Vanc

hair across my face. Ryker led me along a narrow, winding path that skirted the e

hunting grounds in the territory are down there." His wor

med in my mind. *Get

ile my eyes darted across the treacherous ground, search

alice radiating from him. He began to tell a story about some ancient wolf hero,

led like a spring, my weight shift

oming somber. "You know, Elara, sometimes, for the

tion of a startled beast. In the same motion, his foot "accidentally" dislodged a loo

horeographed to look l

th the awkwardness of my pregnant body, I had no chance. A scream was ripped from my throat

cliff face, finding and locking onto the thick, gnarled root of a stubborn tr

gone. His face was a canvas of triumphant cru

ply lifted his heavy hiking boot and brought

knuckles. A cry of agony escaped my lips, but I

ipping sensation, a brutal severing, as if something vital was being ripped from my ver

y baby. My b

gony that it extinguished every other sensation. The pain in my hand, the f

ers wen

ip fa

I

s face impassive, and opened a mind-link to his Beta. *Missio

of agony through my already broken body, but it slowed my descent. I tumbled from the ledge into the thick, de

, and utterly empty, drifting

oices from the clifftop abo

er. His Beta, Marcus Cain, was with h

, every cell in

n if it didn't, no one survives a night in this part of the forest.

e cold. "Now you can officia

This wasn't just an affair. It wasn't a moment of weakness. It was a calc

hollow space where my heart used to be. It wasn't love, or

hrough the undergrowth. I didn't know where I was

make him, and the woman who