"Does the Brecks' protection extend to the woods? And the rest of the shifters?"

Gabriel smiled at me. Keenly. "If you're here, Kitten, you're safe. That goes for both of you. Frankly, most Pack members don't give a rat's a.s.s about politics in Chicago. And even if they did, they aren't going to choose a bullying politician over friends of the Pack."

"And I've got your back, Mer," Jeff said with a wink, earning a dark look from Ethan.

The shifters and sorcerers filed into the night, but Ethan stopped me with a hand. "Dagger?" he quietly asked.

"In my boot," I said. Vampires usually preferred not to employ hidden weapons, but these were special circ.u.mstances. "You don't share Gabe's confidence?"

"Gabe knows what he has planned. I do not. We have allies, certainly. Him, Jeff, Nick. A Pack member would have to be, as you might say, wicked b.a.l.l.sy to commit treachery under Gabriel's nose." We'd seen it before, and with unpleasant consequences. "But clearly many of the shifters aren't fans of vampires, and like Michael, they won't be glad to see us here."

"I would never say 'wicked b.a.l.l.sy.' But I take your point." And I hoped we hadn't escaped Diane Kowalcyzk only to fall into a new kind of drama. But in case we did: "You're armed, too?"

Ethan nodded. "A blade, like yours. A matched set," he added with a smile, tugging on the end of my ponytail. "And we'll see what we'll see."

He slipped his hand into mine but, when we started toward the door, glanced down at my booted feet.

"Color me surprised, Sentinel. Your shoes appear to be appropriate."

I rolled my eyes. "It was icy that night, so I wore galoshes."

"With couture. Very expensive couture."

"It was Chicago in February. I made a practical decision. And I pulled it off."

Only to have him carry me to my parents' threshold and fake a marriage proposal on one knee. So I'd managed to avoid falling in stilettos-but had still nearly had a heart attack.

"Children," Mallory said, peeking into the doorway. "I believe we're waiting on you."

"Sorry," I said, stepping outside as Ethan followed behind me. "Just debating the finer points of fashion."

"Only vampires," Gabriel muttered, and moved forward into the darkness.

Chapter Three.

LONE WOLF.

The night was cold but uncommonly still. No wind at all, which was a blessing in Chicago in February.

With Gabriel in front, the frozen ground crunching beneath our feet, we played follow the leader around the house and toward the estate's back lawn. It dipped down to the woods, which made a dark curtain at the edge of the visible world, a black sea beneath a blanket of stars. They twinkled above us, cold and unfeeling, and a sudden ominous shiver went through me.

Sentinel? Ethan silently asked, taking my hand.

I squeezed in response and dismissed my fear. I wasn't a child; I was a vampire. A predator, and with allies around.

"Dark out here," Mallory said with a nervous laugh ahead of us, hand in hand with Catcher.

"Could be worse," Catcher said. "You could be a vampire on the lam."

"Yeah, I don't recommend it," I said. "Although it certainly does make for interesting bedfellows."

"I'd better be your only bedfellow, Sentinel."

"Who could possibly replace you?" I asked, grinning when Mallory looked back and winked. A twinge of nostalgia went through me. That was the camaraderie I'd missed, something we'd begun to lose when the supernatural drama had grown between us.

As we descended the hill toward the tree line, a breeze blew toward us, and there was magic in it. Fresh and peppery and hinting of animals.

We stepped onto the dirt path that led into the woods, ground that I'd trod many times before. The trail where Nick and I had played as children had been cleared and widened, allowing access for adults.

There was movement to the left. Nick Breckenridge emerged from a side trail in front of Mallory and Catcher, a woman behind him, their hands linked together. He was dark and tall, with closely cropped hair and rugged features. With his snug shirt, cargo pants, and strong jaw, he looked every bit the journalist, albeit one more used to war zones and exotic locations than tramping through the woods of a multimillion-dollar estate.

The woman didn't look familiar. I knew Nick was dating someone-or at least that a woman had answered his phone a few nights ago-but I didn't know if she was the one. She had the self-a.s.sured bearing of a shifter, but if she had magic, she hid it well.

"Merit," he said.

"Nick."

"I don't think you've met Yvette."

Yvette nodded.

"Merit and I went to high school together," Nick said.

"Nice to meet you," she said, and they disappeared into the darkness ahead of us.

Mallory moved back to me and linked an arm in mine, displacing Ethan as my hiking partner.

