LEAH WAS TIRED. It had dawned on her, not two hours after she’d started out for Wild Sign, that she should have taken the car. No one would have thought it unusual if she’d gone for a drive—and she’d have gotten here a lot easier.

But the need to move, the sheer strength of the summoning, had been so overwhelming. One moment she had been out running down the trail of a rabbit, and the next she’d changed direction and loped toward Wild Sign. That wasn’t the name she’d known that place by, of course. And it wasn’t exactly in the same location, either—though the amphitheater had been familiar. But she couldn’t remember what it had been, so she held on to the designations she was given.

She was hungry, too. She’d eaten such things as had come her way on her run, mostly squirrels and rabbits, though she’d driven a coyote off of a deer and feasted for a half hour, letting her body recoup its strength. Most of the time, aided by the supernatural nature of werewolf endurance and speed, and her ability to draw upon the pack energies, she’d spent running flat out.

She knew that she could not, should not, arrive this tired. She needed to find a safe place to rest for a few hours, some food to eat, before she got any closer. She paused next to a fallen tree with a hollow under it.

She had started to burrow into the space when she became aware of the sound of an engine. Abruptly reversing direction, she shook off the dirt and looked toward the noise.

She watched the headlights bounce off trees and rocks, lighting a rough track she hadn’t noticed. The engine sounded familiar, one of the pack vehicles. Charles had taken that Suburban.

She started off toward where her trail and the track the SUV was taking would intersect. As she approached her chosen vantage point, she was still debating whether or not to approach Charles. She closed her eyes as the SUV came over a rise, shining bright lights that would ruin her night vision. But the track dropped right afterward.

As soon as the lights dimmed, she opened her eyes in time to get a good look inside the cab.

She’d expected to see Charles driving, because Tag would already have wrecked on that track, and Anna would be creeping along at a quarter of the speed the SUV was making. But the face that the dash lights illuminated behind the wheel belonged to none of them.

She froze in her tracks, her eyes briefly meeting Anna’s before the SUV’s direction made it impossible to see anything inside the vehicle.