Nick spent most of the day pacing the confines of his room, irritated beyond reason that Sasha dimed him out to the alpha bear and Kaiser insisted on locking Nick up until they could be sure the wolf was no longer in control. By the end of the fight with Sasha, even with the physical exertion and alcohol, the wolf managed to wrestle his way to the top and Nick found himself a passenger in his own head. He knew he would eventually get back on top, even with the crusty old wolf calling the shots, so he wasn’t too concerned, but the alpha bear thought of his family and the cubs first. And the bear didn’t trust the wolf with anything.

So Nick had plenty of time to think and plot, as control shifted between him and the wolf. He didn’t expect much from the sorcerer, but he had high hopes for the leprechaun. Finding Smith would solve most of their problems, if the ErlKing was in any condition to actually help once he was freed. Depending on where he’d been kept and what kept him, of course. Nick glanced up as his sister appeared in the small window in his door, her expression difficult to decipher.

Kara unlocked the door and slid inside, carrying a tray of food, and Nick thought about making a run for it, just to cause some trouble for Kaiser. But Kara’s mate, Owen, waited in the hall and kept an eye on them both. The wolf growled at the kid, still not liking that Nick’s sister smelled too much like the bear.

She gave him a sharp-eyed look, though. “Cut it out. Sit down and eat your lunch.”

“Not my fault,” Nick said, his voice gravelly. The wolf grudgingly gave up control, retreating to the periphery to rest, and Nick braced himself for a fight later. “This is ridiculous. I don’t need to be locked up.”

“Not your call,” she said, echoing his words. Kara flipped dark hair over her shoulder and folded her arms over her chest as she sat in one of the two chairs, though her nose wrinkled as she pushed some dirty socks off the arm. “You need to clean up in here.”

“I like it this way.” Nick tore into the massive roast she’d brought, not bothering with utensils. Sometimes having the animal in control gave him an excuse to act like a barbarian and dispense with those irritating social niceties. Like forks and knives. “And I’m not going to do any damage around the place. The cubs are safe around me.”

Kara didn’t blink. “What are you up to, Nick?”

“What are you talking about?” He ignored the carrots and cabbage on the plate, though he scooped up the potatoes and turnips. A good hearty meal. She’d always been a smart girl. Too good to be related to him, really.

“Nick, come on. You can’t fool me. You’re up to something, and I need to know what it is.”

He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair, still holding half the roast in his hand. “You need to know, or that bear needs to know?” And Nick tilted his head at where Owen still watched them through the window.

A hint of flush colored her cheeks, but she didn’t back down. “Me, Nick. Tell me.”

He grumbled and focused on eating, though he knew she’d wait. The wolf knew it had been a bad idea to let her in, even if the food was delicious. Chances were the alpha’s mate cooked it; Kara couldn’t boil water if her life depended on it, but Josie made sure no one starved. He needed to bring her a gift to repay her. A deer, maybe. Some rabbits.

Nick blinked and shook himself, pushing the wolf back further. Although Josie was the practical sort and probably would appreciate a deer to feed her growing family.

But Kara still waited, and the longer the silence stretched, the guiltier he felt. So Nick sighed and put down the roast, wiping his face with a handful of the napkins she brought. “I’m looking for Smith.”

“Smith? But he’s…gone away. Somewhere else.” Kara shook her head, a hint of fear sparking in her eyes. “He’s gone, Nick. No one knows how to get him back. It’s too dangerous to try.”

“I asked some old friends for help,” Nick said. He shrugged and went back to the roast. “I don’t have anything to lose, looking for him, so why shouldn’t I? What if he’s stuck and needs help?”

“You have me to lose, jerk.” Kara folded her arms over her chest. “And what if you get stuck, too?”

“I’m not going there myself,” he said. “I can’t. No shifters can. So I’ll see if my friends will do it for me. And if they can’t, then we come up with another plan.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Friends? What kind of friends?”

Nick laughed, getting up to scrub the rest of the meat juice from his hands. “What, you’re worried I’m hanging around with hooligans? Come on, Kara. Friends, people I work with... It’s all the same, and not something you want to be mixing about in.”

“I’m worried about you,” she said, and that was enough to strike a chord in Nick’s heart. He didn’t like her worried, no more than he liked Lacey worried. The wolf, at least, agreed on that.

