“No one’s seen her on this side of the street, but I got us some supplies,” Luke panted as he ran up to me. He looked stricken, or perhaps his face was just reflecting my own distress. He pressed a small jar of lycan pills from Clara’s shop into my hand. Both of us were feeling the tug of our wolves, and the full moon was only hours away.

I scanned the street again, but no answers came. We’d been searching for two hours, but I had no idea where she’d gone.

I’m such an idiot. How could I let this happen?

With every minute that went by, and every whiff of Angus’ scent on the breeze, I grew more and more concerned, my stomach twisting up in knots at the thought of what might’ve happened to her.

As angry as Rosa was at me, I still had a duty to protect her. After hunting around the high street with no success, and making the trip out to the forest to check the cabin, Ryan and I drove back to the manor to see if she’d taken a taxi back there to collect her car, but no luck. We dragged Alex from the studio, and quizzed her and Simon on everything Rosa had said and done that morning.

Now we were back in the streets looking for her. Alex had a picture of Rosa she’d taken on her phone, and she was showing that to anyone who would stop. I was just coming out of Spellbinding Books after giving the owner an earful about his treatment of her, when I heard someone shouting my name.

“Caleb!”

I whirled around. Ryan was running up the alley from Tir Na Nog, his face flushed. “We have a sighting! The bartender in the pub said she came in about two hours ago, ordered a full-English and a bottle of red, and asked him to call her a taxi.” Ryan pulled out a bar napkin. “I’ve got the taxi company number here—”

“Give me that,” Alex snatched the napkin from his hand and started dialling the number.

My heart pounded. With her free hand, Alex reached out and squeezed my shoulder. My mind whirled with possibilities. If Rosa got into a taxi two hours ago, she could be anywhere by now …

“Hi,” Alex said. “I was supposed to meet a friend at the Tir Na Nog, and I’ve just arrived and the bar staff said they called her a cab. She doesn’t have her phone on her and I’m wondering if you could tell me where she is—”

Alex will sort it out. She got in a taxi. That means she’s still around her someplace. Perhaps she’s gone back to the cabin. They’ll be able to tell us. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be—

This is all your fault. Guilt surged through me, guilt at the awful things I’d said during the fight. I’d been so agitated with worry, I hadn’t been thinking. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Rosa said the racism she experienced every day came from thoughtless comments made by normal people. I’d just proved her right.

“Oh, really? … That’s right, that is strange … Thanks so much.” Alex frowned as she hung up the phone. “You’re not going to like this, Caleb. This dispatcher said that a driver named Barry Einhorn did pick Rosa up from the pub, about ninety minutes ago. She asked him to take her to the train station, which is only ten minutes drive away. But Barry has gone completely silent. He won’t answer his phone or pick up his radio, and he seems to have disabled the GPS in his car.”

My blood froze in my veins. “Angus.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, although we should go to the station and check she isn’t there, just in case.” Alex took one look at my face, and squeezed my arm even tighter. “We’ll find her, don’t you worry.”

Alex offered to go to the station and check with all the ticketing officers to see if Rosa got on a train. She took Ryan’s car. Luke, Ryan and I continued to prowl along high street, trying to sniff out Angus’ trail amongst the hundreds of crisscrossing paths. We finally caught the tail of it, stopping on a disabled parking spot at the top of the alley leading down to the pub.

“The taxi would’ve pulled in here to pick her up,” I said, my stomach churning. “There aren’t that many people around today. Angus and Robbie could’ve knocked the driver out, and somehow convinced Rosa to get in the car.”

“Where’s the driver now?” Alex asked. “Would they bring him with them?”

“He’s not our concern right now,” I said, to try and deflect her question. I knew my stepbrothers well enough to know the driver was probably dead in the boot.

“It’s isn’t good. They could have gone anywhere, and we have no way of tracking them,” Ryan said.

I shook my head. “Their plan hasn’t changed. They’re taking her to Aberdeen.”

