“Still,” I agree, more softly now. “I hear you.”
We talk for another minute about her mother and about how Anne is doing in her new, mated life. I step between two birch trees without really paying attention to where I’m going.
“Anyway,” Violet is saying, “I’ll let you get back to your work. Tell that grumpy alpha—”
Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck lifts. Every fine, soft hair, all at once. A cold line of it running from my hairline down into the collar of my blouse.
I stop walking. My wolf is on her feet inside me, hackles raised, a low rumble starting in the base of my chest.
“Sienna?” Violet’s voice is sharp. “What is it?”
I do not answer. I turn my head slowly. The forest presses close around me in green and brown, dappled with sun. There isno birdsong. I didn’t notice until now how quiet it has gotten in here.
“Something is watching me,” I tell my friend, and my voice comes out quiet and even in a way that surprises me.
“Where are you?” Violet asks urgently.
“In the forest.” I swallow. “The one bordering the estate.”
“Sienna, get out of there.”
“I’m trying to.”
I start walking backward, eyes flicking from tree trunk to tree trunk. My heels sink into moss. I hold the phone up. I don’t know why I am still holding the phone up when my wolf is snarling at the back of my throat, a continuous low vibration: run run run.
“Violet, I think I have to shif—”
A snarl rips from the undergrowth to my left. Close. Too close. The sound is strange in a way I don’t have time to parse.
I run.
“Sienna!”
“Don’t hang up!” I gasp, already sprinting. The phone is clenched in my white-knuckled hand. Branches whip at my face. I duck on instinct, pivot around a tree, tear up a slope of loose leaves. “Don’t hang up, don’t hang up.”
Behind me, something is giving pursuit. The impacts are heavy. Four-legged. Fast. I can’t see it. It’s not behind me. It’s running parallel to me!
My wolf is howling inside me to come out, to turn and fight, and I am half a breath from letting her. My skin is already starting to itch with the shift.
Tree line. Get to the tree line.
I can see the brightness of the lawn through the trunks ahead, the pale stone of the low wall. My lungs burn. My heels are useless on this terrain, and I kick one off and then the other without slowing down. Barefoot is faster. My claws are startingto extend at my fingertips. I can feel fangs pressing against my lip.
I break through the last ring of birches at a dead run and slam into a solid wall of male chest.
My claws are up at his throat before my brain has caught up with my body. I have him by the collar, one hand fisted in fabric, the other hooked just under his jaw with half an inch separating the point of my index claw and the skin of his neck.
His hands come up to catch me at the waist.
“Sienna.”
It’s Lucas.
My knees buckle.
He takes my weight instantly, a firm band of arm around my middle, pulling me in against him so I don’t fall to the ground. My claws are still at his throat. I stare at them. I stare at his throat. There is a faint line of red where the tip of one claw has touched skin.
“Oh, Goddess.” My voice comes out shaking. “Oh, Goddess, it’s you. It’s you.”