“Too close to stay out here,” he told her. He held out his hand—and she heard music, though he wasn’t singing. It came from the ground beneath her feet and shivered through her reluctant body, bringing with it the understanding of what she was doing here. That this was where she needed to be, with Zander.

She looked at his hand and couldn’t remember why she’d left him standing like that. It was rude. She took his hand—his was cold.

“You are warm,” he said, sounding startled.

“I told you,” she said.

“You did indeed,” he agreed. “Come this way, Anna mine.”

That was wrong, she knew. But she didn’t want to be offensive and tell him that he was mistaken. She didn’t belong to him. She belonged. Belonged to …

She was sitting on a rock overlooking the river and felt his approach.

She would go to that rock when she and Zander were finished hiking, she decided. And her shoulders relaxed with that decision.

They walked another half of a mile, but they traveled now on an actual trail.

TAG HIT THE Suburban with the Land Rover. The Suburban gave way with a crunch and shriek of bending metal.

“Sorry,” he grunted.

Charles didn’t care about the damage done. They had lost signal ten miles before and he had begun to doubt that they were even on the right path. The sight of the Suburban through the trees had been welcome. He understood why Tag had punched the accelerator so they were going too fast to stop in the loose and muddy ground.

Even if the Rover had been destroyed—and he suspected it wasn’t even dented, given the resiliency of old steel—it had already taken them as far as it could.

He jumped out of the Rover and into the cold rain. The Suburban’s hood was warmer than the ambient temperature, but not by much.

“We’re an hour behind them,” he told Tag. “Maybe a little more.”

“Scent isn’t going to help us,” Tag offered. “Not after an hour of this much rain.” He loosened his shoulders. “Good thing that the two of us know how to track using mundane methods.”

Charles didn’t like it. Normally he could track darn near as quickly as he could run, but in the dark and in the rain, it was going to slow them down. Normally he could find Anna wherever she was by their mating bond, but right now all that he could tell was that she was alive.

“Here,” said Tag, pointing up the slope. “They went this way.”

“Wait,” Charles said. He opened the Suburban, taking in the scents.

A man, but not one that Charles had met. Or at least not one whose scent he had taken in. He drew in another breath and got a faint hint of sweetness. Like a snow cone.