Anna felt Charles’s nearness and increased her pace without considering that the much more fatigued Leah—who had apparently run here from Montana—could not keep up. The trees thinned out a little and she caught sight of Charles and Tag.

Charles saw her, too, and broke from the jog he’d been moving at to a full-on run. She could have flown down the hill. She didn’t slow as she neared, just threw herself at him, wrapping around him, arms and legs and heart—knowing he would catch her. He would always catch her.

And for a moment, with his hard arms around her with bruising force, she wasn’t a badass who had just killed the minion of a would-be god. She was a shivering fearful woman who had narrowly missed being Rosemary. A woman who had seen a cavern of living mummies—and that was a memory she might not fight too hard to keep if someone wanted to steal it from her.

Hugs were dangerous in that way. He held her tight—and she could feel in the too-rapid beat of his heart and the slight shiver of his arms that he had been frightened, too.

“We need to go,” said Leah. She sounded pretty tough, but she had it worse than Anna, and she didn’t have anyone to hug her.

Anna dropped back to the ground.

“Leah,” said Charles. “Da is worried about you. I’m glad to see you safe.”

An odd expression crossed Leah’s face. “Is he? And ‘safe’ is a matter of degree, isn’t it?” She looked over her shoulder. “We should go.”

They set off down the mountain toward safety. Anna and Charles took the lead and Tag the rear, surrounding the usually indomitable Leah with what protection they could.

“Tell me,” said Charles.

And because the pace didn’t preclude talking, Anna did. When she had finished, Charles glanced over his shoulder at Leah so that it would be clear that he was speaking to her.

“My da called Asil back from Billings and left for here in the middle of the night, as soon as Asil returned to care for the pack. His intention was to fly to Bend and then requisition a helicopter and fly to Wild Sign. If he was able to do that, he should be here sometime in the next hour or so.”

Because Anna knew her mate, she felt that there was a lot more he wanted to say. He saw her gaze and shook his head. “Some things my da is going to have to put back together or not,” he told her.

“Should we wait for him in Wild Sign?” Anna asked.

“No,” Leah said, though Anna had been talking to Charles. “We need to get out of here.”