“Why don’t you just tell him that you have to be with her? I told you what I saw,” Lilly urged.

“Because Canis lupus males are completely unreasonable when it comes to the safety of their females and it won’t matter what you saw. All Fane will be thinking about is that he isn’t with me to protect me. He needs to be able to focus on finding Costin, not worrying about me.”

“Well, he’s your mate and you know him best, so do what you need to. I’ll be here to help Alina with Slate and Thia. So don’t worry about them while y’all are helping Sally.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Jacque said as she took Slate from her mother. He immediately turned his face toward her, even though he was sound asleep.

Jacque held her son, taking the seat her mom had occupied. She was exhausted, but she just needed to hold him. When she got too tired to stay awake, she put his bassinet right next to her and climbed into the bed. She laid her hand beside him, placing her finger in his tiny hand. Jacque was asleep before her mom turned out the lights as she left.

“Our mates are up to something,” Fane said to Decebel as Jacque slipped from his mind. They’d found clothes hanging on a clothesline in one of the few homes that were scattered throughout the mountains. They’d phased from their wolves so they could talk, and they were walking, taking a much-needed break, through the forest. All three men were frustrated to no end at not having caught Costin yet.

“When are they not up to something?” Vasile asked his son.

Decebel chuckled. “Jen doesn’t consider the fact that I can slip in her mind while she’s sleeping.”

“Don’t you feel bad about invading her thoughts while she sleeps?” Fane asked.

Decebel laughed. “Fane, consider who my mate is.”

Fane shrugged. “True.” He reached for his own mate and found that she was asleep. He smiled to himself. He felt a little bad, but at the same time, he wanted to know what she was keeping from him.

He heard Decebel’s growl and then let out his own growl.

“They went with Peri to Oceanside,” Fane snapped.

Decebel stopped abruptly and snarled. “Peri left them! She left them in Oceanside all night, by themselves.”

Vasile turned to look at him. “You know how much Peri cares about those girls. She kept an eye on them I’m sure. She was probably teaching them a much-needed lesson.”

“They sat on a swing all night,” Fane bit out, trying to consider his father’s words and not the fact that he wanted to rip Peri a new one for abandoning his mate.

“I know that you guys want your females to stay put, but you’ve been with them long enough to know that the likelihood of that is about the same as Desdemona coming back from the grave as Glenda the good witch. We need to focus on Costin and trust that Peri will not let anything happen to them.”

Decebel’s eyes glowed amber. “I’m still going to take a bite out of my mate when I see her again.”

Fane chuckled. “That won’t be punishment to her.”

Decebel shoved Fane who just laughed harder.

Finally, after another few hours of walking on two feet, Vasile stopped. “What do you think about bedding down here for a couple hours before we phase and track his scent again?”

Both Fane and Decebel agreed.

The three men each propped themselves up against a tree. Fane wanted to slip back into his mate’s mind, just so he could feel close to her, but he knew he wouldn’t get any sleep if he did. He closed his eyes and tried to push away the horror of finding the dead human, the frustration of being separated from his mate, and the fact that they couldn’t catch up with Costin. All in all, it was a hell of a day.

Costin knew they were hunting him. He had caught their scent a couple of times. His wolf was leading them on a merry chase, doubling back and going over his trail again and then splashing through streams to try and shake them.

They’d found the dead human. He knew it because they’d picked up their pace after that. Decebel was probably thinking that he was beyond saving and dreading the idea of having to kill him. Costin had thought he was too, but then he’d come upon that man attempting to rape a female. With a flash of rage, he saw Sally as the victim. He’d dragged the man off of the woman and through the forest far away from her. And then his wolf had taken his rage out on the rapist.

He had wanted to go back and make sure that the female got to safety—he knew there was a house near where he’d found them—but his wolf was too worked up. So he ran. He ran until he felt as though he was going to collapse. Having pulled himself from the darkness long enough to kill the man that had been attacking Sally—but not really Sally—had helped him keep it together a little longer. And now that he was thinking just a bit clearer, he knew what he had to do in order to keep himself alive long enough to find his mate. It was desperate, but he couldn’t think of another way.

With a painful howl of turmoil, he sped onward to the one place that he knew he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else if his wolf lost control again—the In Between. It would be another day before he made it to the bridge, and he needed to come up with a payment for the troll. He wouldn’t be able to fight his way in. Even if he defeated the troll, the gate wouldn’t open unless the troll opened it himself, so that was priority number one for tomorrow. Slowing to trot, almost collapsing from exhaustion, Costin found a nice hole at the base of a large tree. With the screams of the rapist, and the whimpers of the poor girl he’d saved, ringing in his ears, he curled up for the night, hoping against hope that he might get some small amount of peaceful sleep before the coming ordeal the following day.

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he felt a nudge to wake up. He blinked his eyes open and saw soft, pure, white light illuminating the area around him. Costin stood and realized he was in his human form and wearing a pair of shorts.

“Costin Miklos, my child, mate to Sally, father of Titus, and Beta of the Serbia pack,” the Great Luna called him.

He turned to face her and then bowed his head. “Maker,” he said, his voice full of awe. He felt peace for the first time since he’d lost his mate.

“You have been strong. You have stumbled, but you have not fully succumbed to the darkness. I implore you to stand fast. Your time in this world is not over, nor is your mates.”