Before you dive into this sneak preview…this is book three in a series! Haven’t read the first two books yet? Mate Market is the place to start.

***

Chapter 1

The knife was burning into my palms, and my oldest friend was disappearing before my eyes.

Which, okay, wasn’t entirely odd. Braden was a ghost after all. And the knife, his anchor, was magical.

But the knife didn’t usually cause blisters the instant I made contact. And Braden wasn’t fading a little the way he sometimes did when running low on energy. Instead, patches of ghost were erasing from the edges inward, allowing hard lines of the bookcase and stainless-steel laboratory bench behind him to show through.

“Wren?” Ellie hovered just outside the salt-marked ward circle, her voice rising to a pitch even higher than usual for the eight-year-old ghost. “What’s happening?”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. The empowerment ritual was intended to give Braden unilateral control over his anchor and to prevent him from losing memories whenever his magic was accessed. To use Ellie’s phrasing, he’d become his own boss.

We’d both agreed that was worth a little risk. Especially after this morning when Braden had looked at me with a blank, searching expression and asked, “Sorry—what’s your name again?”

He’d remembered me within seconds, brushing off the lapse with his usual wordplay. But his eyes hadn’t been laughing, and mine hadn’t either.

Which made me unwilling to wait until I was sure about every facet of the empowerment ritual before attempting it. No matter how leery my mate had been of the plan.

And now Locke’s concerns proved to have been valid. Because the energy spiraling between me and Braden kept building with no apparent end in sight. The heat from his pocketknife intensified until I ached to let go of it.

Unfortunately, my fingers wouldn’t uncurl. And the only people present were ghosts: one a little girl stuck outside the wards, the other a teenager unable to do anything other than grit his teeth and try to cling to continued existence. Neither was able to snatch the anchor out of my grip.

Locke would have been able to help, of course. He’d wanted to be here, even though he’d disapproved of the endeavor. Had offered to stand guard as my “magical fire extinguisher” in case things went wrong.

“You have your own pack to run,” I’d told him.

His answer was simple. “You’re my mate.”

Which should have ended the discussion. Should have meant I’d include him in the ritual, trust him to catch me if I fell.

Instead, I’d smiled and changed the subject. Then I waited until Locke was busy and built a ward circle that blocked our mate-bond connection. The goal? He wouldn’t even know what I was doing until the ritual was complete.

Old habits apparently died hard.

Now, trapped within the six-foot-wide ward circle, I was regretting all those choices. Because the ward blocked me from calling for Locke’s help the same way it blocked his knowledge of the ritual. Even as Braden’s form flickered. Even as my friend’s left elbow vanished into thin air.

As I tried and failed to open my fingers yet again, a draft of cold wind swept through the room. My eyes flew to the door, expecting Locke even though he’d have no way of knowing I was in trouble.

The door stayed closed, just like the windows. And midsummer wasn’t the season for cold breezes.

Still, chill sank into my bones like frostbite. My breath fogged…

Then the cold was gone. And so was Braden.

Except he wasn’t. I could feel him. The pack bond insisted he was standing right there in front of me. But my eyes showed only emptiness where he should have been.

Which is when the pocketknife jerked open in my hands.

I clenched down on the handle as the still-hot and now sharp anchor tried to slither out of my grip. Because every anchor has a special ability, and Braden’s was a doozy. The blade could cut through space and magic as well as flesh.

Sure enough, the tiniest glancing touch of blade-edge sent energy crackling along the ward circle. And, yes, dismantling the ward would let me call Locke…but it would also risk turning this out-of-control experiment loose on everyone outside it.

Ellie, for example. Perhaps even members of Locke’s living pack.

“Braden?” My voice came out strangled, hoping he was the one manipulating his anchor. “Please stop that.”

No answer. Or, well, no words.

But books started flying off the shelves along the back wall where the ward circle brushed up against bookcases. The first one to take flight was a thick volume on ghost theory that put me to sleep every time I opened it. This time, the tome seemed intent upon putting me to sleep in a different and more permanent manner as it sailed past my head close enough so the breeze of its passing swept hair into my mouth.

Then a mug splintered as it struck the floor at the opposite side of the ward circle. Papers scattered like startled birds.

Poltergeist activity. The kind I’d only seen once before, originating with a ghost who wasn’t bound at all. One who was furious about his death and used that fury to burn through every bit of energy holding him to earth without regard for how it would shorten his afterlife.

“Braden!” Ellie shrieked through the chaos. “Don’t hurt Wren!”

“Don’t hurt yourself!” I added. “You’re draining your energy!”

Another book launched itself at me in lieu of an answer. I ducked while also trying again to close the knife, to reverse the ritual before—

The laboratory door slammed against the far wall as it opened.

“Wren!” Locke’s voice roared through the chaos, sharp with fear and command. Behind him, a pack mate appeared briefly in the doorway, security tablet still clutched in one hand.

Despite the swirl of debris and the erratic anchor in my hand, I focused on who was present. I was trying to learn Locke’s pack mates—my pack mates. So I forced myself to put a name to the scared face hovering behind Locke.

Tobias was the one who’d helped find data on a smashed computer back in the spring. He was twenty-something, obsessively organized, and uncomfortable around wolf weavers…which meant he and I hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words in the months I’d lived here.

This ritual gone awry was likely to drive even more of a wedge between the pack and the academy if Tobias carried tales of weird ghost magic away without having my motivations explained.

