I peered out into the gloom. I knew people came here to practice magic, but I wouldn’t have expected quite so much interference to the radio in this forest. I’d never experienced it here before. Who could have been expending enough mana out here to create such a hotspot?

The road widened suddenly, and I saw I was approaching a broad clearing in the trees. It looked like a parking spot.

I wasn’t entirely sure where I was anymore, and I slowed the car down. Perhaps this was my destination?

Suddenly, my Beast Detection app on the car’s display panel chimed loudly. I looked in surprise at its screen where a big red exclamation mark signaled a nearby magical threat.

I pushed the notification to read the details.

”What the hell?”

Beastkin Detected!

Type: Lycan

Do you wish to dial beast control?

Select: Yes? / No?

The Beast Detector Application shouldn’t have picked up a Beastkin—it was meant to only identify beasts. I could imagine the Outworlder advocacy groups would kick up quite the fuss if they found PentaTech’s apps were doing that.

Maybe it was just a glitch? The same tech that identified nearby magical beasts might have gotten confused and picked up a beastkin instead.

Before I could dismiss the notification, a woman dashed from the woods on my right and leaped onto the road.

She had white-blonde hair down past her shoulders and was wearing a dark-colored skin-tight leather jumpsuit. Two wolf-like ears peaked out from the top of her head, and a bushy tail slipped out from a hole in her suit. Her breasts were pale half-globes above a plunging neckline, her skin reflecting the light of the moon.

The woman turned and glared hard in my direction, fixing me with a threatening stare. Golden eyes narrowed as my car careened toward her.

”Astrid?!” I yelled.

It was definitely the woman I was meant to meet tonight—I recognized her immediately from the photo Selena had shown me. All the relaxation I’d got from chilling to War Pigs was gone.

I floored the brakes, and my car screeched on the dirt track, the back wheels skidding from side to side. I wrestled with the steering wheel, trying to avoid hitting my date while also not sending the vehicle off the road to plow into a tree.

Astrid crouched suddenly, as if ready to spring, but instead of diving out of the way of my car, she started sprinting straight at it.

Before I could do anything, she leaped into the air, her combat-booted feet landed on my bonnet, and I heard a series of thuds as she sprinted along the length of my vehicle.

I managed to stop the car, a bare few inches from a tree trunk that would have wishboned it. I twisted my head around to look over my shoulder.