“Don’t be,” Nick said. He leaned back against the wall near the bathroom, hoping she would believe him. “I don’t have anything else to do in the city, so bringing Smith back seemed like a small way to pay back what the other shifters have given me.”

That rankled. The other shifters imprisoned him after he was freed from BadCreek, so that deserved some other sort of payback, at least as far as Nick was concerned.

Kara sighed as she leaned forward, watching him closely. She didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t much else Nick could tell her. “Are you back in control, Nick?”

“Of course.” He smiled winningly, resisting the urge to check his watch. He’d received a note from the leprechaun earlier, and he didn’t want to be late. Hugo was trouble enough even when everything went according to plan.

She laughed, rolling her eyes. “You think that’s going to work?”

“It always did before.” Nick strolled over so he could kiss the top of her head. “Besides, I’m the older brother. You’re supposed to do what I say, kid.”

Owen grumbled from behind the door, and Nick had to fight the wolf back from responding. Nothing like having a wolf in a cage and bear guarding the door. He nodded to Kara. “I have something I’ve got to do tonight, so if you could call your boyfriend off, I’d like to be on my way.”

“He’s more than my boyfriend, and you know it.” Kara levered to her feet and poked him in the chest. “Got it?”

“He hasn’t asked my permission to marry you, so until there’s a ring on your finger, he’s a boyfriend—and a shitty one at that. Tell the bear to get his act together.” Nick ignored the increased growling from the hall. He meant it, even if it pissed the bear off. He didn’t like the easy-peasy mate thing. His sister deserved a real commitment, and more than just a kid with a scarred psyche.

Kara shook her head as she walked to the door. “That’s not the way to get on my good side, Nick. I love him, and that’s that.”

The wolf growled but Nick left it alone. He just needed her to unlock the door.

She still hesitated, peering at his eyes, but eventually Kara gathered up the tray and the few leftover scraps, and nodded at Owen. The bear didn’t look happy as he unlocked the door, but at least he did what Kara told him to do.

Nick had to play along for another few hours, going back to the gym to exercise a bit in front of the alpha bear to make sure Kaiser knew the wolf had retreated, but he planned and plotted his next moves regardless of how the clock ticked down and the other bears watched him. He didn’t mind most people thinking him crazy. He only cared that Lacey knew he was sane.

He slipped away from the bears after they all headed off to have dinner with their happy little families; Kara tried to guilt him into eating with Owen and the crazy polar bear, but Nick declined and returned to his little den in the back of the building. No one stopped him. He wanted to shift forms and run through the woods until he dropped from exhaustion, but instead, he put on clean jeans and a nondescript shirt and headed into the city.

He found Hugo in the back corner of his favorite bar. Nick’s skin crawled from the moment he walked in, and he felt the eyes following him as he headed for the back. The place was full of magic, but not the shifter variety, and not the witch variety either. Must have been fae, like Nick. He made a mental note to avoid the bar in the future. The other occupants didn’t seem too pleased to have a shifter crash the party.

Hugo poured something from a carafe into a small glass, inhaling from it before sipping, and waited for Nick to sit. “Glad you could find the courage to meet me here.”

“Looks like every other bar in the city,” Nick said. He glanced at a menu, but knew better than to take food or drink from the fae. He didn’t want to wake up years from then in a fairy circle, or end up trapped in the Betwixt as someone’s love slave. He frowned at the ceiling. Well, the second didn’t sound half bad... He shook himself and turned his attention back to the irritated leprechaun. “I take it you found something? Or someone?”

“He’s there.” Hugo poured more of the slightly cloudy liquid, the concoction giving off an intoxicating scent that almost drew Nick into ordering some. Or just stealing what remained of Hugo’s. “But he’s trapped.”

“How? What trapped him?”

“It is not entirely clear what magic keeps him there,” Hugo said, though he took his time formulating the sentence. Nick hated that about the fae—there were always traps in their words. You could never trust what they said, not with the hidden meanings and twisty turns of phrase. “There is a human as well. Both of them are trapped by the same magic.”

Nick frowned. The mostly-human alpha of BadCreek, maybe. He hadn’t been born a shifter, but had been turned. “Do you know anything else about how they’re stuck? A charm or a spell or what?”

“It was foreign magic,” Hugo said. “Something I haven’t seen before. I didn’t get any closer to figure out what it was, but you’ll need someone powerful to free him. If they can.”