Locke didn’t worry about any of that. He just waved a dismissal at his pack mate, then his intense gaze returned to me. “Now,” he suggested with careful calm, “might be a good time to shut this down.”

My pulse kicked against my ribs as my wolf tried to force her way out, wanting fur and fangs and a threat she could actually bite into. Or perhaps she wanted what she always wanted when Locke was in the room—to go to him, to forget the complications between us, to…

But the energy around me was building to a crescendo. Locke had a very good point. Unfortunately—

“Be glad to shut the ritual down if I knew how to,” I managed to grit out between clenched teeth.

Because I’d already tried the obvious. And if Braden’s anchor managed to dismantle the ward circle before I stopped whatever I’d started—

A vial exploded near my feet, shards of glass biting into my calves. The ward circle’s light flared bright enough to sear through my rapidly squinched-shut eyelids.

The energy I’d woken was tearing itself apart, and me along with it. What was it doing to Braden? Would he still be himself once the magic burned out?

Locke cleared his throat and I suddenly knew what he intended. Because we’d learned over the last few months that Locke was a bond breaker, his abilities the polar opposite of my wolf-weaver knack. If he touched me with my pack bonds open, he’d temporarily dismiss my ghosts.

Not a huge problem usually. Possibly a huge problem now.

After all, I couldn’t be sure Braden would come back if he was dismissed in the middle of this malformed ritual.

“Stay outside the wards,” I warned.

Ignoring me, Locke stepped easily across the glowing edge of the ward circle that would have caused anyone else to bounce off. When faced with a bond breaker, the circle simply dissolved.

Wards collapsing around me felt like all of my clothes were being ripped off in the middle of an arctic gale. Searing. Freezing. Exposing.

And at the same moment, our mate bond snapped back open and Locke’s emotions crashed into my mind.

His worry was tinged with an edge of frustration he was clenched-fist suppressing. Without asking for permission, he touched my hand, the one holding the knife, the one throbbing with pain…

And the air pressure dropped. My ears popped. The oddest pine-needle aftertaste filled my mouth at the same time every connection I’d built—to Braden, to Ellie, to the spiraling magic—deflated like a pricked balloon.

For just a moment, the effect felt less like relief and more like something had opened its mouth and swallowed up the chaos. But then that thought was gone as the last dregs of ritual energy collapsed…and so did my knees.

The scorching hot knife fell from my nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a clatter that seemed too loud in the sudden silence. Locke caught me by the shoulders before I could join its descent.

Even though we were at odds, his touch steadied me, anchoring me to the physical world in a way nothing else could have. His scent of snow and wood smoke and my own newsprint tempted my lungs back to work. Inside me, my wolf uncurled and stretched, unworried by anything other than the pleasure of our mate’s touch.

Gradually, the heat of his palms seeped through fabric into skin that had gone cold with shock. For one traitorous moment, I let the wolf lead. Together, we leaned into that warmth, let Locke hold us up, forgot why his touch was dangerous.

Then I swallowed a bitter reminder of what skin-on-skin contact cost. Looked past my mate at the ruined laboratory full of overturned mugs and half-emptied shelves.

The lights that had illuminated the ward circle were long since extinguished. Books had stopped flying. Papers drifted slowly to rest.

And, as I’d expected, both Braden and Ellie were gone.

Chapter 2

“Let go of me.” The words came out sharper than I’d intended, but I couldn’t soften them. Not when my ghosts had been dismissed by Locke’s bond-breaker ability against my explicit command.

“In a minute.” His voice took on that maddening calm he used when forcing his temper to settle. “Let me see your hands first.”

“My hands are fine.” I tried to pull away, but my knees remained unsteady from the ritual’s implosion. The lab bench behind me was cold against my hip, sharp contrast to the fire in my palm and the heat of Locke’s touch.

Ignoring all of that, I added: “I need to bring Braden and Ellie back.”

I shouldn’t have needed to explain further. Locke and I were still learning how to navigate the junction between our abilities, but we’d long ago figured out that I couldn’t sweeten my ghosts’ anchors while he touched me. If I wanted to push my living strength into Braden’s knife and Ellie’s toy pony in hopes that would rematerialize them, the two of us had to break contact.

Still, Locke’s hands remained on my shoulders. His tight and sharp concern reverberated down our mate bond.

If I continued hiding experiments, what might happen next time? What if he’d arrived too late?

I was worried too. But worry didn’t ensure Braden and Ellie wouldn’t join the ranks of the ghosts I’d already lost.

George. Fran. Chloe. Names that ached worse than the throbbing of my injured palm.

Locke must have felt my emotional spiral via the mate bond because his hands fell away from my shoulders at last. And even though I’d been the one who demanded it, the distance he created between us felt like a loss.

My fingers twitched toward him, then I caught myself and curled them into fists. Immediately, blisters screamed protest.

Locke was the one who winced. “I’ll get the burn kit.”

He turned away as promised, which let me remove Ellie’s toy pony from my pocket then stoop to snatch Braden’s pocketknife off the floor. The metal of the latter was no longer scorching, but the blade was still open.

Without hesitation, I pressed my burned palm against the sharp edge.

Fresh pain flared hot and sharp, layering atop the deeper throb of burns and blisters. I heard a growl from across the room as blood welled up, Locke’s protective instincts pushing into me via the mate bond.

