“The conclave.” A jittery feeling took root in my chest. “How are we going to play this?”

Rolling up on a dead kelpie gnawed to bits meant I couldn’t cover for Graeson or hide the pack’s involvement. The conclave would demand answers, they would expect me to run into their arms, and we had to give them what they wanted in order to keep the peace between species.

“We’re pulling out.” Graeson’s voice came from behind me. “You’re coming with us.”

“I can’t run from them, or they’ll think I’m complicit.” I didn’t turn to look at him. Our moment under the pines lingered too fresh in my mind. I didn’t want to disappoint him again, which made no sense when his desire to use me was a perpetual disappointment to me. “I’ll lose my job.”

“Your job?” His bare feet slapped the compacted dirt. “Leaving with us, finding who wiped the scenes for the kelpie, that’s your job.” His voice came from right behind me. “Don’t you see? Charybdis sacrificed his pawn. We were too close. He gave the kelpie to us. He paraded it around the shack where we were staying to make damn sure we took the bait. He sent it back into that lake when he could have saved it to buy himself time to escape. He knew about the divinations, or he guessed we used a tracking spell to get in front of him. He knew we would dig in and find the kelpie and kill it.” He drew a ragged breath. “He wants the conclave’s Charybdis file closed. He wants a fresh start, because now he has to find a new way to accomplish his goals. We can’t stop now. Not when we’re so close.”

“I can’t leave Harlow.” I couldn’t tear my gaze from the water hoping she would appear. “She could be injured. If I’m not here when—”

“—if,” he corrected me, and I hated him a little for it. “The conclave will be here in fifteen minutes.” A hard note entered his voice. “Twenty if they check the other sites or hit the shack first.”

I rolled a shoulder. “Then you better go if you want to get a head start.”

“This isn’t over.” He grabbed my arm and swung me to face him. “You know there’s more to this.”

More to the deaths? Or more to him and me? The molten heat in his gaze caused my neurons to misfire.

“Don’t try to misunderstand me. You want to pretend there’s nothing between us, but damn it, Ellis, I can’t just let you go.” He shook me. “Not when my every instinct is telling me you belong to me.”