Chapter 1

Adriana Paige
Interstate 15
Western Montana

I was running.

The sense that something terrible was chasing me was simply too strong for me to do anything else. I knew I was dreaming—my surroundings were too beautiful to be explained by anything else—but even that knowledge wasn’t enough to make me stand my ground. It was like there was some kind of evolutionary cutout at work. The part of me that was advanced enough to talk and use tools was no match for instincts developed over thousands of years—not when faced by something that ran hunched over, with claws that dripped a combination of venom and blood.

It felt like I’d been running for hours, but given the way that time seemed to skip and stretch inside of dreams, there was no way of being sure how long I’d been fleeing. I jumped over a fallen tree, clearing the eight-foot-tall obstacle without breaking my stride. The trunk, a dark bar covered by faintly-glowing moss, sailed by with a speed I never could have managed in the real world. It was one more sign that this was nothing more than a nightmare, but I didn’t slow my pace.

I was running on two feet, darting between softly glowing pillars that I knew had to be trees, and that felt wrong too. I was seeing the world the same way that Alec and the rest of my friends who were shape shifters saw it. It felt like I should be running on four legs, but there wasn’t time to stop and make myself change shapes—even assuming that I was capable of something like that inside of a dream.

Heedless of the noise I was making, I crashed through a set of tall bushes that looked like some kind of glowing, new-age glass sculpture, and then I was free of the forest. The ground I was running across now couldn’t possibly have supported the kind of dense forest that I’d just left. Rather than the soft black soil I’d been expecting, it had shifted to hard red rock.

It had been dark in the forest, but I exited into sunlight that was so bright it was almost blinding. I stumbled, squinting as I tried to continue forward, but before I’d even finished taking my second step the sun had vanished. It didn’t set, it just disappeared, leaving me in a darkness that was so profound I felt like I’d stepped into some kind of void.

Only the feel of the rock underneath my feet gave lie to the idea that I’d stepped into a realm of nothingness. There wasn’t anything living on the rock, nothing to provide even the barest hint of illumination to my borrowed, supernatural vision.

Before the light had disappeared the ground before me had been flat, but now it sloped upwards in a set of irregular steps that tripped me. I caught myself with my hands, but the impact sent shooting jabs of pain up my arms.

As I scrambled back to my feet, I heard something come crashing out of the forest. I knew I would be better off not looking back to see what was chasing me, but I couldn’t help myself. It was big, much bigger than any hybrid, bigger even than the werewolf that had nearly killed Isaac and Jasmin in New York.

I’d only thought that the night around me was dark, but now I could see that I’d been wrong. The night still felt dark, but it was nothing compared to the darkness that streamed off of the creature. It was like nothing I’d ever seen.

I wanted to say that it was a dark light, but even with my heart trying to tear itself free of my chest I still knew that was a contradiction. Darkness was an absence of light, but this darkness acted like light, reached out with greedy tendrils in an effort to fill the space around the thing slowly advancing toward me.

The blackness was strong enough that it was hard to make out details. I’d already registered the fact that it was huge. The claws flexing at the ends of its fingers were longer than my arms and I got an impression there were more teeth crammed into its mouth than could have physically fit inside of the pit housing them.

The ground shook slightly as it approached. I needed to get away, needed to run—until my heart exploded inside of my chest if necessary—but I was having a hard time looking away from its eyes. They were green and seemed to flicker, moving inside of the deep sockets in its head as though they were made out of some kind of grotesque fire.

I’d always thought of green as a color that symbolized life, but in this instance green had been perverted into something unclean, something that devoured life and left behind only ruin.

“You can’t escape me.”

Its voice sounded like plates of chitin sliding across each other, like a billion insects chittering in unison.

“What do you want?”

It was stupid. In the back of my mind I knew that nothing I was experiencing was real, but part of me couldn’t help but act as though this was all real, as though the creature was something that could be reasoned with.

“The death of everything you hold dear, the destruction of everything you stand for.”

I opened my mouth to tell it that I didn’t understand, but before I could get the words out, it sprang towards me. Nothing that big should have been able to move so quickly. I’d spent most of the last six months watching werewolves and shape shifters fight. I’d been exposed to unbelievable speed, to people who were so preternaturally fast that they could cover a dozen yards before I could even blink, but this was more than that. It didn’t just cross the distance between us, it was as though it teleported, as though the space simply ceased to exist for one critical instant.

The impossibly long claws took me in the stomach, pierced my flesh at the same time that they sent me into a state of shock. I tried to push myself off of them in a vain attempt to get free so that I could flee from something faster than thought, but it picked me up.

“So easy. I thought maybe you would be a challenge, that you would be stronger than your friends. Will you beg for me to end your life too?”

Its words didn’t make any sense. I’d never been the strong one. Alec, Jasmin, Dominic and even Rachel all had sources of strength that I’d never possessed. The very act of trying to understand what its words meant pulled my mind out of the shock that had been cushioning me from the pain up until then.

It was like having bars of liquid fire shoved into my gut. I’d spent months suffering from emotional wounds that had come within inches of destroying me. I’d thought that nothing could equal the agony I’d felt then, but this was a whole new kind of pain. It was like agony and despair all rolled up into one terrible package.

For a split second I balanced on the edge of disaster. I wanted to give up, to give into the pain and surrender, to let it carry me away into oblivion, but then I thought about Alec.