He wished that I’d anchor sweeten using something less violent than cutting into my own body. And it was true that sweat or spit did work most of the time. But I couldn’t risk half measures when Braden had looked so odd before disappearing. Especially since that odd coldness lingered in the air like smoke, the aftertaste of pine still strong on my tongue.

No, I needed blood this time. So I ignored my mate’s disapproval and focused on the knife and on the connection between Braden and this object that had been his most prized possession when he was still living.

Far too slowly, the anchor warmed beneath my touch. And, eventually, Braden’s presence materialized at the edge of my awareness.

He was there. Finally, my lungs inhaled a full breath.

Braden wasn’t entirely his old self though. His body had turned solid enough so the walls didn’t show through him, but his edges flickered like a candle flame in a draft.

“Braden? Can you hear me?”

He opened his mouth, and for a terrifying moment nothing came out. Then a thread of his voice reached me. “Yeah. I’m…what happened?”

What happened was I’d nearly destroyed him. What happened was my experimental binding had left him unstable while likely using up memories rather than building a firewall around them.

“I was hoping you could tell me.” When he only shook his head, I pressed: “You were in the middle of things when the ritual went wrong. What did it feel like?”

Braden was quiet for a moment, translucent fingers flexing as if he was testing whether they still worked. “It felt like after I died and before you bound my anchor. Cold. Confusion.” He shuddered, the motion making his form flicker worse as he whispered, “I thought I saw the alpha who killed me and Chloe.”

I had nightmares about that moment far too often. No wonder Braden suffered from a similar trauma flashback when my failed magic was literally unwinding him.

“But hey,” Braden continued, his voice firmer, “now that I’ve almost died twice, I think that qualifies me for a frequent dyer program.”

Just as he’d planned, his bad pun made me smile as I slipped his knife into my pocket and reached for Ellie’s toy pony, the one we’d hunted across the Atlantic Ocean not so long ago. Enough blood remained on my palm to swipe across the toy’s worn surface without opening a fresh cut.

This time, the sweetening followed a more ordinary trajectory. The little girl appeared in a swirl of gossamer mist that immediately turned solid.

“You look funny,” she told Braden, tilting her head to study him.

“I feel funny. Because I’m a funny guy.” As a visual aid, he poked both forefingers up through his hair like devil horns, wiggling them while twisting his face into a silly mask.

Braden did still appear more translucent than he should have been. But if he was well enough to joke, things couldn’t be terrible. I clung to that hope as familiar footsteps approached.

Locke had waited until both ghosts were present before intruding even though finding the first-aid kit in the cabinet behind me would have taken mere seconds. His jaw was set, though, the twitch of tightening muscles drawing my attention to the strong column of his throat, the shadow of stubble along his chin.

Even frustrated and holding himself carefully in check, my mate radiated an intensity that made something low in my belly tighten. His words, on the other hand, were less pleasant.

“What exactly were you trying to accomplish?”

“Braden needs control over his own anchor.” I followed Locke’s gaze to my bleeding palm, finally letting myself register how much the combination of knife cut plus blisters hurt. Still, I stood by my motives. “He needs to be able to use his knife without draining memories.”

“A worthy goal.” My mate’s voice was flat, emotionless. But our bond felt brittle from the bleed-through of his anger as he added: “If it hadn’t nearly gotten you killed.”

Chapter 3

I expected Locke to double down on his demand that he be allowed to bandage my injured hand. Instead he stepped back. “Let’s run.”

I blinked at him. “Now? Don’t you and Tobias need to do whatever you were doing?”

“No.”

Locke didn’t explain further, but I could feel his reasoning via the mate bond. Shifting would have more effect on my wounds than any antiseptic ointment. And we both needed to clear our heads before we said something we’d regret.

After all, we’d been circling the same argument for months now—his need to protect me, my need not to be swaddled in bubble wrap. Standing in a destroyed laboratory rehashing our contrasting viewpoints was unlikely to resolve that impasse.

“Alright,” I said quietly.

Locke opened the door and let Braden and Ellie out before following them, leaving me alone to shift. In their absence, the change rippled through me easily—bones reshaping, senses sharpening, pain fading as my wolf form knit skin back into wholeness on my palm-turned-pad.

The burn still twinged when I put weight on it. But it was easy to ignore after I padded outside and found both ghosts gone while Locke waited in his majestic lupine form.

Easier still when he let me take the lead in our promised run.

The sky stretched wide above open tundra, only the low smudge of spruce on the horizon breaking up the expanse. And in that vastness, it seemed like we could run forever. Like we would run forever, outpacing our problems, outpacing the issues we couldn’t seem to talk about without getting drawn back into the same old arguments.

Our bodies didn’t argue. Instead, the rhythm settled easily between us. Even when words failed, when touching was impossible, we had this: running in the endless summer daylight.

In wolf form, every path we took together was the right path. In wolf form, we could simply be mates.

My legs were shorter than Locke’s, but by now I knew how to stretch them. Meanwhile, his paws landed exactly where mine had been. Not because we needed silence, but because touching ground I’d touched was akin to touching me.

We were fully in sync as we crested another rise and nearly ran over Tobias. He raised his tablet like a shield, backpedaling rapidly while grunting out a surprised, “Oh!”

He regained his composure quickly though. Turned to Locke and reported in as if requiring information was the only reason his alpha might be out on the tundra.

“I’ve recalibrated this camera,” he said, addressing his words to the ground at his alpha’s feet, “but the mount is corroded. I hope it’s okay that I ordered more replacements than we need for the usual pack locations. Perhaps the academy perimeter could use coverage as well?”

