Rear cell block, top floor, third window from the right.

That was what Chase had told her. Perched in an old oak tree outside the prison walls, Ivy narrowed her eyes. Despite the distance and the darkening evening, her keen wyvern vision easily picked out the right cell. Now she just had to wait.

She was only going to get one shot at this.

This prison wasn’t a top-security facility, but she had no doubt that she’d trip some sort of alarm the instant she flew over the high concrete outer wall. She’d only have a few minutes at best.

But a few minutes were all she needed. The cell block walls were steel-reinforced and designed to withstand even a dragon…but nothing was stronger than wyvern acid. One blast at the barred window, and she’d be inside.

And then she’d help Hugh the only way she could.

Tell me where the police are holding Gaze, she’d said to Chase. And you’ll never have to see me again.

She hadn’t dared explain much more than that. After she was caught—and she would be caught—she didn’t want anyone to be able to accuse the pegasus shifter of colluding with her.

Still, Chase was no fool. She’d known from the way that his simmering hostility had turned to unease that he’d worked out what she intended to do with the information. He already thought of her as a dangerous assassin, after all.

But, as she’d hoped, his fierce loyalty and protectiveness had worked in her favor for once. He wanted to help Hugh nearly as much as she herself did. Add in the fact that it also meant that Chase would be rid of her for once and for all, and it was just too good a bargain for him to turn down.

Chase had told her where to come. Now she just had to wait for the right moment to strike.

Yes, her wyvern hissed in bloodthirsty approval. Spit. Strike. Kill. Destroy all threats to our mate!

For once she didn’t attempt to hold back her beast’s murderous instincts. Acid burned at the base of her throat, more potent and concentrated than ever before. With one act, one breath, she would forever silence Gaze. Hugh’s secret would be safe.

And he would be safe. Not just from potential hunters, but from a far more dangerous threat.

Herself.

She had to be locked up, to protect him. She wasn’t strong enough to just leave him. Plus, there was always the risk that Hugh might track her down—even after the terrible things she’d said.

The only way to be absolutely sure that he’d be safe, that he’d never come into contact with her venom, was to put impenetrable walls between them. Walls that neither of them would be able to breach, even if one or both of them was tempted.

She wouldn’t be locked up in a pleasant, airy prison like this one, open to the wind and sky. No, she would be put away in a maximum-security facility, deep underground, like her own mother. Monsters belonged in dungeons.

I’m sorry, Hope.

But her sister had Betty to look out for her now, and Griff, and all her other friends. None of them would ever accidentally put her in a coma due to a moment of carelessness. Hope was better off without her.

Everyone was better off without her.

A dark shape moved behind the cell window. Ivy snaked her neck out, straining to see through the dusky twilight. She had to be absolutely certain that she had the right target.

The man in the window turned his head, his profile silhouetted by the harsh cell light. There was something on his face—something far too bulky to be mere glasses. Some sort of visor was strapped to his head, completely covering his eyes.

Only one person could be wearing that.

Heart hammering, Ivy spread her wings. Her talons flexed on the tree branch. It was time.

Time to save her mate.

“IVY!”

Hugh’s shout shocked her so badly, she lost her grip on her branch. She fell out of the tree in a shower of twigs and snapped branches, too off-balance to be able to twist in mid-air and take flight. Her back hit the ground with a crash that knocked all the breath out of her.

She struggled to her feet just as four black hooves touched down in front of her. Hugh slid off the pegasus’s back, his hair and clothes windswept. He stepped toward her, holding out his hands.

Ivy recoiled, scrabbling awkwardly backward on her hind legs and clawed wing joints. She hissed in frantic warning.

Hugh stopped, though his hands stayed outstretched, as if he was trying to calm a wild beast. “I know what you’re planning, Ivy. You can’t go through with this. You aren’t a killer.”

Acid dripped from her jaws, scorching smoking black holes in the leaf litter. He was wrong. She was made for killing, from her deadly breath to her venomous tail. She’d fought her monstrous nature all her life, but now she was finally willing to embrace it.

“I know you’re trying to protect me,” Hugh said. His expression was intent and focused, his eyes fixed on her as if nothing else existed in the world. “The fact that you’re willing to do this proves that you were lying before, at the hospital. You said you didn’t want to be my mate, but we both know that isn’t true.”

Unable to speak mind-to-mind with him, Ivy could only swing her head from side to side in mute denial. She didn’t want to be his mate. She had brought him nothing but pain.

She could never undo the damage that she’d caused, but she could at least stop him from getting hurt again in the future.

Chase still had his black-feathered wings spread, blocking her way, and the oak branches above her head prevented her from simply leaping into the air. Although she was faster than the pegasus in flight, he was much more nimble on the ground. She’d never be able to get past him in this form.

She shifted. The moment that she was back in her human skin, she attempted to dodge around Hugh, but he was faster. She had to skip backward to avoid touching him.

“Please, Hugh.” She circled, trying to keep a wary eye on both him and Chase. “Let me go.”

“No.” His arms were spread wide, ready to catch her if she tried to make a break for it. “You can’t do this, Ivy. You don’t have to do this.”

“I do!” She jerked off her gloves, throwing them carelessly to the ground. She put up her hands, not in surrender, but to show him the venom slicking her skin. “Now get out of my way, or else!”

He stepped forward again. “You won’t hurt me.”

“I will!” she cried, her voice breaking in desperation. “If you don’t let me do this, I will hurt you, Hugh! Sooner or later, I’ll slip up, or I’ll give into temptation, and I’ll touch you!”

“Good,” he said softly. “Because you can. We can.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I feel it.” Hugh touched his heart. “Right here.”

She shook her head in denial. “You don’t. You can’t. You’re not a shifter, you don’t have an inner animal-“

“I don’t need an animal to know that I love you.” His mouth quirked. “And to know that you love me, for all that you try to deny it. Trust that love, Ivy. Trust yourself.”

“That’s not the problem!” Ivy stumbled backward, hands still upraised defensively. “I don’t trust my animal!”

No, her wyvern said, unexpectedly. You do not trust him.

She’d never before heard her inner animal speak of itself in the singular before. Always, always it said we or us. But now she had a sense of it pulling away from her. The ever-present burning core of rage at the bottom of her soul faded into nothing.

I will always protect you, her wyvern said to her. Its mental words came slowly, haltingly, as if it found it unnatural to refer to the two of them as separate beings. But you must stop being afraid now. You are hurting our mate.

She could almost see it standing behind Hugh. He glanced up, looking startled, as if he too felt the shadow of emerald wings closing over him.

He trusts us, her wyvern said, very gently. Trust him in return. He will never hurt us. He will always treasure us, always defend us, as we treasure and defend him. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.

In the strange silence of her wyvern’s withdrawal, she could finally feel what its anger had always masked. Her own deep, terrible fear.

Not the fear of hurting others, but the fear of being hurt herself.

Letting other people get close, letting them in, meant that they could hurt you. Deep down, she’d wanted to keep the world at arm’s length, to never be vulnerable. Her wyvern had only been trying to protect her.

But she didn’t need to be protected from Hugh.

He was still standing in front of her, head cocked and a slight frown on his face, as if trying to catch a conversation right on the edge of hearing. His eyes widened a little as she stepped forward, but he didn’t flinch. He held her gaze, and there was nothing but love and faith in his own.

She let go of fear…and took his hand.

His fingers folded over hers, warm and strong. He smiled down at her.

“Let’s go home,” he said.