He needed me. Shawn’s gift had settled that particular question as far as the future of the rebellion went. As hard as it was to believe, without Alec and me, the rest of my friends were doomed. With me by Alec’s side they had a chance, slender though it was.

It was more than that though. I’d heard enough stories about how life in the pack had been while I’d been gone to know that Alec had been under incredible stress after I left Sanctuary. He’d dealt with things with admirable determination, but when you came right down to it he needed me in the same way that I needed him.

I wasn’t going to give up and sentence him to a life of loneliness simply because fighting back against this thing hurt.

Thinking about Alec sent a warm rush of energy humming through me. The pain was still there, but the tingling power that had filled me to the point where I nearly couldn’t contain it had somehow muted the pain to a point where I could function again.

“I’m not scared of you.”

Even as I said the words, I kicked off against the creature’s arm with every ounce of strength I could muster. In the real world I never could have hoped to muster enough force to tear myself free of three-foot claws, but in this particular dream I did exactly that.

The pain spiked as I hurled myself back and up, but I’d known that would be the case and I gritted my teeth in a vain effort to stop myself from screaming again. The creature started to bring its other hand around, trying to rip me out of the air, and I knew that would be the end of everything.

In that instant I needed to be faster, and this time reality conformed itself to my needs in the way that dreams sometimes allow. I sailed up over the grasping, deadly points of the creature’s claws seemingly moving in slow motion, but still somehow managing to be faster than the nightmare that had been chasing me.

I should have crashed to the ground on my back, but instead the dream once again molded itself to my needs. I tucked my legs and turned what should have been a disastrous, leg-breaking landing into a graceful backflip.

It wasn’t something I could do in real life. I didn’t even know how to tumble, let alone have the guts to do it in the middle of a fight for my life, but somehow it all came together for me and for one impossibly long second I felt a kind of weightless, perfection that would have probably haunted me forever if I’d been able to dwell on the feeling.

Rock shattered, crushed into powder under my feet from the force of my landing, and then I spun and took off at a run.

It was insane. I was still bleeding and I hadn’t been able to outrun the creature even when I’d been at my best, but apparently I was firmly in flight mode.

I could hear the creature behind me, claws chipping away at the rock as it used them for extra traction while giving chase. My mind whirled desperately, looking for a weapon or a refuge, but this time my surroundings proved stubbornly uncooperative.

I took another step, hands forward to help propel me up the incline, and then I was at the top of the climb. I was trapped. There was twenty feet of flat ground and then beyond that a ravine that was more than fifty feet across.

Alec would have turned and attacked the creature, using his superior position to get at its head and neck, but I wasn’t Alec. I was already gasping for breath, but I reached deep inside and tapped into some of the energy that had brought me this far. It was leaking out in time with the blood that had already soaked my pants, but there was enough left for one more good sprint.

I crossed the open expanse of rock in three impossibly long strides. I took my speed as a good sign, as proof that my dream was about to conform to my needs, and then threw myself across the ravine.

There was a glimmer of something on the other side that looked like it might be a safe landing spot, and that was what I was aiming for. I reached towards that spot with my mind and pulled with everything I had, willing the future I wanted into being.

I heard the creature scream in rage, a raspy roar that made my blood freeze, but it was too late—I was already two-thirds of the way across the ravine and showed no signs of slowing. A grin started to force its way past my concentration, and then suddenly the cliff seemed to get further away from me.

The shock as I started to fall was so complete that for a second my mind refused to function. I was dead…only a tiny voice kept trying to tell me that it was impossible to die in a dream.

Was I dreaming? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Maybe I’d simply had some kind of psychotic break from the stress of dealing with the attack on the estate. It was possible for multiple psychological blows to send someone over the edge like that.

First there had been Dad and Cindi dying in that car wreck and then I’d nearly died more times than I could count. Really, it was a surprise that I hadn’t completely melted down when Alec and I had broken up.

It hit me with a suddenness that took my breath away. What if everything that had happened since the accident had all been nothing more than some kind of massive hallucination? What if none of it had been real?

The universe felt like a crystal goblet vibrating a hairsbreadth away from high C. All it would take was the slightest change in pitch for everything to shatter. Life had gotten a lot harder since the accident, but that had always felt like a fair trade in exchange for having Alec in my life. The thought of going back to how I’d been, a broken little doll with nothing to look forward to, no purpose other than just getting through the day, was more than I could handle and something in the depths of my mind started to unravel.

I probably would have blacked out again, returning to the welcome oblivion of one of my panic attacks, if not for the warm, tingly energy flowing through me. That energy was Alec’s. It had been one of his defining characteristics for as long as I’d known him.

I could very nearly feel his arms wrapped around me and that pulled me back from the edge of insanity. Alec was too amazing to be nothing more than a figment of my imagination. Even in the middle of the worst kind of psychotic break, I still wouldn’t have been capable of imagining a version of reality where I ended up with him.

People sometimes say that someone—or something—is too good to be true, but this was the exact opposite of that. Alec was too good not to be true, and that was all the reassurance that I needed. Besides, I wasn’t sure that it was possible to feel this much pain in the middle of a hallucination.

Then again, it wasn’t supposed to be possible to feel pain in the middle of a dream either. That was worrisome. Alec being real didn’t necessarily prove that I wasn’t falling. In fact, it actually made more sense that a mind facing death would come up with reasons why nothing it was experiencing was real. There were probably lots of people who fell to their deaths convinced that they were just about to wake up from a nightmare.