He hadn’t so much as glanced at me, but thinking of the academy’s safety rather than just the pack’s felt like a truce flag. I wished I was two-legged so I could thank him.

And maybe some part of my emotion flew down my mate bond to Locke then via the pack bond to Tobias. Because the latter’s ears reddened and his gaze flitted to me at last before locking onto the safety of his tablet.

Which made me reassess the past. Perhaps Tobias hadn’t avoided me because I was a wolf weaver. Perhaps he was just shy and uncomfortable around women. After all, until recently, Locke’s pack had contained only men.

Locke saved us all from further embarrassment by nodding his lupine head at Tobias then nudging me back into motion. After that, we kept running for minutes or hours until all the rough edges left by the day’s adventures were gone. Only then did Locke finally send his first word down the mate bond.

“Better?”

I didn’t answer in words. Instead, I let him feel the peace that had settled inside me. The way my paw barely throbbed.

A slight hesitation, then a question formed: “May I?”

I cocked my head. I didn’t know what he was asking. But the answer was easy.

“Yes.”

The energy he pushed down the mate bond rolled into me like warm honey. It found the lingering damage leftover from before hand had become paw. Found the ruptured blisters and abraded skin beneath the tough pad callous. Then it soothed all of that away along with the pain.

This wasn’t exactly healing magic. Instead, it was Locke using our mate bond to carry strength and vitality. He was offering me his own body’s resiliency, and I was accepting it gladly.

Like real, functioning mates.

The final ache faded and I stumbled slightly, overwhelmed by the intensity of Locke’s energy inside me. “Better?” my mate asked a second time.

This time, the answer was easy.

“Perfect.”

We weren’t running any longer. Instead, we’d come to a halt atop a small rise, boggy ground oozing up between my toes and the aroma of crushed ferns sweet in my nostrils. I turned to face my mate…

…Then shivered. A pocket of cold air had settled over the rise, intense enough to make my recently healed paw ache. My inner wolf’s ears swiveled, trying to track the invisible.

Or no, not the invisible. There was movement beyond Locke’s left shoulder.

Two wolves loped toward each other in the distance, barely visible through the heat shimmer rising from a sun-warmed expanse of marsh. “Pack mates?” I asked via our mate bond.

Locke didn’t turn to look, using my own eyes in place of his own. Still, his answer was certain. He knew every one of his pack mates on a bone-deep level.

“No.”

“Intruders?”

“Likely.”

After all, we were closer to the academy grounds here than to pack central. Closer to the area we’d known might become a target for those afraid of wolf weavers or of wolf-weaver knowledge expanding past designated bloodlines. The only surprise was that no strangers had made trouble before this.

Through the mate bond, I felt Locke transition from run-partner to alpha. The change was so abrupt it felt like ice hissing into boiling water. He needed to chase, to defend, to—

The wolves turned down a slope, disappearing from view. And I made the decision for both of us, breaking into a sprint along a route that should lead straight toward where the intruders had gone.

***

Distances were deceptive in wide-open landscapes. What had looked like a quick jog stretched into minutes of hard running as we arrowed toward the landmark I’d noted.

Locke surged ahead almost immediately, our former synchronization abandoned. I had to push my muscles hard to keep up as the first fat drops of rain struck my fur.

Then a summer storm unleashed itself with the kind of abrupt fury only arctic weather could manage. Soon, I was running flat-out across ground turned muddy and treacherous. Rain plastered my fur flat against my face, making it hard to see.

The water washed away scents also—the easiest way to track in wolf form—leaving us at a disadvantage. But the wolves hadn’t fled. As we crested the next slope, I spotted them: two figures in human form, standing so close together they seemed like a single shadow against rain-sodden tundra. They were visible only in flashes when lightning strobed through storm clouds, so it was hard to make out any identifying features.

In the second of those flashes, they saw us just as we’d seen them. Instantly, the intruders split apart, shifting back into fur even as they leapt into motion. The one on the left darted toward a cluster of spruce, the other toward a deep ravine that cut like a scar through the hillside off to our right.

A deliberate attempt to divide us? “Stay together,” Locke commanded through the mate bond even as he veered right.

The ravine made tactical sense—easier to trap a wolf between stone walls than in brush and trees. But the intruder was faster than I’d expected, dodging between rocks with desperate speed that suggested panic rather than strategy.

We closed the distance gradually. Fifty feet, then forty.

As we ran, the rain intensified until I could no longer tell shadows from substance. A sudden band of cold speared through me and I glanced at Locke, expecting him to be shivering just like I was.

Only, he cocked his head while we both kept on running. No, he hadn’t noticed anything.

So maybe the cold hadn’t been real? Maybe none of the chills during and after the failed empowerment ritual had been actual environmental changes. If haywire magic had knocked my internal thermostat sideways…

I shouldn’t have let my attention wander from the current moment, not when sprinting over rough terrain during a downpour. My paw slipped on loose rocks. The newly healed cut on my pad reopened. Pain flared with my next step.

Locke stopped so abruptly I slammed into his flank, fur cushioning the impact while also shielding us from his bond-breaker abilities. Still, it was a close call. If I’d fallen and my nose had touched his paw pad…

“What are you doing?” I demanded, trying to see past him into the ravine.