"I think you just got jealous," she whispered.

"I'm not jealous. But I am more than 'a girl he went to high school with.'"

She snorted. "What did you want him to say? That you're the girl he's pined over since he made the regretful decision to break up with you in high school? Which was ten years ago, I'll point out."

"No," I said, drawing out the word to emphasize just how silly that thought was. "But maybe something along the lines of, 'This is Merit, sentinel of Cadogan House, protector of the weak, defender of the innocent'?"

"Yeah. Let me know when the Avengers come calling. In the meantime, while he does have a very curvy Yvette, you have an Ethan Sullivan."

"I hate it when you have a point."

"I'm wise beyond my years."

The trail narrowed, and we fell into a silent, single-file line, the skeleton trees standing sentinel around us. The woods were draped in winter silence, the native creatures sleeping, hibernating, or deliberately avoiding the train of predators. The woods were deep, and I'd been back as far as a hedge maze that I thought was somewhere to my right. But it was dark and the trail was pitched, and I wasn't entirely sure of my direction.

We followed the trail for ten or fifteen more minutes, until the woods opened, revealing a large meadow surrounded by glowing torches.

The clearing was at least the size of a football field, and in the middle stood a twenty-foot-tall totem, animals carved in a trunk at least four feet thick. Tents, campfires, and folding chairs were sprinkled here and there. And everywhere, shifters milled, most in the official black leather jackets of the North American Central.

Scents filled the air. The fur and musk of animals, charcoal, roasting meat, earth. There was life here. Renewal and rebirth, even though spring was still weeks away.

I guessed that was why the Brecks hadn't wanted us here. Shifters could take care of themselves, certainly, but there were a lot of families in the open s.p.a.ce, and tents wouldn't be easy to defend. On the other hand, they were, like us, on private property held by one of the most powerful families in Chicago. That was a point in their favor.

Gabriel left us at the edge of the wood, walking to his wife, Tanya, who stood in the clearing with their infant son in her arms. Tanya was a lovely brunette, a woman with smiling eyes and pink cheeks, her softness a contrast to Gabe's tawny ferocity. Gabe put a paternal hand on Connor's head and pressed a kiss to Tanya's lips. She beamed up at him, the love between them comfortable and obvious.

Jeff found Fallon, Gabriel's younger sister. They'd been on-again, off-again for a time, but considering the warmth of their embrace, I guessed they'd made "on" a little more permanent. Fallon was pet.i.te, with a st.u.r.dy, athletic body and wavy hair the same sun-kissed color as Gabe's. She preferred black clothing and tonight wore knee-high motorcycle-style boots, a short skirt, and an NAC leather jacket.

I didn't know Fallon very well, but I knew Jeff, and there weren't many I respected as much as him. If he loved her-and the look in his eyes made clear that he did-then she was good people.

"Ready?" Catcher asked.

"Now or never," Ethan said, taking my hand as we stepped forward into the meadow and into the fray.

Shifters chatted in camp chairs, watching cautiously as we pa.s.sed. Others hurried around us with steaming food or boxes of gear. Someone nudged my elbow, and I turned to find a squatty woman with freshly bleached hair standing behind me, a foil-wrapped bundle in her hands. It was as large as a newborn baby and smelled of meat and chilies.

She looked me over, shook her head in disappointment, and thrust the package at me.

I nearly grunted under the weight. It was as heavy as a newborn baby, too.

"h.e.l.lo, Berna," I said.

Berna was a shifter, a relative of the Keene family, and the bartender at Little Red, the Pack watering hole in Chicago's Ukrainian Village neighborhood. She was convinced I didn't eat enough and enjoyed plying me with food. Since I enjoyed eating, we'd managed to stay friends of a sort.

She looked at Ethan and winged up her pencil-drawn eyebrows suggestively. "h.e.l.lo, man," she said in her st.u.r.dy Eastern European accent.

"Berna," Ethan said politely, eyeing what I guessed was a baby-sized burrito. "Nothing for me?"

Without even blinking, Berna yanked the package from my hands and offered it to Ethan.

"Is family recipe. You will eat. You"-she looked him over, from blond hair to booted feet-"should remain strong. Handsome."

I think I just won Berna, he silently said, and nodded gravely at her. "Thank you, Berna. I'm sure this will be delicious."

