The beast moves toward them, cracking branches and brush.

“Viger,” Tierney pleads with him in the darkness. “Please, gods, tell me you’re on my side.”

Points of soft, silvery light appear inside the Shadow tide and plume to life around them, scuttling up Viger’s legs, the whirling smoke that engulfs Viger’s lower body now eerily lit up by the wraithlike glow. In a flash, Tierney realizes the glowing, scuttling things are phosphorescent millipedes.

Her gaze lifts to the crashing beast, her heart catching in her throat.

It isn’t a dragon at all, but a huge, horse-size raven, its dark feathers illuminated by the millipedes’ glow.

Viger releases Tierney’s arm and croons to the bird in his strange, resonating language as she gapes at the beast of myth, stunned. The raven cocks its head, as if listening intently to this fellow creature of the night, then lowers its body, and Viger deftly climbs onto its back, the millipedes still swarming all over him as long fingers of smoke rise from the ground.

“I’m on your side,” he says, his voice a deep thrum as he extends a hand to her. “Come, Asrai. We will strengthen our warding of the rivers and find your Black Witch.”

CHAPTER THREE

PREDATOR

Aislinn Ulrich

Xishlon night, twenty-second hour

Aislinn clings to Jarod, a soft bed of leaves under them both, the purple moonlight mottling the night-darkened canopy above. She draws in a deep, sultry breath. The rich scent of the forest mingles with the clean masculine smell of Jarod’s skin, along with the deeper musky note of their pairing, both of them slick with sweat as they curl around each other in the Xishlon moonlight.

Joy bubbles up inside Aislinn, the feral pleasure of mating with Jarod still pulsing warm through her body, the caress of the Forest secure around them both. Jarod’s face is flushed, his breathing deepened, a kind of stunned amazement lighting his amber eyes as his lips curve into an adoring smile. “I love you so much,” he says as he brushes his fingers down the length of Aislinn’s bare back, sending a shiver through her that he deftly reads, a knowing heat in his eyes.

Being with him was more than she could ever have expected. A revelation.

His Lupine senses were able to read her desire and emotions so clearly, to scent the things that heightened her want and draw away from the things that stirred up conflict to the point that they quickly fell into an irresistible rhythm that spoke of the full joining to come. Aislinn’s fear fell away, layer by layer, as blazing delight rushed in. And she could read him too.