“Lori,” I whispered, still trapped in her form.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart.” Fingers trembling from the rapid shift, he clasped hands with me. “Rest. You’re safe. I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m pretty sure I told him I’m not your sweetheart before my consciousness slipped, because his rusty chuckles were the last thing I heard.

Chapter 11

Dreams didn’t usually jar my teeth. The world dipped, and my head banged a hard surface. Light streamed through tinted windows and spilled over my face. The dull jab of a headache set up camp between my eyes. Ouch. I ground my palm into my forehead, gripped the back of a leather seat and leveraged myself upright.

“Where am I?” The question came out of me on a groan.

“An hour outside of Abbeville, Mississippi,” a familiar voice replied on my right.

“Graeson?” I squinted at the blurry outline occupying the passenger seat.

“Call him Cord.” The pale blue eyes of the driver flashed up to mine in the rearview mirror. Strawberry blonde hair sun-bleached with softer highlights. Flawless skin without a hint of makeup. An artful smattering of freckles that could have been hand-drawn for their symmetry. “Graeson makes him sound uptight.”

The uptight warg in question grunted. “Ellis, this is Dell Preston.”

“Short for Adele.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “And hi, freaky shifter person.”

Irritated prickles swept over my skin, and my fingers dug into the headrest. Too bad it wasn’t Graeson’s skull. “Freaky shifter person?”

“Dell,” he growled.

“What?” Her forehead crinkled. “I’m a warg. You’re a warg. It’s not like shifter is a derogatory term.”

“The freaky part is probably what she’s taking exception to,” he said dryly.

“Oh.” Dell’s lips pursed as she studied me instead of, oh, I don’t know, the road. “Hi, totally unfreaky shifter person.”

“It’s fine.” The opinion of a random warg didn’t matter one way or the other to me. “Where’s Harlow?”

“She’s on bedrest for the next twenty-four hours.” He twisted around in his seat. “The magic you used healed her. You saved her life, Ellis.”

“Who do you think escorted her to death’s door?” I mashed my lips into a firm line. “I used to have better control.” Vause was right about one thing, practice made perfect, and I was rusty. Relying on one of my talents to get by led to neglecting the others.

“That Fury would have killed her with or without your help.” He placed a comforting hand on my knee and squeezed. “They don’t back down. They’ll self-destruct before stopping a hunt when they feel they’ve been slighted. You did the best you could. Harlow doesn’t blame you, and you can’t blame yourself.”

He was wrong. Blaming myself was something I did very well.

“We got to you as fast as we could,” the redhead offered.