She sniffed, as if offended by the mere possibility it wouldn't be delicious, but her eyelashes stayed batty, and her gaze didn't stray much from his face.

"I guess we aren't getting anything," Catcher muttered behind us.

"So these are the vampires?"

A shifter stepped beside Berna-a woman who was taller and thinner, with a short shock of platinum blond hair. She was muscled and rugged, her features better described as handsome than pretty. And she all but vibrated with irritated magic.

"Twilight," Berna confirmed, pointing at me and Ethan. "Grumpy," she said, pointing around me at Catcher.

She looked at Mallory for a few seconds before offering judgment. "Magic," she finally said with the smallest of smiles, and it was obvious she meant the word as a compliment.

Mallory beamed, but Berna's friend was not impressed.

"You shouldn't be here," she said, pointing at each of us in turn and flinging magic with each movement. It left a sting like tiny insects. "This isn't any of your business, and it isn't for you." She stuck her nose into the air, slid Berna a narrowed look. "And you shouldn't carouse with them."

"We were invited here," Mallory said. I think she might have put an arm around Berna, except that Berna had already puffed out her chest and was nearly buzzing with irritation.

"Go," she said, flicking her hands at the woman. "Go elsewhere. Too negative."

But Berna's dismissal only seemed to encourage the woman.

"Mark my words," she said, that finger pointed again. "This is all doomed because we didn't go home when we could have. We should have left Chicago months ago, and we certainly shouldn't be here now. The Keene family should have been removed a long time ago. They are leading us right into disaster." Her eyes flashed with self-righteous anger. That emotion seemed to be in unusually strong supply among shifters lately.

She walked away before Berna could respond to the slight, joining up with two other women who gave us suspicious looks. But Berna's balled fists made it clear she'd had words in the hopper.

"I see you've met Aline." Gabriel joined us, made a point of putting a hand on Ethan's shoulder. Aline and her troop of friends didn't seem impressed.

"She's a charmer," Ethan dryly said.

"Where have you been keeping her locked away?" Mallory asked.

"She keeps herself locked away," Gabriel said. "She and my father b.u.t.ted heads and she's transferred that hatred onto our generation."

Berna patted his arm collegially. "You are not popular, but you are doing right."

"Maybe," Gabriel said, "but I'd prefer to be both." He towered over Berna and glanced down at her from his couple of extra feet. "We ready?"

She made a sound that made clear exactly how ridiculous she thought the question. Berna, apparently, was always ready.

Gabriel smiled. "My fanged friends, you're about to be witness to a very special treat. Tonight, you get to hear us roar."

He lifted his head and unleashed a howl that sent shivers down my spine-and invoked the rest of the chorus. Not all shifters were wolves, and the Pack's sounds were just as varied and cacophonous. Howls, screeches, feline roars, and screams that might have been from birds of prey. Together, as the shifters formed a circle around the totem in the middle of the meadow, they lifted their voices and sang into the night, the very sound magic.

Goose b.u.mps lifted on my arms. Ethan slipped his hand into mine as we shared the sight and sound of it. After a moment, the howls quieted, now a backbeat instead of a melody.

Gabriel looked at Mallory appraisingly. "You ready?"

She blew out a breath with pursed lips, then loosened her shoulders and nodded, this time confidently. And although nervousness still fluttered in the air around her, it was a good kind of nervousness. Excited antic.i.p.ation-not the resigned dread I'd sensed before.

Side by side, they walked forward into the circle and stood in front of the totem. A hush fell over the crowd.

I glanced at Catcher. His expression was blank, but his eyes fixed on Mal and the shifter at her side. If he was nervous for her, he wasn't showing it.

His hair pushed behind his ears, Gabriel looked more like a biker or boxer than Pack Apex, the king of his people, but there was no doubt in the set of his shoulders and grave expression that he stood as leader of them all.

"Tonight," he said, hands on his hips, "we celebrate the Pack, the mothers, the sires. We celebrate our founding, our brothers, Romulus and Remus, and our future. We celebrate the wild things. We have voted to remain in the realm of humans and vampires. That decision was not unanimous, but it was a decision to stay, to join, to bind together with our brothers and sisters and become stronger in the binding."

He looked at Mallory. "There are those among us who have erred, deeply and significantly. Who have wounded the world and broken themselves. The worst of them lose themselves in their errors. The best of them crawl back, one foot at a time, and seek to amend their breaches. That is the way of the brave."