No, I could see myself doing that, but everything that had happened during the last few minutes was too far outside even the normal dream craziness for me to believe it was all real. This had to be a dream. Maybe the pain was just a side effect of the dream power that Mallory was convinced I had.

I was still falling; my brush with insanity had taken no more than a second, but I was moving impossibly fast and the ground wasn’t very far away.

This wasn’t my first falling dream and I relaxed as I fell the last hundred feet, expecting to wake up in the instant before I would have crashed into the ground. I started to drift free and then some kind of heavy pressure pushed me back into my body.

I screamed again, my mind clawing desperately for some escape, and then another wave of energy crashed through me and my eyes popped open.

I was safely in my bed at the back of Alec’s massive RV. The chase and fall had been nothing more than a bad dream, a dream that was swiftly slipping away from me despite my best efforts to hold onto it for analysis.

There was something about what I’d just experienced that put it in a category all of its own. It was more than just seeing the world in shades of glowing white or the fact that I’d felt such intense pain. There was something fundamentally different about this dream, something that felt important.

It was right on the edge of my mind, like I’d started to say something and then had the word I’d wanted to use dissolve out of my memory. Maybe I would have managed to pin it down if I hadn’t realized a second later that Alec’s warm, muscular arms were wrapped around me.

“Are you okay, Adri?”

I couldn’t think of a better surprise to wake up to. Alec and I were still sleeping separately despite the temptation to do otherwise. Waking up and finding Alec in bed with me sent thoughts of my nightmare tumbling out of my skull.

“I think so—what happened?”

“I was about to ask you the same question. You started screaming a little while ago. I came back to check on you and saw that you were thrashing around hard enough that you’d broken the bookshelf.”

I didn’t want to give Alec a reason to let go of me, so I didn’t move very far, but I turned my head enough to see the pile of books on the far end of the bed.

“Wow, I’m lucky I didn’t get brained by one of them.”

“Yeah. In hindsight maybe it wasn’t the best idea to mount a shelf above the bed like that. I was worried you were going to break the other one as well so I immobilized your arms. I’ve been trying to wake you up for nearly five minutes. Bad dream?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Actually I do, but I don’t seem to remember much about it. I think something was chasing me, but that’s about all that stuck with me.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing else?”

“I don’t know…maybe the sense that it wasn’t a normal dream, but I couldn’t tell you for sure what made it special. I’m sure exhausted though. I feel like I’ve been running for hours—I was less tired than this when I went to bed.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

It was the kind of casual remark that I’d caught Alec making from time to time lately. I wasn’t even sure he was aware of what he was doing, but it almost seemed like he was trying to give those around him a heads up without actually coming right out and saying point blank that there was a problem with something.

It was the kind of thing that could be problematic in a leader if he wasn’t doing it on purpose, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to point it out to him. Most everyone else didn’t know him well enough for it to be a problem and I was reluctant to make him any more of a closed book than he already was.

I opened my mouth and then decided once again against saying anything. Instead I turned in his arms so I was facing him. It was a calculated risk. There was always a chance that he’d take my moving as a reason to let go of me and sit up, but I kept his right arm trapped underneath my body and this time he didn’t move.

Looking into his eyes was like entering an entirely new universe, one where I was completely happy. Alec could fake a lot of emotions on those occasions where it became necessary, but he couldn’t fake the level of love and commitment that I saw reflected back at me in the quiet moments when it was just the two of us.

If his comment had been the slightest bit less concerning I would have just sat there gazing into his eyes for as long as he was willing to remain in one place, but I knew there was something important he wasn’t telling me.

“What’s going on, Alec?”

“This isn’t general knowledge, so don’t say anything to Donovan or the others, but it doesn’t look like Dream Stealer has lost interest in Kristin. All the signs point to him having singled her out as the weak link in the pack.”

“What does that mean? I know a little bit about Dream Stealer, but obviously not enough.”

“It means he’s torturing her every night in her sleep in an effort to break her. He doesn’t do it often, but he’s taken down entire packs this way. He picks out a target, either someone he thinks is weaker than the rest of the pack or someone who’s got access to something particularly important, and then he makes every night hell until they finally snap. Once that happens they’ll do anything to get him to stop hurting them.

“For someone who’s been through that, there’s no secret they won’t disclose, no ally they won’t betray, no murder they won’t commit. Sometimes he only has to break one person, sometimes he has to break half the pack, but in the end he’s always managed to achieve his goal.”

“That’s…well, it’s beyond terrible. Are you sure he’s targeted Kristin?”

“Yeah. Ash says that she’s thrashing around in her sleep every night and she’s so tired that she drops off to sleep as soon as she stops moving. It was questionable before, but it’s become pretty clear lately that she’s his target.”

I closed my eyes to stop them from tearing up. Kristin wasn’t my favorite person. She was a little too pushy for the two of us to ever be close friends, but she didn’t deserve to be put through what Alec was describing.

“She mentioned that she was having issues with him before the attack on the house, but she seemed pretty sure that he would leave her alone if she could just tough things out for a week or two.”

Alec gave me a sad smile that told me he knew exactly what I was feeling. “Yeah. So far that’s all that anyone has been able to do where Dream Stealer is concerned. He’s not omnipotent so if you can manage to fight him off for several nights running then there is a chance that he’ll reassess the situation and come at the pack through someone else.”

“So if you win then it just means that he’ll go after someone else close to you? That doesn’t seem like much of a victory.”