“You’re hurt.” Energy trickled down the mate bond without permission this time, turning pain into a healing itch, one significantly less welcome than it had been the first time.

“You’re letting them get away—”

I craned around his bulk, desperate for any glimpse of our quarry. But rain and cloud shadows blocked everything.

Locke stepped aside just as static raised the fur along my spine. Lightning split the sky, bright enough to turn the whole world white.

For just a moment, the full landscape was illuminated. But it was also empty. Just ravine and rain-washed stone.

Whoever—or whatever—we’d been chasing had vanished as thoroughly as if they had never existed.

Chapter 4

Through the mate bond, I felt Locke reaching out to his pack, coordinating a continuation of the search he’d forced us to give up on. His mental touch brushed across one pack mate after another then—

His whole body went rigid.

Instinct pressed me closer to my mate’s fur even though I’d been the one wary of this kind of contact a moment earlier. My query was more emotion than words, but Locke’s response came through the mate bond in full sentences.

“Tobias is down. X found him near the eastern perimeter.”

Down could mean injured. Down could mean unconscious. But the way Locke’s pain crashed into me suggested it meant something far worse.

This time, when we ran, Locke kept me in front of him. Not to give me control but to guard my back. Meanwhile, his dread amplified my own until the prickly emotion reverberated back and forth between us like speaker feedback.

We’d seen Tobias an hour ago. He’d been fine then. Alert. Focused on his security cameras.

What had happened in a single hour?

Locke’s beta met us at the tree line in human form, clothes already on and a bundle of additional items in his arms so Locke and I could dress after shifting. X’s stance was as stiff and alert as always, but his face was ashen as he informed us:

“Tobias is dead.”

The warning was for me, I realized, not for Locke. This hard-nosed beta had proven his protective streak when he left his life in Europe behind to follow his nephew, Locke’s son, back to Canada. Now, as X took up a position at my shoulder, it seemed he expected me to collapse at the sight of a dead body and was well aware that my mate shouldn’t be the one to catch me if I fell.

I wouldn’t collapse though. I’d seen corpses before. After all, that’s where ghosts came from.

Instead, Locke was the one who swayed as we entered the small clearing ringed by scrubby willows, leftover rain dripping from their leaves like tears. Locke was the one who grunted as if he’d been struck as he took in the scene.

Tobias’s tablet was still clutched in one hand, screen dark. The young man looked like he’d simply sat down to rest—legs crossed, back resting against a tree trunk, head tilted slightly to one side.

Except he wasn’t breathing.

X would already have checked his pulse. Still, Locke dropped to his knees, fingers flying to Tobias’s throat. At the same time, my mate’s thoughts flowed toward me down the mate bond.

Tobias had still been learning how to carry himself. Now, we’d never know what kind of man he would have grown into.

Just like Braden and Chloe. I swallowed. All three had been far too young to die.

I expected the sag of Locke’s shoulders when the pulse he was seeking didn’t materialize. I didn’t expect what my mate did next.

Without explanation, Locke began prying open Tobias’s mouth.

I moved closer, careful not to disturb anything. The area around Tobias showed no signs of struggle, no trampled grass or broken branches. The screen of his tablet wasn’t scratched or broken. His clothes weren’t bloodied or torn.

“No strange scents,” X said before I could ask. “But he’s been here through the rain.”

“Dry soil beneath him,” I agreed. Then for the beta’s benefit: “We saw Tobias just before the storm, so the timeline is tight.”

X nodded, but his attention hadn’t left his alpha. The gruesome sight of Locke’s finger probing deep in a dead man’s mouth had quickly grown understandable to me but apparently not to X.

“What are you doing?” the beta demanded at last.

Spitz and Fisher’s Medicolegal Investigation of Death pointed out that surface temperatures dropped quickly when bodies stopped working, but core heat should only lose a couple of degrees per hour. Locke didn’t go into those specifics. Just said, “His tongue is colder than it should be.”

Cold like that blast of chill during my failed empowerment ritual? Like the two I’d felt out on the tundra?

Only this one Locke could feel too.

That left me even more at a loss to explain the temperature oddity, but I knew one thing: “Young wolves don’t drop dead of natural causes.”

“No.” Locke closed Tobias’s mouth then ran his hands over his pack mate’s arms in a way that suggested grief more than investigation. “No, they don’t.”

***

Keep reading in Bond Breaker!

The cage bars were too close together for even my wolf form to squeeze through, not that shifting would have helped. The last time a prisoner tried, electricity shot through her fur so fast the yelp still echoed in my memory.

Meanwhile, out in the warehouse aisles, men in expensive suits strolled beneath harsh fluorescent lighting. Their lazy footsteps as they peered into cramped, bare-floored cages like mine moved far slower than the pounding of my heart.

Because these buyers weren’t browsing for furniture or electronics. They were shopping for mates.

And I couldn’t afford to be chosen.

“What about her?”

The newest man to look me over was battle-hardened, his nose bumpy from an improperly set break. Despite that, his voice was so quiet it drew my eyes. Reminding myself that glancing up made me more interesting to buyers, I forced my chin back down onto my chest.

“Dirt cheap but hardly useful for your purposes.” My captor’s tone was dismissive. “She’s already mated.”

“Is she?”

Predatory interest rolled off Broken Nose, less slimy yet also more dangerous than that of the previous men who’d passed over me this afternoon while hunting a cheap bedwarmer they could bind themselves to. It hadn’t mattered to any of the others that every woman here was being mated against her will, but perhaps it would matter to this man?

