I’ve never run so fast in my life. I’ve never felt both exhilaration and terror in equal parts the way I did that night. Pulling away from Mac gutted me. At the same time, the promise of seeing him again and finally leaving with him drove me.

We stayed to the shadows on the other side of the wall. There were still fifteen minutes before curfew. The campus patrols were close, but four girls giggling and walking briskly across the quad weren’t enough to draw suspicion right now. If it had been Chris or Joel or even Trey, things might have gone to hell. But, I’d never seen the men on patrol that night.

April headed toward Covey Hall. Before she got there, she looked over her shoulder and made a sharp turn to the right. Signaling Jasmine, she and Kat broke off. They headed up the dorm steps while April grabbed my arm and pulled me off the sidewalk down a steep embankment.

“Where the hell are we going?”

“Better you don’t know,” she said through gritted teeth. “But, you can’t go back to your dorm. Maybe not ever. Chris Woods isn’t an idiot. He may not have marked you yet, but he’s got your scent ingrained in him now. You get anywhere near him, he’s going to smell your man all over you.”

Terror froze my heart. She was right. As much as my body craved Mac’s, it might be the very thing that got him killed. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened. Not now. Not when I’d gotten a taste of what he was supposed to be to me. Even now, my neck burned where I’d wanted him to bite me. In Nikki and even April, that mark was an abomination. For Mac and me, I knew it was destiny.

We doubled back twice. April made wild gestures with her hands. There were security cameras hanging from the street lamps in certain parts of campus. She made a big show about passing under them. Then, we went back to the shadows. We circled the edge of campus three times. Finally, she darted across Clover Lane and headed for a one room schoolhouse just outside the campus boundary. The building was allegedly one of the oldest schoolhouses in the state. The campus had been built around it.

April took me around to the back of the building. There, in the darkest shadows behind thick shrubbery, she knelt in front of a small, rectangular basement window. The metal frame was rusted out.

“Be quick,” she whispered.

“You want me to crawl through there?”

April arched a brow and nodded. “Better hurry. It’s going to be dark and damp down there. But, you’ll find a pallet under the stairs and a box with some food and water. Don’t come out or even go to the upper floors for any reason. I’ll come back for you tomorrow. You’ll know if it’s me ‘cause I’ll knock on this window. There’s a bench under it you can climb on.”

“What if I have to…”

“There’s a sump pump in the corner.”

“Gross.”

“Glamorous life we rebels live, eh?”

I put a hand on April’s shoulder. “Thank you. Why are you doing this?”

“It’s not like I’m a hero, Eve. I just know what it was like to be taken against my will by one of those...assholes. I’m not planning on letting it happen again.”

I wanted to hug her. This girl had steel in her back, and I hoped it was enough for what we had planned. She sat back on her heels, regarding me.

“You sure that one’s different? Your man?”

The question took me aback. April’s eyes gleamed under the stars. It didn’t take a mind reader to understand she was thinking about whatever past horror she’d endured under a different shifter. How had she resisted? How had she come out whole?

“He is,” I said.

“I hope you’re right. For all our sakes.”

“What about Lena Morris?”

April smoothed a hair away from her face and pointed across the street facing away from campus. “You see that yellow house? Two down from the intersection.”

I did. It was an unassuming bungalow with red shutters and a white picket fence. There were dozens of them on every street in Birch Haven. Again, the spooky nature of ghost town at night made my skin crawl. I’d spent almost a year and a half in Birch Haven, and only now that truth was evident. I think I’d been willfully blind until Mac made me see.

“She’s in there?”

April nodded. “I’m pretty sure. That’s where they took one of my friends after she...fought. Plus, two nights ago, Jasmine thought she saw Lena in the backyard. They let her out sometimes. Fresh air, I guess.”

“Is she under guard?” As much as I wanted to hide, the little yellow house was so close, less than two blocks away.

“Oh, there’s a shifter who lives there. One or two, actually. But, they’re not there all the time. When you saw her, was she bound?”

I closed my eyes and envisioned Lena as she was the other night, curled up on the bed. I didn’t remember seeing chains or bindings on her wrists. But, it had been so brief a glimpse, I might have missed something. “I don’t think so. But, someone was in the room with her. And of course there were the cameras.”

“Right,” April said her voice trailing off. “And, she might have chains on her you can’t even see. We can try to get a message to her tomorrow if you’re willing. Jasmine says she goes out in the yard at two o’clock every Wednesday for a few minutes. The house next door is vacant. But, if I sense even a hint of trouble, Lena’s going to be on her own. She’s damaged goods, Eve. I didn’t want to say that in front of your man, he looked so sexy and desperate. But, who knows what’s going on in Lena Morris’s brain? They’ve got her locked in there, so somebody still thinks she’s a threat. That’s good for us. She just might not be too stable.”

Ice ran up my spine. God. What had Lena endured? I just prayed she shared the strongest part of Mac’s DNA. I was banking on the hope that there was enough fight left in her to make all the difference.

Then, it was time for April to leave. She had just a few more minutes to race back to Covey and make it in before curfew. We’d pressed our luck enough for one night. As it was, I had put my trust in Jasmine. She’d promised to swipe my ID when she went back into Camden. Unless Nikki came back and raised some alarm, no one would know I was gone.

“Be back before two,” April said. “Then we’ll see if there’s anything left of Lena Morris to save.”