All around us the brush was alive with lithe shapes. Glowing eyes watched us, drinking in every movement. The Pack was mobilizing, pulling into Keep. No shapechanger would remain outside its walls, and until the last of them crossed the threshold of their fortress, the roads leading to it would remain heavily fortified.

“Nobody can remain on full alert forever,” Curran said, as if answering my thoughts. “After we killed Olathe, I’d let them go.”

Except that it wasn’t over.

The roar of the water-powered car grew too loud to talk. We rounded the bend in the road and I saw the reconditioned Jeep guarded by three wolves. We climbed in and Curran drove to Keep.

CORWIN’S LABORED BREATHING ECHOED ACROSS Pack’s infirmary like the toll of a mourning bell.

His misshapen face looked haggard, gray skin sagging from the bone. His feverish eyes fastened on me.

“The Wood is calling,” he whispered. I touched his hand, and wicked claws shot out, tearing my skin. “A good hunt,” the lynxwere said.

“He doesn’t know who you are,” Doolittle said over my shoulder.

Gently I freed my hand and patted the furry throat.

“It won’t be long now,” Doolittle said.

“I hurt,” Corwin rasped.

I looked to Doolittle, but he shook his head. “There is nothing I can give him to stop that kind of pain.”

“He was impaled on a broken lamppost when we found him,” Curran said softly.

Corwin jerked upward. Massive hands gripped my shoulders and green eyes blazed, suddenly lucid. “I’m dying,” he rasped.

“Yes,” I said, while Doolittle said “No” at the same time.

The cat clung to me. “You never came to the Wood,” he said.

“No.” I held him gently. His chest shuddered, raked by pain. “I never did.”

“Too bad . . .” the cat whispered.

He sagged in my arms and I lowered him to the pillow. He trembled. A bloody waterfall drenched the sheets, leaving a lynx among the tangle of bandages. His fur was matted and bloody.

“Shit!” Doolittle spat, shoving me aside.

I backed away from the bed, as he feverishly grabbed for a syringe. Curran took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the bed at the opposite wall.

“There is someone I need you to ID for me,” he said.

I looked at the bed and saw a man lying on his back covered to his chin with a blanket. There was something unnatural about his rigid pose. Curran pulled the blanket aside and I saw that the man was strapped to the bed. I took in the filthy brown hair and the hard face. There was something familiar about him. I’d seen him before. The man’s eyelids snapped open and I took a step back, instantly recognizing the promise in the pale eyes. The bum from Ted’s office. The pieces clicked. How stupid of me.