“It’s good news, though.” Ryan said. “We know where she’s going, and we know she’ll be alive when they get there. They’re expecting you to follow her, right? That’s the whole point of this exercise, to get you to go back to your father’s clan?”

“Yes, but it’s vital that he gets there first. Angus wants Rosa for himself. He wants to make her his mate. He’s afraid of all of us, now that we’re a pack and he knows we’ll fight him for her. I think he’s counting on the rest of the Maclean clan to back up his claim to her when he arrives. He’ll tell them that she was his mate, and that I tried to take her from him. Douglas will believe him, unless we can get there first and he can smell the fated connection between us. If we get there too late, we’ll be walking into an ambush.”

“So we have to get to him before he arrives in Aberdeen, or else we’re hopelessly outnumbered?”

“That’s pretty much the situation. And we can’t fly. Angus has connections in British Air. He’ll have already made a call to ensure I can’t get on a plane.”

“Okay.” Ryan doubled back down the street, heading for Bewitching Bites. He grabbed the handle of the bakery door. “Come on.”

“How can you think of your stomach at a time like this?” I growled. “We don’t have any time to waste if we’re gonna—”

“I know,” Ryan grinned. “Just trust me.”

The bakery was pretty busy. Every table was occupied, and a line snaked between them from the counter all the way to the door. Behind the counter, a tiny, gorgeous Asian girl darted every which way, serving coffees and cutting cakes.

Ryan barged right past the line, ignoring the cries of indignation that followed in our wake. If there’s one thing an upstanding British citizen cannot stand, it’s people who cut into lines.

He marched up to the woman behind the counter. “Belinda, where’s Cole today? I need to talk to him urgently.”

“Oh, hey Ryan.” The pretty Asian girl’s face lit up in a bright smile. “He’s upstairs, actually. He wanted to get some of the paperwork done for the bird sanctuary. He’s trying to get it registered as an official charity. Go on back.”

Bird sanctuary? Charity? This whole conversation was really bizarre. I didn’t have time to ask questions or protest, as I followed Ryan through the kitchen and up a narrow flight of stairs into a tiny flat at the top.

A small kitchenette beside the door held a coffee machine and a kettle and several dirty teacups. Every available inch of wall space was covered with posters of brightly-coloured birds, native bird species charts, migration patterns, newspaper clippings, and the odd scone recipe.

The only other furniture in the room was a lumpy-looking couch under the window, a tiny desk in the centre of the room, under the light, and a man with long, black hair, a thin, hawk-like nose, and beautiful dark eyes. He was hunched over a laptop, his muscled thighs barely fitting under the desk. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.

What was going on here? Who was this guy? Live-in toy boy for the bakery lady? Hell, anything’s possible in Crookshollow.

The man stood. “Oh, hey Ryan. Do you like what we’ve done with this place? Belinda and I got our own apartment a couple of months back, so I’ve been using this as an office for the sanctuary—”

“I need your help, Cole.” Ryan introduced me and started to explain the situation.

“Hey.” I jabbed him in the arm. “Who is this guy? Can I trust him?”

“This is Cole. If I trust him, you trust him. That’s how this whole pack thing works.”

I nodded. Ryan was right. Just because I was the pack alpha, doesn’t mean I had to be like Douglas. Ryan knew what he was doing.

“Any idea what the taxi looked like?” Cole moved over to the wall, and flung upon the window.

“Yeah, it’s one of the yellow ones. Licence number BD17 SKR. The girl is black, with super frizzy hair. She was wearing a red sweater. The other two guys have short hair and Maclean tattooed on their arms, but they might be in disguise.”

“Maclean tattoos?” The man scrunched up his nose.

I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the large castle. Cole nodded.

