energy geared up above her, drowning out even her own sobbing breaths.
She didn’t need to look to know what that meant: the vortex was fully formed. If she was going to leave, she had to do it now.
And, oh, dear God, she needed to leave.
Tears blurring her eyes, she spun and bolted up the remainder of the path.
She heard Dayn shout her name, but she didn’t look back. Couldn’t. She could only look ahead of herself.
The narrow stone bridge that formed the archway was higher than it had looked from the ground, the drop scarier, the pathway itself narrower—little more than a two-foot-wide span in places and crumbling at its sides. But where only a few days earlier she had balked at the rope bridge, now she strode across the crumbling stone archway without fear.
She wasn’t sure if she was too scared to be scared anymore, having been vaccinated by repeated terror, but as she looked down into the dark center of the vortex, her only real thought was, Well, here goes nothing. There was no anticipation as she called the spell to mind and visualized her apartment kitchen, which seemed suddenly small and stale rather than safe. But she couldn’t stay in the wolfyn realm and she didn’t want to go with Dayn anymore. Not now.
She glanced over, saw the pack gathered around Dayn as if awaiting orders and felt her heart break.
And she jumped into the whirlwind that would take her away.
Reda! Dayn watched her fall, felt the vortex surge deep in his bones and knew she was gone. He felt it in the emptiness inside him, the hollow spaces he hadn’t even recognized until the past few days.
Agony hammered through him—not the pain that had come with the change, but from the way she had looked at him when he transformed, and again when he killed Kenar. The world was better with the bastard dead, but he wished there had been another way. There hadn’t been, though, which left him with a pissed-off, leaderless pack and no time to waste.
Tearing his eyes from the archway, he refocused on the pack, not liking the way Kenar’s main lieutenants were closing on him, though there seemed to be some sort of commotion going on at the back, over where Reda had broken through. Maybe he had an ally or two, after all. Too bad one or two allies weren’t going to do a damn thing when the other forty-something went for his throat.
Pulse thudding sickly in his skull, he spread his hands in a “no harm, no foul” gesture. “Look, I just want to go home. If you’ll just let me—”
The wolfyn closest to him shimmered and stretched to his human form to reveal Janus, a thick-necked soldier who followed his alpha’s orders unquestioning and knew tradition better than he knew his siblings’ names. “You won the challenge,” he growled. “But we don’t intend to be led by a filthy bloodsucker.”
“I don’t want to lead you. I just want—”
“I claim the Right of Challenge.”
“Damn it, Janus, just listen for a minute. I don’t want to fight you.”
“Too bad.” The other male blurred and retook his wolfyn form, baring his teeth in a feral snarl.
Dayn cursed under his breath, all too aware that he only had so much time before the vortex started to die back down. Hell, the thing could collapse at any moment. Taking a deep breath, he called on his other magic, and—
“Hold, damn you!” a woman’s voice called.
Every eye swung to the source, and a murmur of yips and growls rose up at the sight of Keely in human form, pushing through the crowd with a man at her side. Easily twice her mass, he had silver hair despite appearing to be only a few years older than her. He wore the heavy furs and sigil of the Bite-Tail pack, and sent Dayn a steely look as they joined him in the fight circle that had cleared at Janus’s challenge.
“Who the hell are you?” Dayn blurted, but even as he said it, the Bite-Tail connection clicked and he put it together. “Roloff?”
“Aye.” The big man’s low growl carried enough force to quell the pack instantly. He swept the wolfyn with a look. “Keely’s father promised her to me, but Kenar broke that bond and outcast me. I claim her by right of the original promise.”
And to Dayn’s utter shock, Keely blushed.
Not a loner, then, Dayn realized. It had been Roloff, coming around during each moon time,