“Don’t let a pretty face shake your focus.” No one except me could hear Braden as he hovered behind my back, invisible and silent since he just so happened to also be dead. As a ghost, he was limited in how much assistance he could provide. But what he’d already given—a short-lived and illusory mate bonding—should be enough to protect me now.

“That face isn’t pretty,” I retorted through our mate bond where only Braden could hear.

“You’re kidding yourself.” Braden’s voice bubbled with laughter and I couldn’t resist tilting my head until I could see him. He looked sixteen, just like when he’d died a decade ago, the same lock of sandy hair falling into his eyes and his smile as easy as ever. The only physical differences between now and then weren’t currently visible: He walked at the same pace as always but could pass through the bars of my cage if he wanted to. Meanwhile, his physical form would begin wisping away at the edges as he grew tired.

“Mate market buyers aren’t my type,” I countered, trying to ignore the taut muscles of the buyers’ forearms that had slid into view along with Braden’s face.

“That man is everybody’s type. He’s a hot hunk of beef bound to make even you rethink vegetarianism.”

Braden wasn’t wrong. It took a mental recitation of facts from my current read—a field guide of arctic lichens—to keep my eyes to myself. Still, I eventually managed to drop my gaze away from those muscular forearms while also shrinking my torso in on itself so my over-sized hoodie and cargo pants would cover up my curves.

Only then did I warn Broken Nose: “You can buy my body, but you can’t buy my affections. I’m mated. Go ahead and check for yourself.”

His voice was even lower than it had been previously when he responded. “I intend to.”

“I already sniffed her,” my captor countered. “You’re wasting your time—this one’s useful as a servant only. There’s a potential mate on your left who would suit your purposes perfectly…”

Everyone else had assumed the man in charge knew what he was talking about when he dismissed me as beneath their notice, but Broken Nose didn’t. Instead, ignoring the salesman’s patter, he crouched down with predatory grace, his face coming dangerously close to electrified bars.

With the buyer directly in front of me, I couldn’t resist staring into his piercing eyes even though Braden had transitioned from cracking up to hovering protectively. My ghostly friend could no longer physically take a punch intended for me the way he had when we were both twelve, and he very clearly hated that fact. Instead, he growled inarticulate warnings Broken Nose wouldn’t hear while the latter murmured words that should have sounded like an order yet didn’t.

“Give me your hand.”

I hesitated, but not for long because I knew my captor couldn’t care less about the cadence of a potential buyer’s request. During the few hours I’d been in here, disobedience had already resulted in multiple electric floors fired up, once beneath me. I could still taste the singed flavor of my body’s reaction and didn’t want to risk a repeat. So I turned my palm sideways and slid it out between the bars.

Broken Nose’s fingers enveloped mine with a rough warmth that felt good after huddling in this underheated warehouse for the last eight hours. His calloused skin rasped against mine, sending an unexpected jolt up my arm, like yet unlike the electrical punishments I was so carefully avoiding. I twitched, yet he held me steady. Almost as if he was protecting me rather than restraining me, making sure I didn’t touch the electrified bars.

Anyone else would have demanded I lift my hand to his nose, but Broken Nose instead bent down to sniff at my skin. “You don’t smell mated.” His words were so quiet I felt them pulse through my skin as much as heard them. The sensation was powerful…and the words were deeply problematic.

“A little more connection if you don’t mind,” I told Braden silently.

But this time, my words skittered oddly through my brain, like shouting into a void and hearing no echo. This was the same way it felt after I broke a temporary mate bond at the end of a rescue.

Only, I hadn’t broken my bond to Braden. I needed that pairing for a few additional hours until captors went home and I could open cages to let prisoners out…

“Braden,” I called again. Silence answered.

Silence like what I’d heard ten years ago when I begged my friend to wake up, knowing he wasn’t merely sleeping. The dark pit of loss I’d felt then made me spin now without regard for current danger.

And my wrist brushed up against metal. The same electricity my captor had forced me to sample when he shoved me into the cage crackled through me.

Pain tasted like blood and smelled like scorched flesh. It lit every nerve ending on fire, a white-hot current racing through my veins.

The effect should have curled my body into a ball, forcing even more contact with the awfulness. Instead, the first burst of agony was muted by Broken Nose’s inexplicable choice to hold onto my hand rather than dropping it. The flow of electricity seemed to be halved by our continued contact even though that didn’t make mathematical sense.

Vaguely, I could feel his fingers working their way up to my wrist, trying to shift me away from the electrified bars. But surprise and dread had jerked my whole body sideways. There was no space for my catty-corner arm to fit without touching the bars. And I couldn’t move…

Trapped. There was no escape from the pain arcing between flesh and metal. And an alpha was in front of me. An alpha like the one who had killed Braden…

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Broken Nose’s jaw clench as he rode out the shock waves rippling through both of us. “Turn it off,” he demanded, raising his voice for the first time yet keeping his tone so steady it seemed as if his muscles weren’t spasming.

Mine were. My teeth chattered against each other, the only part of me able to move.

“Now,” Broken Nose ordered, threading compulsion into the single syllable the way only truly dominant werewolves could.

That shouldn’t have made me feel any better. It should have made the terror pulsing through me ten times worse.

Instead, I found myself starting to relax even before receding footsteps promised our captor was rushing toward the power switch. Because Broken Nose hadn’t turned to ensure his order was followed. Instead, his gaze anchored me, steadying the fear that had ridden in on the coattails of pain.

