Chapter 4

I emerged, gasping, beneath the overhang of a bushy outcrop on the Claremont side of the watercourse. The watchers had lost interest, I noticed, retreating back to their bridge-side vantage point. Relieved that their tenacity was so subpar, I rose out of the water, pushed through the brush to the open area further from the river...then felt myself spinning sideways as hands grabbed and tugged on my left arm.

Shifter. My sense of smell was still catching up to my reeling balance, but I could tell I was being manhandled by a werewolf due to the superhuman speed my attacker possessed. Too bad my diffusely dispersed star ball meant a sword refused to materialize in a timely manner....

I couldn’t afford to shift into fox form, either. Not when kitsunes were verboten everywhere other than in Gunner’s mansion.

That didn’t make me entirely helpless, however.

Instead, I let momentum carry me groundward, curling in upon myself as I fell so I hit the leaf litter already spinning into a somersault. With any luck, my opponent would still be shuffling backwards into two-footed stability after such an all-out attack, a lapse I planned to take full advantage of by ramming into his knees....

Or, rather, into her knees. I identified my teacher’s signature scent of spring rain, roses, and ozone even as I bowled her over, was apologizing profusely before she thudded butt-first atop the hard ground.

“Elle, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”

My roll had carried me past my opponent and back to my feet, so it was an easy matter to reach down in preparation for pulling the slender brunette erect beside me. And as I did so, I felt my forehead furrow in confusion. Why was my teacher—Crow’s mate, a resident of Ransom’s pack—waiting for me here rather than half a mile down river where we usually met each other? Had Crow received a message that he failed to deliver? Had our illicit meetings finally been found out?

“You were late,” my mentor answered the question I should have asked rather than the one I’d actually managed even as her hand clamped down on mine. “I was worried.”

Not so worried that her lupine nature didn’t show through, however. One moment she was my smart, protective teacher. The next, her eyes glistened with amusement and I braced myself against the inevitable yank intended to tumble me onto the ground.

Strangely, though, Elle merely scratched my palm rather than pulling me downward. A tiny trickle of blood welled up even as she retreated, her expression more fox-like than wolf-like as she licked her fingernail clean.

“What?” I started as icy cold ran up my arm and across my shoulder. My mentor’s eyes glowed red, my stomach lurched in answer...

...Then I was bending over backwards, twisting my body into a series of contortions that might have amused an audience but felt torturous from the inside. I hadn’t actually known I could hook my leg around my neck, and now that I’d been pretzelified I sure hoped Elle planned to untangle me...

...then the possession that had forced gymnastics upon me dissipated. I was once again alone inside my body while Elle hooted out her laughter at my struggles to shake out the newly-created kinks.

“And that,” my teacher told me, “is why you need to practice defensive magic.” Then, thrusting a photocopied document toward me: “Now read.”

***

It took a solid minute to loosen my muscles sufficiently so I could take the paper from her fingers. But when I did so, I was immediately sucked in. Because this new historical document provided much more than the vague hints offered by Elle’s previous findings.

Or so I guessed while poring over the bad handwriting and worse grammar that had passed for literacy a couple of hundred years before. As best I could tell, the writer had seen werewolves seize kitsune magic and use that power to perform terrible feats of subterfuge....

“Your trust is what left you open to manipulation,” Elle confirmed as my gaze rose from the paper. “Me taking your blood is only part of the reason it worked.”

“But I trust you because you’re trustworthy,” I countered, trying not to cringe at tossing such high praise at a wolf.

“Oh, and you always know to trust the good guys and distrust the bad guys?” Elle shot back. “You’re a fox among werewolves. You’ll never really know who your enemies are.”

Chilling...but true. And, at the same time, shifter faces flowed before me. Gunner, Tank, Crow, and Allen—how could I not trust werewolves who provided a better life for my sister and myself?

The contradictions were giving me a headache, so I forced myself to relinquish them and focus upon what really mattered. “Point taken,” I said simply, running my hand through tangled locks and grimacing at the dirt stains on both of my knees as the day’s deadline reasserted itself. “I’ll work on defensive magic...but not right this minute. I’m sorry I was late, but now I have to go.”

“To Kira’s hearing. I understand.” And just like that, Elle turned from hard-nosed teacher into loyal pack mate. Her hand settled on my arm in an example of werewolf touchy-feeliness, and the gesture actually felt natural. “I hope she’s doing better than she was?”

I shrugged, wishing I had something better to report about Kira’s strange crankiness. Because my sister hadn’t been quite herself for weeks now. The symptoms were mild but tenacious, and I was considering a visit to a human doctor to figure out what was going on. I just wasn’t sure if the risk was worth the potential payoff....

“Tell me if I can help in any way,” Elle continued, rather than prying further. And something about the kindness in her voice flowed across the city alongside me as I returned to the husband she hadn’t seen in three long months. Elle refused to risk the guys by cluing them in to her proximity during our meetings, which I knew created a wedge in her relationship that shouldn’t rightfully have been there.

Now, as I rushed up the courthouse steps and found the mate in question pacing anxiously, I somehow lost track of the plausible deniability Elle had worked so hard to create. Because Crow was clearly worried by my lateness...and not because he distrusted my ability to guard my own skin. No, the male had seen through the charade Elle and I created and he was anxious about his life partner.

So even though I shouldn’t have, I broke my mentor’s rule of secrecy. “She misses you but she’s fine,” I murmured, heartened by the way the male’s eyes lit up with instant pleasure.

Then I was pushing past the werewolf and running up marble steps toward the tremendous, column-lined entrance. Was sliding through the metal detector without removing anything other than my keychain—another benefit of carrying my star ball in a diffuse manner rather than as its customary sword.

And I was only two minutes late when I slid into the back of the courtroom...just as the judge banged his gavel and prepared to decide my sister’s fate.