It sounded like perhaps the djinn helped out Ray, since that was the only magic that Nick knew was going on inside the BadCreek compound. But until someone got a lot closer, he wouldn’t know for sure. Nick rubbed his jaw and squinted at a few more of the bar’s customers. “How much would it take for you to get closer and maybe free him?”

“You don’t have enough gold,” Hugo said. He finished his drink, head tilting back as he savored it, and the leprechaun dabbed at his mouth with a napkin before leaving a few dollars on the table. “No one in this city has enough gold for me to risk it.”

“Is there anyone here who’s crazy enough to do it?” Nick had a few people he could ask, although he really didn’t want to. He’d been done with witches the last time he worked with them. They gave him the creeps in the worst way.

Hugo shrugged. “No one I know.”

And that was apparently as helpful as the leprechaun cared to be. A growl escaped before Nick could get the wolf under control again, and Hugo’s expression darkened. The leprechaun got to his feet and glanced around the bar before he spoke. “Just keep in mind that whoever you send after him had better be strong enough to deal with the monster capable of binding the ErlKing against his will. Anything less and you’ll end up in a worse position than he is.”

With that, Hugo sauntered out of the bar, only distracted by a beautiful violet-haired nymph for a moment. She distracted Nick a hell of a lot longer, but not enough to turn his attention from Lacey. Nick liked to think he only appreciated the beauty of a feminine form, with no intention of actually doing anything about it. Besides, the nymph had sharp, pointed teeth and probably wanted to rip out his throat while he slept, so it was better not to get too distracted.

A queasy feeling brewed in the pit of Nick’s stomach as he left the bar, and he double-checked to make sure he hadn’t touched any of the food or drink. Something wasn’t right. As much as he didn’t blame Hugo for not wanting to risk his skin against whatever trapped Smith, Nick dreaded reaching out to the witches for their help. Life would have been a lot simpler if the leprechaun was the cheerful, helpful kind instead of the surly asshole type.

Nick walked away from the fae bar and headed for downtown, hoping that maybe Lacey wandered through the bar district two nights in a row, and checked his phone for messages from Kara. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and the wolf quieted, growing wary. Something definitely wasn’t right. He hesitated, about to return to the bears’ den to wait it out, but a distinctive howl rose in the distance, followed by a hyena cackle.

The hyenas.

He ran for the den, foreboding crawling up his spine. Lacey. Lacey was in trouble, the wolf was sure of it. Nick almost crashed into some of the wolves from O’Shea’s, snarling as he tried to throw Rafe out of his way, but the alpha stood his ground. He and Ruby tackled Nick and threw him into an alley, fighting to pin Nick as the wolf raged to the surface and clawed for control. Nick roared and broke free, getting only a few steps before Rafe dove at his legs, and then at least half a dozen wolves helped pin Nick down.

He bared his teeth at the alphas as Ruby knelt next to his head and smacked his cheek. “Release me. Immediately.”

“Listen to me, wolf,” Ruby said. Her eyes glowed gold, and some of that alpha magic gave her more influence than he expected. The wolf quieted in his head just a touch, because at least Ruby had always been a straight shooter. More barks and cries echoed from the hyena den, and Nick tensed. Ruby grabbed a handful of his shirt to help pin him to the dirty concrete. “The bears are on their way, Nick. Keep your shit together. I have something to tell you, but you’ve got to keep yourself together.”

He already knew. The wolf already knew. A howl bubbled up in his chest and nearly escaped, but he needed to hear it. Nick bared his teeth. “Say it. Just say it.”

“The hyenas made a run at BadCreek,” Ruby said. “Lacey Szdoka is dead.”

The wolf’s howl broke free, tearing him apart from the inside out, and Nick launched up, throwing off the restraining hands. Lacey couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible. Through the red haze of fury and grief, he saw the bears lumber up and knew they meant to stick him in a cage again.

He couldn’t help Lacey from a cage. She had to be alive. She still lived. He would have died himself if she did; something had gone wrong, there was no doubt about that, but she lived. Nick snarled and dodged Rafe’s attempt to restrain him, and instead shed what remained of his humanity to assume his wolf form. He could find her. If she’d been near the compound, he could skulk in the woods until he found her. Any traces left behind would lead him to her.

He bolted, dodging around the wolves and bears and even a lion that tried to stop him, and fled. He’d find her. Wherever she was, he’d find her.