“I don’t think…” His eyes closed then opened almost immediately, and he raised his head awkwardly from the bed. “Wait, yes, he has! He asked me about it a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t know what scar he was talkin’ about, ‘cause I couldn’t see it. I forgot all about that!”

I turned to my father in triumph. “That’s how he knew! Marc had seen Dan’s scar, then when he took Eckard’s clothes for warmth, he noticed an identical mark on his back, and knew that was too weird to be a coincidence!”

My father nodded thoughtfully, and I could practically see the gears in his head turning.

When everything was ready, Dr. Carver chose a scalpel from the tools laid out on a clean towel over Manx’s nightstand, and with my mother there to soak up the blood with a sterile white cloth, the doc made his first incision.

It was a lot easier than I’d expected. Just a single cut, then Dr. Carver used a special pair of tweezers to remove the chip—which was right where it should have been—and sewed Dan back up.

Dan felt no pain, but claimed he could feel weird tugging sensations, so he lay as still as he could, with his eyes squeezed shut.

“There.” Dr. Carver sat up straight and handed his curved suture needle to my mother, who set it on a metal baking tray she’d brought in from the kitchen—at-home medical care at its finest. “Let’s get you all cleaned up, and you’ll be as good as new.”

I stared at the tiny, blood-coated microchip lying beside the scalpel on my mother’s tray. “Do you think we could trace a serial number from it, or something like that? Find out who—”

But the rest of my sentence was lost forever, swallowed whole by a sudden, urgent cry from the backyard.

“Help!” It was Jace, shouting with more fright and rage than I’d ever heard in his voice. “Someone help me with her!”

A jolt of adrenaline raced through me. My heart pounded. My hands clenched around the mug and it shattered in my grip, raining hot coffee and chunks of ceramic all over me and the floor. I was out of the room in an instant, and Owen’s boots clomped on the floor behind me, where he’d emerged from the office. But my father was already halfway down the hall.

We burst through the back door almost as one. At my first glimpse of Jace—a deep shadow in the predawn darkness—my feet froze on the porch, and my breathing quickened with shock. Owen ran right into me. He would have knocked me down all four steps if my dad hadn’t caught me.

My father paused only long enough to right me, then raced across the backyard with the speed of a much younger man.

Jace was halfway between the tree line and the back door, jogging unsteadily, his arms held awkwardly in front of his chest. When he stepped into the light from the guesthouse porch, I saw that he carried Kaci in both arms. Her head bobbed limply near his right shoulder, her hair brushing his hip with each step. Her legs dangled from his other arm, one foot bare. Blood dripped steadily from either his right arm or her head, staining the dead grass with a trail of fat, red drops.

Owen grabbed my arm on his way down the stairs, hauling me with him. Two steps later, I’d come back to myself and was running of my own accord. We were still fifty feet from Jace when I caught the first whiff of the blood.

It was his, not hers. Thank goodness.

Still, my pulse spiked as I closed the distance between us. Why was he bleeding? Why was she unconscious? And where the hell was Ethan?

“…think she’s okay,” Jace was saying when I pulled close enough to hear him over my own ragged breathing and racing heart. “She just passed out. Here, take her.” He held Kaci out to me and I took her without a second thought. “Gotta go back…”

Jace turned toward the trees, but my father stopped him with a single heavy hand on his shoulder. “What happened?” he asked, as I ran my gaze over Kaci’s face and shoulders, then down both arms. Jace had said she was fine, but I had to verify that for myself.

Jace shook his head as if to clear it, and I could smell adrenaline pouring out of him and into the air. Mixing with the scent of his blood. Now that I held Kaci, his wound was exposed. The right sleeve of his coat was shredded, and his arm was ripped open from wrist to elbow, the skin dangling in several places. The bone exposed.

He’d been mauled.

My arms tightened around Kaci involuntarily, and a moan escaped my lips before I could press them together. But incredibly, Jace didn’t seem to have noticed his own injury.

“Four toms. Quarter mile southeast of the bend in the creek. Three Shifted. Alex is on foot.”

The only Alex I knew was Alex Malone, Jace’s half brother—the second son born to his mother and Calvin Malone. And if Alex was more than two years out of high school, I was Thomas O’Malley, the alley cat.

“Cal sent them for Kaci. Said not to come back without her.” By the time Jace’s mouth closed on that last word, his eyes had glazed with shock. He’d lost a lot of blood, and it was still flowing.

Owen’s shirt hit the grass, and the guesthouse porch light glinted off his bare back in the cold. My father’s face had grown grim, his eyes blazing in equal parts fear and fury. “Where’s Ethan?”

Jace stumbled, and Owen put a hand out to steady him. “Stayed to fight. Told me to get Kaci home.”

“Good.” Dad took Jace’s right hand and gently pulled his arm forward to inspect the injury. “Go in and let the doc get you fixed up,” he said, as Kaci moaned in my arms. I hoped she’d wake up, but she only turned her head toward me. Her eyes never opened.