By the time he arrived outside, the yard was empty. A car sounded in the distance. He ran alongside the house to the front yard, where a metallic SUV pulled away from the curb and peeled down the street. Gideon ran, legs and arms pumping. Heedless of his nudity, of the stinging smack of his bare feet on hot asphalt, he sprinted down the middle of the street, trying to read the license plate. The vehicle swerved around the corner, tires squealing, before he could note the numbers.

“Claire!” Panting, he skidded to a halt in the middle of the street. Indifferent to the setting sun warming his nude body, he stared blindly ahead. His hands sliced through his hair, clutching the shaggy locks at the back of his head until he came close to ripping them out by the roots. Throwing back his head, he hollered at the sky.

He fucked up.

Claire was gone. In the hands of a lycan who would put her through God knew what. And in five days, she would shift. She would kill and feed.

He ran his hands over his face roughly. Claire had been right last night. He should have simply let her pull the trigger. His own desire, his selfish need for her had stopped him, sentencing her to God knew how many lifetimes as a lycan—a veritable hell on earth. And if the day arrived when some other agent did what he failed to do and actually destroyed her—she would face an eternity of damnation.

The sound of his name came to him from far away. He turned to see Cooper standing on the curb, one hand pressed against his rapidly swelling split lip. “You’re naked, man.” With a grimace of disgust on his face, Cooper gestured to the house. “And bleeding. Come inside before your neighbors call the precinct.”

Gideon inspected his hand and numbly noted the blood trickling down his fingers to the street. Dropping his hand, he marched past Cooper, cutting through the lawn still warm from the day’s relentless sun. “Go to hell.”

Cooper followed. “You know, I’m the one who should be angry here.”

Gideon yanked the back door open and stalked inside, going straight for the bottle of whiskey on the pantry’s bottom shelf. “Put it in a letter.”

“How about putting some clothes on?”

Gideon glanced down at himself.

“Probably need stitches,” Cooper added, nodding to Gideon’s hand.

Unscrewing the cap, Gideon downed a mouthful of liquid fire and continued to ignore the man he felt like pummeling to the floor. It wasn’t Cooper’s fault, he reasoned. He had no one to blame except himself. He felt hollow, dead inside. The whiskey burned its way down his throat, warming his belly.

“So, that’s it?” Cooper crossed his arms. “You’re going to get shit-faced now?”