“Stay with me.” One large thumb traced hypnotic circles into my palm, the movement proof that he could have jerked away and avoided the shock if he’d wanted to. Instead, he maintained contact, absorbing half the awfulness into his own body while forcing my lungs back into gear with a different sort of alpha command: “Breathe.”

We stayed like that for a second or an eternity. His eyes were liquid blue, as deep and mysterious as the reflection of the summer sky on snow-melt ponds miles from civilization. His crooked nose reminded me of the soaring peak I’d recently used as a landmark when traversing the wilderness.

Braden had been right. This alpha was beautiful, just not in a magazine-cover way. He was dangerously awe-inspiring like a fast-approaching hurricane that made it impossible to avert your eyes.

Then the pain receded as quickly as it had started. I sagged forward, my forehead settling against bars that were no longer electrified yet might be again shortly. The metallic tang of my recent shock mixed with the snow and fire scent of the stranger’s skin as I breathed in and out far too quickly. No matter the danger, I couldn’t quite muster the energy to sit up straight.

Physical weakness didn’t derail me from my most important task, however. Instead, I sent more words down my temporary mate bond. “Braden, where are you?”

The silence this time felt both absolute and final. As if we’d never had a mate bond. As if Braden had never walked into this warehouse beside me.

And I had other evidence of his absence also. With my chin on my chest, I could smell myself rather than Braden’s pine-tinged smokiness.

Which meant that not only was my friend inexplicably missing, I was also officially unmated. Unprotected. A prime specimen to be sold off to the highest bidder.

No wonder Broken Nose released my hand as he returned to his feet. His voice was all business as he addressed my captor.

“I’ll take this one, double your asking price.”

***

Chapter 2

“You sure you don’t want to toss her on the mating stage before you go?” My captor’s scent sharpened in a way that wasn’t just accommodating. He wanted to see me on my knees, neck bared and body contorting to avoid cattle prods while Broken Nose’s wolf form ripped through the skin of my neck.

My buyer’s reply was so quiet I could barely make out his words. “I’ll seal my mating in private.”

“She’s disobedient. She’ll require encouragement.”

Broken Nose’s hand, previously gentle around my elbow, tightened, which rattled the chain leash dangling from my newly cuffed wrists. He opened his mouth as if to argue then shook his head and turned us both away from the raised platform at the far end of the warehouse where other buyers were gathering in anticipation of the exact spectacle being discussed.

“No refunds!” my captor shouted after us. “Your problem if you can’t seal the deal!”

Then we were outside, snow-covered tundra stretching endlessly in all directions. The northern wind carried ice crystals that stung my exposed skin like tiny needles and my eyes squinted against the harsh glare of sun on snow. Ignoring the discomfort, I searched for another ghostly friend—Chloe—who should have been waiting.

She wasn’t visible, but I reminded myself she wouldn’t be with my pack bonds quenched. Because it had taken me only one shaky moment to make the connection between Braden’s disappearance and Broken Nose’s touch. To remember the whispers I’d heard about ghost banishers, then to leap from there to the quick fix of closing pack bonds to protect the dead. As soon as my wobbly brain had dredged up that information, I’d slammed my metaphorical mental doors shut to protect those I cared about most.

Without pack bonds, I was just like any other shifter—unable to see or hear ghosts. I could only hope that other members of my ghost pack hadn’t been sent away along with Braden. Could only hope Braden’s dismissal had been temporary rather than permanent.

Well, hope wasn’t the only thing I could do. I could also get away from the likely cause of Braden’s banishment so I could open up my pack bonds and assess the damage.

“Oh!” I pretended to twist my ankle on a chunk of ice. Mimicked losing my balance, floundering, and dropping like a dead weight.

Most people instinctively let go of an off-balance human body dragging them down. But Broken Nose had no sense of self preservation, perhaps didn’t need one given his rock-like solidity. His hand merely moved from my elbow to my waist, the motion so swift I stayed completely vertical.

Vertical and now pressed up against the hard length of my buyer’s torso in a way that made my belly flutter. Heat radiated out from him, a stark contrast to the biting cold seeping through my clothes and making me shiver. I could hardly breathe as I demanded, “Take your hands off me.”

He released his grip so quickly I might as well have burned him. Took a step backwards until a chasm of air separated us, the tips of his ears reddening as he peered over my shoulder rather than meeting my eyes. “I didn’t mean to…”

“You didn’t mean to buy me like a loaf of bread, then handle me in the exact same manner?”

“Yes to the former, no to the latter.” The blush disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by perfect composure as he pulled a key fob from his pocket and unlocked a blue pickup truck ten feet away. “I have a proposal for you,” he continued, those sky-blue eyes piercing into me. “But I’d prefer to broach the topic somewhere without an audience.”

For a breathless moment, I thought the audience he was referring to was Chloe. But even I couldn’t see her when my pack bonds lay dormant. My buyer definitely shouldn’t be aware of her existence.

Then I belatedly remembered his glance over my shoulder and swiveled to find a trio of hungry-eyed shifters staring at us from the doorway of the warehouse. They were lone wolves who couldn’t afford to buy a mate yet came to mate markets hoping for a dropped scrap.

It was evident from the intensity of their attention that I was the scrap they were looking to gulp up.