“It’s not. For the last few decades he hasn’t even had to break people to accomplish his ends. Once it becomes apparent that he’s decided to target a pack, it usually just disintegrates as everyone tries to get far enough away from each other that there’s no reason for him to continue to target any of them.”

“He turns families against each other.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so. There’s a reason that nobody has come out in open rebellion against the Coun’hij since they killed my father. Between Agony, Dream Stealer and Puppeteer there’s never been any doubt as to where the balance of power rests. Agony was their scalpel, Puppeteer has always been a blunt instrument, and Dream Stealer is like a virus, just looking for a weakened host he can use to create a pandemic. Even someone like Jaclyn Annikov has had to be very circumspect about disagreeing with the Coun’hij in public.”

“We can’t let him do this to Kristin, Alec. There has to be a way to stop him. You’ve already killed Agony and you proved that Puppeteer isn’t unbeatable. If we can find a way to neutralize Dream Stealer, then the Coun’hij will fall overnight.”

“I wish that was true, Adri. I killed Agony, but we beat Puppeteer as much by luck as anything else. It’s going to be a long road to defeating the Coun’hij, but I promise I’m doing everything I can right now. There isn’t anything I can do directly to protect Kristin, so Ash and Isaac are going to take her somewhere they can keep her isolated and make sure she can’t hurt herself or the rebellion either one.

“To be honest, I’d hoped initially that I’d be able to stop Dream Stealer from getting at any of my people. I seem to be able to nullify most other powers. I stopped Agony’s cuts from scarring like they should have, I can stop Grayson from being able to send people into convulsions, it didn’t seem that much of a stretch to think that I’d be able to nullify Dream Stealer’s ability to dream walk, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

“You didn’t stop Dominic from being able to heal people and you didn’t seem to do anything to nullify Shawn’s gift either.”

“Yeah, unfortunately there’s still far too much that I don’t know about my ability. I need time to explore its limits, but time is the one thing that we don’t have. Many of the shape shifters who gathered in Sanctuary before the attack did so because they thought that my gift would protect them from Dream Stealer and Puppeteer. Now that they know that’s not the case we’re going to have a much more difficult time adding to our numbers.”

“Are you second-guessing the decision to split everyone up?”

“A little, but I still don’t see another way forward. Dream Stealer always does more damage in bigger groups. It’s harder for him to get his hooks into someone unnoticed in small groups, and by compartmentalizing our operations we can limit the amount of information he has access to at any one time. When you throw in the fact that Puppeteer can only be in one place at any given time, it just makes sense to try to make sure we don’t offer them a big, stationary target to come after.”

“So we scatter and hide while Kristin suffers.”

“For now. It all comes back to us needing to find the Coun’hij’s base. If we can do that then we have a chance of forcing the fight on terms that favor us. I can’t fight Dream Stealer on his home turf, but if we can pin him down in the real world then Jaclyn, Grayson or I can easily make sure he never tortures anyone else again.”

Alec had been serious about compartmentalizing his plans, but so far I seemed to be one of the few exceptions. I appreciated that fact because it gave us one more reason to spend time together, one more thing to talk about, but it created a potential problem that we were going to have to talk about.

I told myself that I wasn’t bringing that issue up because there was something else more important that I needed to ask Alec, but even as I asked my other question I knew I was mostly just waiting because I was scared of what his reaction might be.

“You don’t seem as confident in our ability to defeat the Coun’hij as I expected you to be. I thought it has always just been an issue of us not knowing where they are located.”

“That’s the main thing, the only thing that I can point to as being a concrete problem, but there are a lot of unknowns. For decades there have been rumors that there are other members of the Coun’hij who keep their identities hidden, hybrids every bit as powerful as Agony or Dream Stealer or Puppeteer.”

“Why would they do that? Wouldn’t it make sense to present the scariest front possible in order to make sure that the packs are too intimidated to rise up against the Coun’hij?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. There is a lot to be said for making sure everyone knows exactly how big a stick you’re wielding, but there is also something to the idea of keeping your enemies guessing. The less they know about your true capabilities the less they can do to neutralize your advantages through superior planning. You could argue that between Puppeteer, Agony and Dream Stealer the Coun’hij had a plenty big enough stick to threaten the packs with.”

“You’re not convinced that’s the reason though.”

“Not entirely. There are rumors that some of the Coun’hij hide their names and abilities because their gifts are so terrible that if the packs knew about them they’d rise up in a united group and try to overthrow the Coun’hij despite the blood bath that would almost certainly result.”

“And if those rumors are true, then the mere fact that you’re being so successful puts us in more danger, because that’s the kind of thing that would cause the really scary members of the Coun’hij to finally get involved.”

Alec nodded gravely. “Exactly. It’s one of those things I can’t plan around because I don’t have enough information, but it’s there in the back of my mind with every decision I make. It’s like my own personal boogeyman.”

I’d already wrapped my arms around Alec after turning to face him, but now I squeezed him harder. “It’s going to be okay, Alec. You’re going to find a way through this. We don’t know what’s coming or who else we might be up against, but we do know that it’s possible for us to win.”

“You’re putting an awful lot of trust in Shawn’s gift, and he never said we could win, just that it wasn’t guaranteed that we were going to lose.”

