Madeleine let go, her heart racing. She wasn’t the least bit attracted to Becca, but that voice—old, cold—was nearly impossible to silence. “Right. Goodbye.”

“Bye, hon. I’ll say a prayer for you. Text me!”

After yet another promise that she would, Madeleine dragged her suitcase to the glass doors while Becca drove away. The doors parted before her, but she stood still, her heart hammering. The same old voice murmured, It’s not too late to turn back.

Turn back.

For once, she managed to silence it. However cruelly persuasive it could be, its power dwindled to nothing compared to the voice from the sea.

Return to me.

Madeleine set her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “All right,” she whispered. “Whoever you are, I’m coming.”

And with one deep inhalation for courage, she stepped through the door on her way to the sky.

CHAPTER TEN

The dogs no longer feared her. It had taken a while. Herding dogs were intelligent animals and could scent predators even when they came in unusual forms. When Hæra and Jonathan had looked for their first dog, many had snapped at her. More than one breeder had asked her, “You’re not a dog person?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she’d replied, having never tasted dog meat.

They got on better now. Perhaps it was all the time she’d spent inland around humans. Hæra smelled less like the ocean and more like grass. She spent more time on grass than she could ever have imagined. Being outdoors was better than being cooped up indoors, and the wind and rain never troubled her.

The farm’s first dog, a collie cross named Brodie, followed close behind as Hæra guided the four-wheeled Gator down the farm’s “road.” Said road was only the tracks created by the farm’s vehicles, the grooves worn down after hundreds of drives.

Up ahead, her target came into view. Hæra sighed. Brodie barked. “I see it,” she called to him. “Let’s not forget whose eyesight is still better.”

The cast ewe lay ahead, flat on her back and bleating in distress. Hæra pulled up closer, turned off the Gator, and hopped down. The mud squelched around her boots, wet soil covering the dried dirt that already crusted them. A surprise storm had rolled in last night. As always, she’d stayed indoors while Jonathan and the farmhands secured everything. She couldn’t risk being seen by the Stormhorses. Calder would recognize her human form.

The Sire must have been in a temper. Jonathan had said the storm was “a bad’un.”