Willow showed me the medallion. “Could it be some sort of pack insignia?” she asked, pointing to the Baird and Lowe crests tattooed on my bicep.

“Maybe.” I studied the stag. I doubted it had anything to do with a shifter pack, but anything was possible. Those who shifted into stags tended to be loners – I’d never heard of them organising into a pack before. Two stags couldn’t usually stand to share the same territory, let alone work together to manage the complex social hierarchy of a pack. But, then again, a mixed pack like the Lowes was hardly normal, and it had happened.

And it still didn’t explain why the man bore no scent of a shifter. There were spells and charms that could disguise a shifter’s scent, but they involved a very advanced magic that only a few people would have access to. Our peeper could be a human in the employ of a stag – sometimes packs worked with humans who knew their secrets to run errands or perform other tasks they couldn’t – but if that was true, it still didn’t explain why he was following us. Why were they watching us? Why not watch Caleb? I was an ally, sure, but not nearly as powerful as Rolf, and I didn’t make any decisions. Willow was even less involved than I was.

The more I thought about it, the more I believed this had nothing to do with shifters and the plan and everything to do with Willow and the reason she left London. And I think she ken it, too, which was why she didn’t want Caleb involved.

It could be her mother, as we’d originally thought, but if Willow’s Ma wanted to find her, then why hadn’t she shown up here already? Why was she still calling Willow every few days to beg her to come home?

An ex-lover scorned … no, that didn’t make sense, not given what I ken about Curtis. But what then …

Willow wasn’t telling the whole truth about her past, of that I was certain.

You’re one to talk, or did you forget that you haven’t told her about what you’re planning for shifters, or that you’re capable of the very monstrous things that she’s so terrified of?

Shaking away the unsettling thoughts, I glanced up at Willow, studying her face of any sign of recognition as her fingers traced the stag on the medallion. She looked as stumped as I felt.

“Is there anything else here?” Willow asked, tucking the medallion into her shirt pocket.

“Just his scent.” I ran my fingers over the bent grass and broken branches, thick with the man’s distinct scent. There was no clue at all in the odour, apart from the fact the guy laid on thick with the aftershave. If I transformed into my wolf, I’d be able to pick up much more subtle clues with my superior sense, but I’d promised Willow that I wouldn’t shift. “I’d like to follow it a little further.”

A sliver of fear flickered across her face, but she nodded.

I helped Willow back onto my shoulders. As soon as her arms were wrapped tight around my neck, I took off, following the scent as it weaved through the trees. It emerged a few miles later on the edge of the gravel road leading deeper into the forest. Tire tracks in the soft earth at the edge of the road showed me how our stalker had arrived. We looked around where the car had been parked, but found no other clues.

“Well, we cannae do anything else tonight,” I said, dusting dirt off my jeans. I knelt down and patted my back. “Up ye go.”

“Drop me back at the parking lot,” Willow said, as she clambered onto my shoulders, her warmth burning through my skin. “I’ll head back to my flat and—”

I shook my head. “You’ll nae be going back to your place alone.”

“Excuse me?”

“This guy is human, which makes me think he’s after you, not me. He could be that same guy who was hanging around your flat the night Resurrection got trashed.”

Willow’s face paled. “You mean … he was a stalker, after all?”

“Could be. Whoever he is, he could be staking out your place, waiting to get you alone. You need to come back to the cabin. You’re staying the night.”

A panicked look broke out on Willow’s face. “But … I have things to do.”

I folded my arms. “We can do them together. I promised you that I wouldnae let you out of my sight.”

“But—” Willow seemed ready to protest. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. I ken it. There’s some secret she’s not telling me. Even if she doesn’t ken who this guy is, she at least has an idea now of where to find out.

“No arguments.” I stood up, throwing Willow back onto my shoulders. She yelped in protest as I started off toward the forest.

“Irvine, wait! Put me down! Why can’t we stay at my place?”

“You live in the village. If someone attacks you, I cannae shift into my wolf form with so many people around. We need to be in the forest.”

“You promised you wouldn’t shift into your wolf form in front of me. This wasn’t part of the bargain—ow!” Willow jerked as a branch scraped across her back. “I said, put me down this instant.”

“Careful. I dinnae want to drop you.” Willow stopped squirming after that, and I managed to get her back to the cabin without any more protests. I expected her to try to leave as soon as I put her down, but all she did was slump against the bed and remove her prosthesis, a grave expression marring her beautiful face. I think she’d realised that I was right.

I made a fire in the tiny potbelly stove and and moved the two chairs in front of it. Willow curled up in one with a blanket around her shoulders, her stump propped up on the stool I used beside the bed. I grabbed a block of dark chocolate from the fridge and made a pot of bubbling hot chocolate on top of the stove, adding a little chilli for a real kick.