“No, I’m putting an awful lot of trust in you. Shawn’s gift was just a nice confirmation of what I already knew. If you really put your mind to it there isn’t anything you can’t do. Your gift has fully manifested and we have an impressive list of allies that include Jaclyn and Grayson. You can do this, Alec, and I love that you’ve chosen to stand up to the Coun’hij. You’re not doing it because you want the power; you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, the thing that will give your people a chance to be free for the first time since the monarchy fell.”

He looked at me in amazement and this time the smile that was tugging at the corner of his mouth was a happy one. “You do realize that most people don’t consider living under a monarchy to be a shining example of freedom, right?”

“Most people don’t have to deal with the complexity of shape shifter existence. You were right all of those months ago when you told me that shape shifters can’t live by the same rules that humans live by. Even the weakest of you are still incredibly dangerous and when you throw in the fact that you’re in the middle of three wars while trying to keep your existence a secret from the humans, it becomes painfully evident that your people need a stronger central authority than would be ideal for a bunch of suburban soccer moms. Besides, living under the rule of a Graves is the one sure way to guarantee that you’ll be treated justly.”

That earned me an eye roll. “My ancestors weren’t perfect and I’m even further away from perfection than they were.”

“I don’t know, you look pretty perfect from right here.”

That broke through the last of Alec’s defenses. He was always less guarded around me than he was around most of the rest of the pack, but my favorite times were when all of the walls came down and I saw him without any pretenses.

There was an incredible gentleness to Alec Graves that he kept carefully hidden for fear that his enemies would use it against him. He wasn’t wrong to do so. Someone like Puppeteer would do anything to exploit something he perceived as a weakness, but it wasn’t a weakness, at least not in my book.

Alec fought so hard precisely because he cared. He would attack despite all the odds because he couldn’t bear to let someone he cared about die if he had a chance to save them. The Coun’hij wasn’t capable of understanding that any more than Brandon had been.

Every momentous change in our life could be traced back to that one thing and it had caught our enemies by surprise each time. Alec had fought Brandon to save me and triggered his power, and then he’d faced off against Agony in order to save Jasmin and Isaac and brought his power fully under control.

Even his decision to try and reestablish the monarchy had resulted from the fact that he couldn’t bear to see packs being torn apart by the likes of Dream Stealer. The smart thing would have been for Alec to take a less confrontational approach, pretend to ally himself with the Coun’hij and bide his time while he gathered allies. It would have been the smart thing to do, but it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do and so he’d never even considered it.

“Adriana Paige, I don’t deserve you, but I’m very glad that you came into my life. I never would have made it this far without you.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he wasn’t giving himself enough credit, but he didn’t let me get the words out. He kissed me and there wasn’t anything hesitant about this kiss. I had a split second to be glad I’d switched to that new, longer-lasting mouthwash and then I was swept away in the moment.

Alec’s arms around me tightened to the point where the pressure was just short of painful and I loved every second of it. It was like the ultimate expression of strength and manliness. He could have crushed me without even trying, but he wouldn’t because even now Alec was in complete control of himself. That control was sexy in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain.

I reached up and cupped his face as I returned the kiss, shaking from the thrill of having him close to me, giddy from the buzz of his shape shifter energy coursing back and forth between his bare skin and my hands, face and arms.

His lips were perfectly firm and insistent against mine, and I wanted to let myself go fully, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I needed to tell him about my concern and if I didn’t do it now then there was a chance that I wouldn’t ever do it.

It was one of the harder things I’d ever done up to that point, but I pulled back from Alec and rather than keeping me there like some guys would have, he immediately relaxed his arms. He didn’t let go of me completely, but he gave me the option of breaking free if that was what I wanted.

“As much as I would love to stay like that forever, there is something we need to talk about.”

The old Alec would have become at least a little guarded after a lead-in like that, but all he did now was raise one eyebrow in a questioning manner. I took a deep breath and then forced the words out.

“What if I’m being attacked by Dream Stealer?”

“No, that’s not possible…”

I cut him off before he could finish. “Alec, you have to be rational about this. I was thrashing around and screaming. I feel like I didn’t get a wink of sleep, and I have no recollection of what I was dreaming about so I can’t vouch for the fact that I wasn’t being tortured.”

He looked like he wanted to interject something, but I gave him a stern look and just kept on speaking.

“You said that Dream Stealer likes to target the weakest individuals in a given pack, especially if they have access to important stuff. In case you haven’t been keeping score, that’s basically a perfect description of me. You need to start cutting me out of some of the planning. I probably already know too much, but at least if you start keeping me in the dark now you’ll be able to limit the amount of damage I do when he breaks me.”

Alec shook his head at me. “Are you done?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Thank goodness. I was half expecting you to say something about locking you in the bathroom until we could make arrangements to ship you off to some kind of makeshift prison four states over.”

I shrugged. “Now that you mention it, that’s not a bad idea. I would have eventually suggested something like that—I just hadn’t thought things out completely yet.”

“I guess I should just be grateful that distancing yourself from me wasn’t the first thing that you thought of.”

His light, joking tone brought a smile to my face despite my best efforts, which just made me want to punch him in the arm.

“This is serious, Alec.”

He sighed. “I agree, but I don’t think there is a need to do anything drastic right now. Dream Stealer is something of an enigma, but while we don’t know very much about him as an individual, the packs—even the sympathizer packs—have been keeping as close an eye on his activities as possible for the last couple hundred years. There’s never been any kind of evidence of him working on two people at one time.

“There have been about a dozen times where he took a pack apart by breaking two of its members and even a few instances where he turned three people in order to accomplish his goals, but he always attacked them one at a time, even when he appeared to be working under some kind of a time limit.”

