Realizing that made me want to curl into a ball. I had seen every inch of him nude. No one had seen me naked in, well, ever. I was a lights-off, clothes-on kind of girl. The exact opposite of the man who walked around bare-skinned and conversed with his pack, who were also in various states of undress, while I restrained myself from gawking.

It was the wrong thing to worry about now, but it gave my brain a direction to sprint in that didn’t involve the wolf, the lake or the maybe-mermaid who might be closer than I ever imagined.

“The Garzas are never wrong.” Dell rested a hand on my shoulder. “They’re not always exactly right, but they’re never wrong.”

The wolf arrived before I got to ask what she meant. His paws were damp, and he shook out his fur with a snort.

I wiped mud flecks off my cheeks. “Did you find anything?”

He groan-whined a human-sounding answer that didn’t make sense coming from a wolf’s mouth.

“Nod for yes.” Dell bobbed her head then turned it side to side. “Shake for no.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the shift in his cognitive awareness. “Did you find anything?”

Nod.

“Harlow?”

A low whine.

“Charybdis?”

Shake.

“So not Harlow but definitely not Charybdis?” Dell scratched her head. “I don’t get it. Either she’s there or she isn’t.”

As much as I wanted to agree with her, too many possibilities loomed. “Is it safe for us to look around?”

Nod.

Pilcher’s Pond hadn’t changed since our first introduction. The same sense of dread puckered my stomach and dampened my skin as I approached the dry bed where water ought to be. I’d arrived after Graeson had found Marie, after he and Harlow had removed her from the water. She had been curled on a tarp when we met, and I would never forget the look on Graeson’s face that day.

He looked like a man ready to jump. All he needed was a push.

I hadn’t understood then that his whole life was about serving others. Sure, he did it in his own pigheaded way, and the others in question might want to kick him in the shins for it, but he had a good heart. I saw that now. It wasn’t just my stomach talking, even though the man was a fine cook. It was in the way he’d put his life on hold to raise Marie, how he valued and trusted Dell when everyone else overlooked her. It was the stoic acceptance of the six wargs I watched Graeson punish for their loyalty to him, each standing their ground, trusting him even then to take the maulings as far as they had to go but not a bite or scratch further.

And it was me. I had changed or been changed too.