“I’m on it. Tell Belinda I’m running an errand for you.” Cole faced the window, and flapped his arms. I stepped forward, certain he was having some kind of fit. Then I saw the change in his face, the way his bones cracked and rearranged themselves, the way his nose elongated, extending out from his face and hooking over at the end. He let out a croak as his knees bent backward, and he jerked to the ground. Black feathers poked from his skin, extending down his spine. His jeans and shoes dropped to the floor as his legs shrunk and his toes grew into talons. With a final cry, the man’s outstretched arms unfurled into enormous wings, and a black raven flew out the window, swooping into the alley below and disappearing over the village.

“A Bran?” I turned to Ryan in surprise. I hadn’t seen a raven shapeshifter in years. Usually, they were hidden away behind the walls of rich estates, slaves to the bidding of their masters. “Is he yours?”

Ryan shook his head. “And if you want him to do you any favours, don’t ever let him hear you say that. Cole was granted his freedom. It’s kind of a long story, another of Crookshollow’s secret supernatural affairs. Suffice it to say, if anyone can get to Rosa before they reach Aberdeen, it’ll be him.”

“And then what?” I growled. Watching Cole shift had yanked my wolf even closer to the surface. At any moment now, I could be overcome, and that could get very, very bad.

“Cole’s resourceful. He’ll figure something out.”

“I hate this.” I glared at the window, wishing I was flying alongside Cole, ready to tear Angus to pieces with my talons. I touched the ring around my neck. “I need to find her, Ryan.”

“I know you do.” Ryan patted my shoulder. “We will. In the meantime, we’ll go grab some road-trip sustenance from Belinda, and wait until Alex gets back with the car.”

* * *

Alex returned just as we were stumbling out of the bakery, laden down with boxes of goodies. She shook her head as she got out of the driver’s seat. “She definitely didn’t make it to the train station. You said in your text that Cole was following the taxi.”

“He left ten minutes ago. We’ll head up the M1 and wait for his call.” Ryan kissed her on the cheek. “This is going to get dangerous. I’d really prefer it if you didn’t come with us.”

“This is the 21st century, Ryan. Girls can be heroes, too.”

“I don’t doubt it. I’d just prefer if my girl wasn’t the hero in this particular instance.”

“Fine.” Alex rolled her eyes. “I guess I’ve already saved your arse more times than I can count. I will take one of those boxes, though.”

“That’s my girl.” Ryan handed her the Heaven & Hell cake.

“You boys stay safe now.” Alex bent up and kissed Ryan on the cheek, then dropped the keys into his hand.

The four of us piled into the car. Ryan behind the wheel, me in the passenger seat, and Luke and Marcus in the back. Ryan tossed me his mobile phone. “Cole will send an SMS when he’s located them,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to gain some time.”

“How?”

“He carries his phone on a pouch under his chest. He’s never without it.”

Ryan sped out into the street, careening around the corner and heading for the M1. I gripped the dashboard. “Jesus, man. You’re a worse driver than Luke.”

“I resent that,” Luke said, his mouth full of cake. Loose crumbs splattered over the seat.

“I’ll drive,” Marcus piped up.

“This is the latest model BMW,” Ryan growled. “I’m not trusting a mutt with it.”

“I resent that,” Marcus growled back.

“Caleb?” Luke asked. “Do you have those lycan pills on you?”

I pulled the tiny bottle from the pocket of my jeans and tossed it to him. “Save half for me. We’re gonna need them.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s nearly the full moon,” Luke said. “In a matter of hours, Caleb and I could go full werewolf on your asses.”

“Shit.” Ryan slammed his foot on the accelerator. “We’d better start moving faster. The last thing I want is claw marks in the leather seats.”

I stared into the mirror as the Crookshollow village faded into a blur behind us. My wolf clawed at my skin, begging to be released and tear Angus to pieces for hurting my mate. I popped another pill under my tongue, hoping like hell I’d be able to hold off the change until after I found Rosa. If Luke and I went ‘full werewolf,’ there’s no telling what we’d do.

We’re coming, Rosa. We’re coming.