“So as long as he’s still trying to break Kristin that means I’m safe.”

“Yes, which means that your nightmare was just that—a normal, subconscious-acting-up nightmare. Ash will keep a very close eye on Kristin and as soon as there are any signs that Dream Stealer has either succeeded or given up trying to break her, we’ll get a call letting us know that we need to start keeping a closer eye on everyone else.”

I closed my eyes for a second as I tried to think through all of the ramifications of what he’d just told me.

“I suddenly feel like an even bigger jerk than I did a few seconds ago. Kristin is suffering unspeakable things just so I can be safe. It doesn’t make any sense. Out of all of the possible options, why choose her? It makes more sense to go after me.”

“That’s not true, Adri. It actually makes a lot of sense to get Kristin out of the picture. In a lot of ways her visions make her the ultimate wild card. As long as she’s in play and on our side there’s no way for the Coun’hij to guarantee that she won’t ruin their plans by telling us something that we couldn’t possibly know.”

“But her visions are so unpredictable…”

“Yeah, but even so they could make all of the difference. If Dream Stealer hadn’t locked her into some kind of feedback loop she would have been able to warn us of the attack against the estate. If we’d known that was coming even just ten minutes before the werewolves actually arrived, we could have changed the outcome there in a big way.”

“You’re right. If we’d been close together and waiting for them we wouldn’t have lost most of the people who died that night.”

My words came out rough, but that wasn’t a surprise, not considering the way that my throat seemed to be trying to close itself off. Alec pulled me close again, but this time there wasn’t any passion to his embrace, just the comfort that I so desperately needed.

“I’m so sorry, Adri. I know how much Carson meant to you. I wish I’d been there to help him.”

I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. If things had gone even a little bit differently your mom would be dead. Besides, Carson died the way that he lived—protecting someone who couldn’t protect themselves. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

“I’m not sure it was a worthwhile trade. I’m not sure even now that Mother really understands that Rachel is gone.”

Part of me wanted to pull back in shock, but I understood why Alec had said it. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his mother; he was just struggling with losing so many people.

“She’s still there somewhere, Alec. You just need to give her more time to come back from that kind of a loss.”

Alec sighed, but he finally met my eyes again. “How can you be so sure when I’m plagued with doubts? Tactically speaking, going after my mother was the worst decision I could have made.”

“I’m sure because you couldn’t have made any other decision and still have been the man I love. I’m sure because I knew Carson much better than you did and I know that he hated the fact that his life had been spent pursuing violence. The only thing that made his choices bearable was the fact that he was able to use his skills to protect people who were weaker than him. He never would have agreed to let your mother die in exchange for saving his own life.

“More than that, I have a pretty good idea just how devastated I would be in your mother’s position. It was all I could do to keep on going when I left you and that was my decision. It would be a hundred times worse if you were taken from me. She’s retreated inside of herself because she’s trying to protect what’s left of the woman who must have been head over heels for your father. That’s good though because it means there’s something there to protect, some fragment worth trying to preserve. I’m not sure I could have done as much in her place. I would have just gone catatonic.”

Alec kissed my forehead, a chaste brief kiss, but one that still left my skin feeling like it was on fire, a pleasant, energizing fire. “You’re a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for, you know.”

I snuggled in closer to him, tucking my head into the spot where his shoulder and neck joined up. “Maybe you’re right, but I didn’t start out this way. Before I met you I was a shallow little girl who was little more than a collection of razor-edged shards. You are the one who put me back together and gave me a chance to become a real person again.”

“I think in this instance we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

Alec’s words were little more than a whisper that teased stray strands of my hair into motion. He was making me feel tingly all over again, but this time it didn’t have to do with the otherworldly energy that he gave off by virtue of being a shape shifter. This was wholly the result of him making me feel like someone who was special enough to be worthy of him.

“There aren’t very many people who could have done what you just did, Adri.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dream Stealer’s power is dangerous, but it wouldn’t be half as bad if everyone was strong enough to tell someone when they thought he was after them. You are strong. A weak person would have just stayed quiet and hoped that they were just having a string of normal bad dreams.”

“I almost didn’t say anything.”

“But you did. You’re going to make a fine queen someday, Adri.”

Normally a comment like that would have been enough to give me the shakes, but I was too blissed out to let it worry me very much. I’d raised the possibility that I was being attacked. I’d done my part and now I could happily stay where I was, cuddling with Alec, for as long as he would hold still.

Unfortunately a few seconds later my phone started ringing. I tried to ignore it, but Alec wasn’t the type to ignore calls.

“Adri, are you going to get that?”

“No, voicemail was invented for precisely these kinds of moments. Nothing that anyone could be calling me about this early in the morning could possibly be important enough to get in the way of spending more time with you.”

“Isn’t that your mom’s ringtone?”

“Yeah.”

“I really think you should answer it. Your mom doesn’t call very often—she probably has something important to tell you.”

I shook my head, still steadfastly refusing to open my eyes. As long as I couldn’t see Alec’s face he couldn’t employ his most dangerous weapon against me. His words were already persuasive enough—I definitely didn’t want to have to try and resist the earnest, concerned look I knew was currently being directed at me.

“My mom doesn’t call about important stuff, Alec. You get important calls—you know the ones where someone’s life hangs in the balance. My mom just calls once a week or so to make sure she’s fulfilled her motherly duties.”

