Kane crouched at the edge of the treeline and counted the tracks in the mud. Four sets. All wolf. None of them his. He had left Eden's cottage an hour ago and already the sky was going gray. Every minute here was a minute she stood alone behind a moss line and a locked door. He needed a pack at his back before something worse than him came sniffing around her yard. He did not have a pack. He had a list of names whispered by drunks and a forest full of wolves who had forgotten their own faces. He followed the freshest track north until the trees opened onto a stone hollow. His own cottage sat inside it, low and quiet, the door marked with a paw print he had carved himself. He did not go in. He waited. Theo came down the slope from the other side, blue hair damp, jacket half-zipped, boots quiet on the rock. "You're late," Kane said. "I'm here." Kane held out a folded scrap of paper. Six names on it. Wolves he had scented at the edges of Everwood over the last month. "Tell me which ones are still people." Theo read the list. His mouth tightened at the third name and again at the fifth. He handed it back. "Two," Theo said. "The rest are gone." "You're sure." "I watched them. You told me to watch them." Kane looked at the paper. Four names to cross out. Four days he would have wasted. Four nights Eden would have been alone for nothing. He folded the paper smaller. "Which two?" Theo pointed. "Her. Him. Her den is past the crystal pool. His is closer. Start with him." "Why him first." "He still flinches when you say his name. He remembers being spoken to." Kane nodded once. He did not thank him. Theo did not wait for it. A laugh cracked from the rocks above them. Raze sat on a boulder with his boots swinging, ram horns catching the last light. Kane had not heard him arrive. That itself was a message. "Two wolves," Raze said. His tongue flicked. "That's a sad little pack, Holtwood. You sure the girl's worth thinning your options for?" Kane did not look up. "Get off my rock." "I'm just saying. You go recruiting, something walks up to that cottage while you're gone. Something already has her scent." He grinned. "Just neighborly concern." Kane's eyes flashed yellow. Raze raised his hands and slid off the boulder, still smiling, and was gone between the trees. Kane stood. The list in his hand was shorter now, and heavier. He knew who to find and in what order. He also knew he had been watched deciding it, and that whatever hunted Eden already knew he had left her side. "Go back to her yard," he told Theo. "Stay in the trees. Don't be seen." Theo was already moving.

Kane came off the ridge at a run. Raze's words sat behind his teeth like a stone. Something already had Eden's scent. He had left her behind a moss line and a locked door with only a ghost for company, and now the woods between him and her cottage were too long. He could shift and cross faster on four legs, but a white wolf in daylight would draw every eye in Everwood to exactly the place he did not want watched. He needed help. He did not have time to earn it. He cut east instead of south. The closer recruit's den sat in that direction, a lean-to under a run-down cottage's collapsed porch. Theo had told him the man still flinched at his own name. Kane would take that. He would take anything that ran on two legs and remembered how. The cottage rose out of the brush like a broken tooth. Green paint peeling, roof half caved, every window punched through. Kane stopped at the porch step. He did not call out. He waited. A blonde head lifted from behind the railing. Scars raked one cheek. The younger wolf, Blake, stood slow, hands open, jacket loose. He looked at Kane the way an omega looks at any alpha he does not yet belong to. "You're Holtwood," Blake said. "I am." "Theo said you'd come." Blake's nose worked once. His eyes sharpened. "You've been running. Something on you smells wrong." "Not on me. On the girl I left at a cottage an hour south. Something's tracking her. I can't reach her before it does. Not alone." Blake did not blink. "Why me." "Because you can still smell what I can't. And because Theo said you remember being spoken to." Blake's jaw worked. He looked past Kane at the trees. Kane watched him decide. He did not push. Pushing an omega was how you got a wolf who obeyed and hated you for it. He had learned that from the other side. "What do I get," Blake said. Quieter now. "A pack. If I'm wrong about you, you walk. If I'm right, you stand with us." Blake stepped off the porch. His boots hit dirt without sound. "Then we run. I'll cut the track from the wind. You keep up." Kane felt his shoulders drop half an inch. He had not known they were up. They shifted at the treeline. Kane's white wolf hit the ground first, broad and pale, jaws already open for air. Blake went low and lean beside him, nose down, and took the lead without asking. Kane let him. That was the deal. They crossed three miles before the wind shifted. Blake stopped hard. His hackles rose. He looked back at Kane once, ears flat. The scent he had caught was not ahead of them. It was already at the cottage.