The discovery of our peeper had killed the sexual tension, but the connection still thrummed between us. I pulled my chair closer, and as I handed Willow a mug of hot chocolate, my hand brushed hers and the now familiar jolt of electricity shot up my arm. The moonlight through the window framed her dark hair in a halo of cold light, and the firelight flickered across her face,

My mate. My beautiful, brave, clever, shy mate. What are you hiding? What secrets lurk in your past?

Willow was the first to break the silence. “Hey, Irvine.”

“Aye?”

“Why are you here?” Willow sipped her chocolate.

I shrugged. “Why are any of us here? That seems an awfully deep question to surprise a man with after he’s just given you a chocolatey treat.”

Willow laughed, the sound like a rushing stream. “No, I mean, why are you in Crookshollow with Caleb and his crew? You must have a pack somewhere else.”

“Aye, my pack, the Bairds, is back in Aberdeen. I’ve placed a wolf I trust as the new alpha there. What I’m doing here with Caleb is something that’s going to make life better for all shifters. It’s something I’ve believed in for many years, but Caleb is the only one who will be able to make it happen. It’s important to me that we achieve what we set out to do, see it through to the end.”

“And what is that?”

I studied Willow’s face, searching for a sign that she might be receptive to our mission. I glanced over at her stump resting on the stool, and the force of her loss crashed against my desire to be truthful. The urge to tell her dried my tongue in my throat. You can’t do it. She will never understand, never accept that it would be better for everyone if shifters were known. And can you blame her after her own father took her leg from her?

“I cannae tell you, I’m sorry.”

“Fair enough.” Willow rearranged the blanket, pulling it further back from her stump and exposing her bare skin to the fire. I fixated again on her limb, on how the skin had knitted itself together over the amputation, a single long scar the only sign that something traumatic had happened to her. The body healed the damage of the past.

I pictured Willow as a little girl, her brown curls tied up in pigtails with white ribbons. Her bright eyes sparkling as she played some kind of game. I tried to imagine the kind of monster that could see this girl and want to hurt her in such a way, but it just seemed impossible.

Surely thinking like a monster would come naturally to you.

“Oh.” Willow’s face flashed with heat. She hurriedly replaced the blanket over her leg.

“Why’d you do that? You were getting hot.”

“You don’t want to look at it.”

“I didnae say that. I see it all the time.”

“That’s different. In the heat of the moment, you can forget about it. But no one wants to look at a broken person. It’s fine.” She blinked. “I’m used to it.”

“You shouldnae have to be used to it, because there’s nae a ring of truth to it. You’re nae broken, like some toy on the shelf for repair. You dinnae need to be fixed, Willow Summers. And if there’s one thing I hope you get out of this arrangement of ours, it’s the ken that you’re beautiful not in spite of this leg, but because of it. Because it’s a part of you, and therefore is beautiful.”

Willow glanced away, but not before I saw a tear roll down her cheek. “This is really good hot chocolate,” she said, finally, keeping her face turned away as she raised the mug to her lips. “I love the chilli.”

Right, so we were done talking about her, then. “Aye. My father used to make it like this all the time. He spent quite a bit of time in South America—”

“On business?”

I guess overseeing the illegal import of cocaine is considered business. “In a manner of speaking. Anyway,” I raised my own mug to my lips, “he had a huge sweet tooth, and he couldnae hardly go a day without chocolate, which meant we spent many a night cooking mugs of this over our campfire.”

“Where is your father now?”

I paused before taking another sip. My hand went to my throat, closing around the coin he’d given me as a good luck charm. Careful. Don’t say anything to give away the truth. “He’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry.” Willow still faced the wall, but she snaked her hand over to my lap and squeezed my thigh. “What happened? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I found his body in part of the forest owned by the local manor. It was the full moon, and he was in his wolf form. From the looks of things, he’d killed a baby deer – one of the manor’s herd. I found its carcass beside him. The gamekeeper must’ve seen him. He had put a bullet right through his neck.”

That part at least was true. The memory of staring down into Pa’s eyes as they glassed over threatened to surface again, but I pushed it down. It wouldn’t do to get caught up in the past with Willow here.

Willow whipped her head around, her dark eyes burning into mine. “A gamekeeper shot a wolf? How did that not end up in the news?”

Shit. I was an idiot. “We talked him out of it. He’s keeping our secret.”

The lie tasted bitter on my tongue. I set down my hot chocolate. I no longer had the stomach for it.

Later, after the fire had wound down, we crawled into bed, our bodies twisted around each other. With one less limb to tangle together, we fit against each other in the tiny bed perfectly. Willow curled into my armpit, and a few minutes later, she was fast asleep.

My eyes remained open, trained on the window. A hundred thoughts whirled through my head. Who was the mysterious man who was watching us? Was it the same guy from outside the shop, or was it just a coincidence? Why was he after Willow, and was he just content to watch her or did he have something more sinister in mind? How would I keep Willow safe if she discovered the truth about what I have done, and what I was planning on doing? Because of our agreement, she was starting to open up and realise that shifters could be more than violent monsters.

Yet here she was, in bed with the greatest monster of them all.