“She’s trying to change, Adri, but if you don’t give her a chance you can’t complain that the two of you still aren’t as close as you’d like to be.”

“Fine. You win, but don’t think that there won’t be consequences later on. The last thing you want is for my mom to decide to relocate to wherever we end up living once all this is over. It’s going to be very difficult for me to look very queenly if I’ve always got my mom hounding me about the fact that I’m not going to college like a good, sensible girl.”

“No consequence is too dear if it means a happy future mother-in-law. Be sure to tell her it was me who convinced you to answer her call.”

Alec rolled off the bed and ducked out of my room with a twinkle in his eye while I was still struggling to come up with a response. I threw my pillow at the swiftly closing door and then reached over and answered the phone.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Adri. Did I wake you?”

“Normally you would have. We just left Oregon yesterday so I’m still on Pacific Time, but I had a bad dream that woke me up earlier than normal.”

“Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t know. I just figured that you were still in Utah.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t know that we’ve been travelling lately. If I get really off of Utah time I’ll put my phone on silent before I go to bed. How did your latest shoot go?”

Talking about her work was always safe territory and it was a good bet that she’d just finished an assignment sometime in the three days since we’d last talked. Russ was having a good effect on my mom when it came to convincing her to be less of a workaholic, but it was going to probably take years before she toned things down to the level most people would have called normal.

“It was really good. That’s the first time that I’ve been down to Belize. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful it was down there and the shoot went acceptably. The models were all great to work with, my equipment all arrived on schedule, and the weather cooperated completely.”

“Wow, Mom. I think your standards are getting even more stringent. If the weather and models were all taking orders and you had your gear it seems like that’s the definition of perfection to me.”

“Adriana Paige, you may be a millionaire and living on your own, but that doesn’t mean I can’t show up and spank you if you get too big for your britches.”

Part of me wanted to take exception with her tone, but mostly I was too busy envisioning Mom storming into the RV and being served tea by Donovan while he calmly explained to her that it simply wasn’t done to administer any kind of physical discipline to the future queen of the North American shape shifters.

Alec, on the other hand, would probably hold her coat for her while she tried to administer said punishment.

“Sorry, Mom. You do have to admit that there isn’t much more you could ask for on a photography shoot, though…”

“I suppose you’re right. The work side of things was fine. I guess I was just sad that Russ wasn’t able to fly down with me. We were scheduled to go down together, but then Patrick called at the last minute with something urgent and everything changed. It put me really out of sorts. Then you throw in the fact that my bodyguard was hassling some of the support staff, and it felt like the whole world was collapsing in on itself.”

Bodyguard? That was new—I’d thought I was the only Paige forced to deal with having a minder less than twenty feet away at all times. I went to ask Mom what she meant, but she’d already moved on, talking as fast as always.

“Adri, Russ hasn’t been acting like himself lately. Do you think that he’s losing interest?”

I almost dropped the bottle of water that I’d just finished uncapping. “Seriously, Mom? This is Russ we’re talking about. He’s the last person you need to worry about stringing you along.”

“I don’t know, Adri. He’s acting really different lately. He’s been travelling a lot more than normal, and he’s stuck me with a bodyguard. It was bound to happen really. Once the initial excitement wore off, there was no way I was going to be able to keep someone so eligible interested for the long haul.”

I recapped my water bottle as I reflected on just how alike we were. We had so many differences that it was sometimes hard to remember that my mom and I shared a lot of the same insecurities.

“Mom, I don’t think you’re being fair to Russ. He’s not the kind of guy to leap without looking. If he proposed to you then you’re exactly what he’s looking for. I know he could have almost any girl he set his eyes on, but I know a little bit about dating those kinds of guys. If something is bothering you then you need to sit down and talk to him about it.”

There was a long pause as my mom digested my words. “You’re right. You’re not telling me anything that I haven’t already told myself, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to broach the subject with him. What if I don’t like the answer he provides? I’m not sure I’m ready for all of this to end.”

“Who says it has to end?”

“There’s something going on, Adri. Maybe you’re right and he’s not losing interest in me, but that doesn’t mean that things are okay. For all I know, he’s started trafficking drugs. Actually, that would explain a lot.”

A chill worked its way up my spine. “What do you mean, Mom?”

“I don’t know. There’s the bodyguard, despite the fact that Belize isn’t any more dangerous than any of the other places I’ve been to recently, but there’s also the fact that when I stopped by for lunch last week Russ was seeing some guy out that isn’t one of his usual associates.”

“Some guy?”

“Yeah, you know the type. Tattoos, piercings, looked like he could bench-press a small car. It didn’t look like they were on the best of terms either.”

I closed my eyes for several seconds and then took a deep breath. “You said that your bodyguard was causing problems at the shoot—tell me more about that, Mom.”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t watching. I was changing lenses and looked up as Jonas put some poor guy in an arm bar and then threw him off of the location. I’m right, aren’t I? Russ is working with the Mafia or something, isn’t he?”

“Is Jonas there with you now, Mom?”

“No, he picks me up whenever I need to leave and then checks the house when he drops me off, but he doesn’t stay here in the apartment with me. Adri, how bad is this? Is Russ some kind of criminal?”

“I think it’s too soon to be jumping to those kinds of conclusions, Mom, but I don’t think it’s too soon to begin taking some precautions.”

“What do you mean when you say precautions?”

“I mean you need a bodyguard of your own, one who’s on your payroll rather than on Russ’. Ideally you ought to get two bodyguards until you get to the bottom of whatever is going on right now.”

