . .” I took another breath. “I mean—”

“She’s staying with me.” Kaillen’s words were clipped.

The commander’s nostrils flared, and she opened her mouth, but Kaillen abruptly stood and pulled me to my feet. “We’re done here. You have what you need. We’ll show ourselves out.”

Before the vampire could utter a response, Kaillen blurred us to the front of the SF office and out the door. Cold autumn wind swirled around us, and the scent of snow lingered in the air.

Within a second, the hunter’s whirling yellow portal waited before us just as the commander barreled through the SF’s front door. “Mr. King!” she barked.

But the hunter already had his arm around me as he sucked me into his portal’s winds. He did it all so quickly. So commandingly.

Fury burned in Commander Klebus’s eyes. It was the last thing I saw as we disappeared, but the anxiety in my stomach lessened. That suffocating feeling of being exposed and judged receded.

My emerging wolf side was still hidden, and the only one who would be witnessing what was to come tonight would be the hunter at my side.

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Chapter 3

After Kaillen’s portal dropped us into his living room, I let out a sigh of relief. I wasn’t happy to be shacked up with the hunter in his home again, but I was grateful for the privacy. Right now, I needed it. No way in hell was I going to shift into a wolf for the first time with an audience, and here, I didn’t have to hide. I could be me . . . whoever the new me was.