She needed to interrupt it, so she said, “What is that song, Leah? Rachel’s right. It’s familiar but I can’t place it.” It made her want to go do … something.

Leah stopped humming but she looked lost in her own thoughts.

“Anna was a music major in college,” Sage told Rachel. “Before the bad wolves got her.”

Pulled away from the musical puzzle by Sage’s words, Anna tried not to scowl. Anna hadn’t wanted to go into graphic detail about her time in hell, for sure, so why did Sage reducing her abduction to the level of a Grimms’ fairy tale make the hair on her neck stand up? Anna frowned at her mostly full cocktail, sure she was overreacting. Maybe she shouldn’t drink things that tasted like paint thinner?

Leah touched Anna’s hand and gave her a soft smile that made her look more beautiful than Sage for a moment. And no one was more beautiful than Sage. It wasn’t a smile Anna had ever seen on Leah’s face before—something, she thought, the music had brought out.

“I don’t know the name of the song,” Leah said, her voice a little rough, as if her throat were dry. She looked at the far wall, but Anna was pretty sure it wasn’t what she was seeing. “I never did—or at least I don’t think I did. It’s been troubling me lately. I wonder what it means.”

The waiter came back with their drinks then, and the topic of conversation moved on to something lighter. But the song Leah had hummed lingered in Anna’s ears, along with a nagging sense of unease because of the unfinished story. It felt important. There had been five years between the day someone had happened upon Leah’s starving family and when Bran and someone else had rescued her.

Rescued her from what?

C H A P T E R

1

AUTUMN: ASPEN CREEK, MONTANA

Anna let her hands press the ivory keys of the old upright piano in a few preparatory chords, enjoying the rich sound. Music, for her, was not just an auditory experience—she loved the feel of the vibrations running through her fingers. The bass notes resonated in her core, leaving her energized and ready to play.

In all senses of the word.

She glanced over her shoulder and up at her husband’s face. She wasn’t sure anyone else had ever played with him. No one in their pack, for certain, including Bran. Oh, they played music with him, but they didn’t play games.

The piano wasn’t her instrument, but like most people who had ever attended college with the aim of majoring in music, she was reasonably competent. For this game, the piano was more flexible than her preferred cello, which was limited to two notes at a time, a few more with harmonics.