“I don’t…wait, you seriously think that I need three bodyguards? I wasn’t even thrilled about the prospect of having one bodyguard and now you’re telling me that I need three?”

“No, I’m telling you that you need a bodyguard you can trust who can worry about external threats without having to worry about what Jonas is going to do.”

“Adri, you’re completely overreacting! What has gotten into you?”

She was aiming for indignant, but she wasn’t succeeding. She sounded exactly like what she was, scared but trying very, very hard to hide it.

“Mom, this is my world now. If I had questions about photography I’d come to you and I’d listen to your advice. Worrying about bodyguards and assassins is my photography. You need to pay attention to what I’m telling you.”

I had her on the back foot for the first time in a very long while and I wasn’t going to let up now, not when her life might very well depend on it.

“Listen, Mom. As soon as we’re done you need to call the two most successful models you’ve worked with and ask them for bodyguard suggestions. Models, the really successful ones at least, probably deal with stalkers on a regular basis. I’ll go talk to Alec and see if he has anyone he can put you in contact with, but his guys are going to stand out like a sore thumb in the kind of circles you run in.”

It sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Mom, get a pencil and some paper and write this down. You need to get two bodyguards hired before the day is out and then you need to schedule a conversation with Russ. Make sure that you pick the location. Make it somewhere public, but run it past whoever you hire before you finalize things with Russ.”

“Adri, you sound like a spy.”

“Mom, I don’t hear you writing. This is important.”

“Russ is going to feel like I don’t trust him. I don’t think I can do this. I’m not sure I can afford to hire one bodyguard, let alone two.”

“Right now you already don’t trust him, Mom. Best-case scenario right now is that he’s keeping something back from you, something dangerous enough that he thinks you need a bodyguard. The worst-case scenario is that he’s put Jonas there to make sure he can control you. If Russ is just worried about you then he’s not going to resent you taking your own precautions. As for the money, you aren’t paying that ridiculous tuition now that I’m here, but if you need more money I can send you anything within reason.”

I could hear the sound of a pencil on paper and some of the tension inside of me started to loosen now that she was taking the situation seriously.

“Okay, Adri. I’ll start making calls as soon as I hang up. What should I be looking for as far as qualifications for a bodyguard?”

“I don’t know for sure, Mom. I’ve never been the one actually hiring our people. Once you’ve got some names ask the candidates to evaluate the other names on your list, that should help weed out the guys that are totally unqualified, but it’s still not perfect. I guess if you can find someone who helped protect a head of state that would be a bonus. Let me go ask Alec.”

I stood and started towards the door, but my mom brought me up short with a single question.

“Adri, how much danger are you in? When I was in Utah last time you made it sound like Alec was just being paranoid with all of the security arrangements. That wasn’t the case, was it?”

“I didn’t say anything that was untrue, Mom, I just let you think what you wanted to think.”

“Adri, I’m serious, how much danger are you in?”

“A lot. Probably more than you, but the difference is it was my decision to get involved with Alec and put myself in harm’s way. I knew what I was getting into. Russ is keeping you in the dark, which means you can’t even make an objective evaluation regarding how much danger you’re in.”

“What has he gotten you into, Adri? Is Alec some kind of drug dealer? I always thought it was suspicious that he had access to so much money. Have you even met his mother? The rumor back in Sanctuary is that she’s been dead for years.”

“Yes, I’ve met Samantha Graves and Alec didn’t ‘get me into anything,’ Mom. Like I said, I chose this. Alec isn’t doing anything wrong. The danger I’m in—that we are in—is because Alec is trying to stop some very bad people from doing terrible things.”

“Then he should call the police, that’s what they are there for, Adri. Don’t let him drag you into some kind of vigilante-inspired quest for glory.”

I wanted to yell at her, but I forced myself to keep my voice under control. My mother was older and more experienced than I was, but she wasn’t ready for the world I’d been living in since we’d arrived in Sanctuary. She was obsessing about my situation as a way of denying the seriousness of her own circumstances.

“The police can’t help us, Mom. They can’t do anything until after a law has been broken, and even then, sometimes there are criminals they aren’t qualified to deal with. You’re in the same situation now. The police aren’t going to be able to save you—you need to take steps of your own to make sure that you’re not a soft target.”

I opened the door to my room and looked out at the rest of the RV, but rather than the calm, ordered environment I’d grown to expect from our time on the road, I found the desperate motion of a group of people who were one step away from disaster. Alec was talking on the phone and the hand holding his cell had gone white from the effort of not crushing the device.

“What do you mean you don’t have eyes on them? I specifically told you to keep their compound under observation. Buildings don’t just disappear. If the satellite is still working then you should be able to see the compound and be able to confirm whether or not they’ve started evacuating.”

Alec turned towards Donovan and pointed at the laptop the butler was working on. “Fine, send the feed to Donovan’s machine. I want to see what you’re talking about for myself.”

Donovan’s inbox chimed as an email arrived, and then his screen flickered as he clicked on a link and a video feed started playing. It took me several seconds to realize what I was seeing. There was so much smoke filling the center of the screen that it was only the large fountain on the bottom left-hand corner that made it possible to tell that we were looking at an overhead view of the Bishop Compound in Chicago.

A heartbeat after I finally registered what was going on all of the phones in the RV started ringing at the same time.

“Mom, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, but in the meantime make sure that you get those bodyguards.”