Getting into a truck with a strange man while cuffed was monumentally stupid, but I had zero chance of escaping all four of them. Hoping Chloe was still present and that she had the sense to hop into the vehicle and ride along with us, I considered the door Broken Nose had opened for me.

Then I slid inside.

“Here.” Broken Nose didn’t look away from the road while offering me two items in the flat palm of his right hand—the throwaway cell phone I’d bought for this mission, removed from my person when I was shoved into the cage, plus a key that must match my shackles.

This felt like a trap: way too easy. Still, I scooped up both phone and key, fumbling with the latter as I tried to fit it into the keyhole of my handcuffs with hands that couldn’t move more than an inch apart.

“Need help?”

I shook my head then gusted out a ragged sigh of pure relief when the key steadied mid-air, suspended by invisible fingers. Chloe was there.

I let her take over, swiveling my body slightly away from the driver so he couldn’t see the way the key turned by itself. He heard the click though.

“Lock,” he rumbled.

“Why give me the key if you want it to stay locked?” The man made no sense. Against my better judgment, I turned back around so I could check out his expression. But his face remained an unreadable mask.

“My name,” he clarified, “is Locke.”

The muffled sound of tires on pavement filled the space between us for a long moment. Outside, the Dempster Highway ribboned through nearly flat tundra until it reached the mountains. A lone raven perched atop a bullet-riddled road sign, the turn of its head as it watched us pass the only movement in the vast emptiness.

When Locke spoke again, his quiet voice seemed to fit this place where human sounds were swallowed by wilderness. “It’s customary to offer your own name in exchange.”

“So you’ll know what to call me when your fangs tear into my flesh?” In stark contrast to his quiet calm, my words were a blade, meant to cut. I’d learned the hard way that alphas didn’t notice subtleties.

“I have no intention of forcing a mating.”

I barked out a non-laugh. “You’re into catch and release, then? You visit mate markets to buy women then let them go?”

“I would like to become your mate.” Locke spoke to the windshield, his words quiet and focused. “You’d be a pack leader’s partner, well taken care of. You’d have status and devoted backup. As my mate, you’d never again risk ending up in a cage.”

This alpha sounded like he’d cribbed his lines from chapter twelve of Claimed by the Ice Wolf. I’d highlighted that passage…but I still didn’t believe anyone with a Y chromosome would say such a thing. “Who wrote your script?”

The tips of his ears turned red again, but he offered no answer. Instead, he pressed on with what was clearly a carefully memorized speech. “Life is easier with an alpha on your arm. Let me prove it before you make your decision.”

“And if I say no, you won’t stop me when I walk away?”

He met my gaze at last, ice-blue eyes making it hard not to at least consider the unbelievable—that this alpha wasn’t like the others. “That’s right. Any additional requirements?”

“No touching.”

It was a good thing the highway was traffic-free because Locke’s attention remained riveted on me as he cleared his throat before speaking. “A mating can be entirely platonic. The ball on that front is in your court.”

Now I was the one whose cheeks burned. I hadn’t thought through the deeper implications of Locke’s proposal, mostly because I wasn’t really considering accepting his offer. I’d been talking about—

“You grabbed me outside the mate market,” I clarified. “There won’t be a repeat.”

His head cocked ever so slightly, as if the wolf inside him was intrigued by my demand. “If you trip and fall, you want me to let you drop at my feet?”

“Yes.”

“Even if the results would be catastrophic?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Figure it out. That’s my line in the sand.”

Locke drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in lieu of an answer, and I was pretty sure I could see the shadow of a beard pushing through the skin of his jaw. Disappointment bit into my belly even as my heartbeat sped up to match the fast thuds of his fingers against padded plastic.

Of course Locke was like every other alpha, preparing to shift at the first sign of rebellion. After all, forcing a mating would be so much easier than negotiating with a prisoner.

Which meant the independence I’d guarded so fiercely all these years was about to vanish with one tear of teeth into my neck. I tensed, gauging our speed of travel. If I jumped out now, would I survive the landing?

Locke slammed on the brakes so hard my seatbelt was the only thing preventing me from cracking my head open on the dashboard. “If you want to leave, tell me.” His voice was clipped, his hands white-knuckled as if he had to physically restrain himself from reaching out to protect me from the whiplash.

And that did what his words hadn’t managed. It made me believe the impossible.

“You really mean it. You’ll let me go if I decide I don’t want to mate with you.”

“Yes.”

“You’re willing to keep your hands to yourself.”

“Unless you give me express permission otherwise.”

As if I’d ask him to touch me. Instead of beating that dead horse, however, I delved into the other sticking point. “You’re offering me a platonic mating in exchange for what, exactly?”

I was trying to figure out what Locke thought he’d get out of such an arrangement. Instead, he misunderstood my question and returned to his script.

“I’ll support you the way an alpha supports his mate. You can test me in any way you like before making your decision.”

He really seemed to mean it. And even though a handshake would have been the traditional way to seal such a deal, he didn’t so much as extend a finger toward me. Just waited. Silent. Patient.

A mating of convenience was far from what I’d intended to win today, but going along with Locke’s test seemed like the easiest way to get rid of him. “I’ll agree to a trial,” I said at last. “No touching. No pack bonds.”

“Then I only need one other thing from you.”

I tensed and his head cocked before he continued.

“Your name. Unless you’d prefer I choose a diminutive. Sunshine? Sweetheart? Darling?”

I grimaced. “My name is Wren.”

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