“You were there too?” I searched my memories for a hint of a second wolf but found none.

“Cord was as pissed as a cat with firecrackers tied to its tail when I fished him out of the water. He’d swallowed half the lake, and partial drowning is tough for even a warg to recover from,” she prattled on. A growl rose from the passenger seat, more felt than heard, but he didn’t comment. “Anyway, I overheard the witch talking before y’all vanished. She called the shadow things her pets and said, ‘Let’s go home.’ Graeson said home was Wink, Texas, so that’s where we went. We booked a flight and—” she slapped the steering wheel with her palms, “—rented this big honking thing then went after you.”

“Vanished?” I asked.

“I went to fetch Cord,” she explained. “I didn’t want the witch to get a head start, and I couldn’t leave him behind. By the time we reached the spot where I last saw you, you were all gone. No scent. Nothing.”

Just like in the woods. Either Letitia was an adept witch or she was friends with one to draw on magic so heavily to enact her revenge fantasy. The trip from Alabama to Texas was a long one, and I still didn’t remember a blink of it. She must have drugged me or put a magical whammy on me.

“How did you two…? Are you…?” I stared at his proprietary hand on my knee, which seemed to have put Dell in a smug mood. “Why hasn’t Graeson introduced us before now?”

“I didn’t introduce you,” he grumbled, “because I didn’t know I’d been assigned a babysitter.”

“Our alpha, Bessemer, had concerns about Cord’s state of mind. He asked for volunteers to keep an eye on him, and my hand shot up in the air. I’ve been on his trail for days.” Her grip tightened on the wheel. “Ever since…” A single tear slid down her cheek, glistening in the sunlight. She even cried prettily. “Anyway, I had a charm to hide my scent thanks to the brothers Garza, our pack witches, and I wouldn’t have confronted him at all if you hadn’t been taken.”

Garza. I dedicated the name to memory. One of them must have been the brother-in-law he mentioned, the one with the kids using his body as a jungle gym.

As tempting as it was to ask what Dell’s relationship was to Graeson, why she had been so eager to volunteer to shadow him, it was none of my business if Dell wanted to run around in the middle of nowhere, fishing waterlogged wargs out of lakes in the dead of night like some supermodel superhero.