Another howl came, piercing and threatening. I’d heard wolf songs often when in the forest and how tranquil they always sounded.

Oryn pushed himself up from the ground, a grunt rolling through his chest. He looked down at himself as if he’d never seen himself as a human before. Surely not. Nero had said all three were alpha shifters.

“Why are wolves attacking you?” I glanced over my shoulder at the thick woods, shadows crowding between the trunks. I was convinced I’d see an army of hounds rushing down the hill to rip us apart.

“Sharlot,” Oryn responded, his voice deep and guttural.

I grabbed his arm, forcing him to move. Standing around would get us killed.

“My name is Scarlet.” Heavens… or did he mean “harlot”? After all, he’d watched Nero and me going at it. My face heated, and I looked away, ready to crawl under a rock.

He seized my forearm and drew me toward him with such force, I tripped and fell against him, my palms snapping against a hard, bare chest, scorching hot beneath my touch. I gasped and peered up into the bluest eyes, framed by long, dark lashes, crowned by heavy brows.

“What have you done?” His fingers dug into my arm.

Fire burned through me. I hadn’t just survived wolf attacks to have my savior turn on me. Or had that been his intention all along? “What are you talking about?”

I wrenched against his hold, but I might as well have been at tug-o-war with a boulder.

“What magic did you use to return me to a human?”

“I didn’t do anything. Maybe you changed yourself?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I was stuck in my wolf form.”

Another howl, and Oryn lifted his chin, sniffing the air.

I scanned the surrounding trees. “We need to go before more of them come.”

Oryn pushed into a march while holding on to my arm, and I limped alongside him, rubbing the bruises forming along my shins from the earlier fall.

“Hey, let go,” I said. “You’ll cover more ground on your own.”

“No! You helped me and I will keep you protected.”

All right, not that I could say no to getting bodyguard action from a hunk, but why were we headed away from the house? “Aren’t we going the wrong way? The cabin is up the hill.”

I staggered alongside him as his pace picked up.

“There’s more coming from that direction. We need to hide our scent and wait for them to leave.” He rushed, and he took me with him.

I wasn’t sure how to take Oryn, not with his stiff demeanor and the commanding way he spoke without a hint of emotion. Was that how he ran his pack, all demands and controls? Damn, his members must be warriors. Then again, Nero had said this part of the Den belonged to Oryn, so did that mean he had just fought his own pack? Why would they attack him? And why had he been stuck as a wolf?

Grunts came from farther behind us, and Oryn increased his pace. His once-injured arm now swung easily by his side. How quickly did these shifters heal?

Apparently fast, so why hadn’t Dagen woken up yet?

Didn’t matter. All those questions had to wait until we weren’t in danger. When Oryn broke into a run, he dragged me with him.

The gushing sound of running water found me and the more ground we covered, the louder the sound grew. We emerged near the river bank. The roaring crash of the waterfall stood to our left. Above was where I’d fallen off the cliff. Good to know I’d headed in the right direction in my attempt to escape. Which had failed miserably.

A plume of water vapor hung over the pool, and if I wasn’t running for my life, I might consider sitting here for hours with my paints and canvas, capturing this beauty.

“Get undressed,” Oryn broke through my thoughts, letting go of my arm and pulling at my sleeve.

“Hey.” I slapped his hand away. “Don’t manhandle me. Understand? And no one is taking my clothes off but me.” And Nero, it seemed. Crap.

“Sharlot, this—”

“It’s Scarlet.” I rolled my eyes.

“Your garments carry your scent and will slow us down. We need a distraction.”

My pulse was racing as I looked back, praying the wolves weren’t close. Oryn stood there, wildness capturing his gaze. Yet mine dipped down his body because I had zero control. Oh, sweet heavens. He was bigger than Nero in the downstairs department!

“Hurry. Later you will have plenty of time to study me.”

I arched a brow and looked up as the corner of his mouth turned upward. For the love of wolfsbane, he had me burning up, and I turned away, unbuttoning my vest. Yep, because my options were either face the wolves or get into the river. Though I had no idea why I had to get naked. When I twisted to protest, Oryn towered over me.

“Quickly, Sharlot.”

I sighed.

The snap of foliage came from within the woodland, and I toed off my boots, then pulled off my shirt, pants, and underwear.

Oryn reached over and grabbed my belongings before bunching them into a ball and running down the bank at least fifteen feet. He then tossed them into the forest and my boots farther away.

“They were my favorite shoes,” I mumbled to myself.

A grunt grew louder from somewhere near.

I twitched and spun, searching for the culprit.

Oryn snatched my wrist and hauled me into the river. “Quick.”

I covered my breasts with an arm, and a scream of protest wedged in my chest for agreeing to lose my clothes and remain naked in the wolves’ territory. But getting eaten wasn’t an option, and when the heavy snarls emerged from within the forest, I moved with haste.

Oryn smiled but didn’t say a word as he drew me deeper. Iciness lapped to my waist, and the pebbly river bottom stabbed my feet. I winced. He leaned over, slid a hand under my knees and another behind my back, lifting me off my feet, and cradled me in his arms.

The air gushed from my lungs. We pressed against each other, naked. He kept moving, the coldness splashing up and over my stomach.

I shivered. “I c-can w-walk.”

“You’re too slow. Now hold on.”

I pulled my gaze from Oryn and noticed we headed toward the edge of the waterfall, where the cascade thinned. Too terrified to argue, I hugged his neck, staring at the river behind us.

“I’ll keep you safe. Trust me,” Oryn whispered in my ear, and his soft words uncoiled the knot in my gut. I held on to him tight and stared at the bank where the first shape of a wolf had appeared. Would he see us?

We pushed beneath the waterfall, and a sudden explosion of ice cold water pummeled into my side, my back, my head. I tucked myself against Oryn’s neck, nestled in his arms. The sensation was like a mountain pressing down me.

I flinched as the crashing water suffocated me, compressed down on me.

But his arms squeezed me to him, and soon enough, the agonizing beating eased.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I lifted my head, shaking with cold, and met his concerned expression. We now stood behind the waterfall in a cave. “That was terrifying.”

“We’re safe here? The wolves won’t risk the flow of waterfall.”

When he lowered my feet into a small lagoon that reached my thighs, he climbed out onto the rocky edge. His tight ass caught my attention, along with his strong legs and his muscles moving beneath his skin. Who was this hunter? He strode forward into the mouth of darkness, leaving me alone.

“Hello, Oryn?” My words shook, and I hated that I showed fear. I followed and a frostiness settled in my bones. Yep and my nudity wasn’t helping one bit… though body heat would help. I sounded more like Bee every day.

A glint flicked from deeper inside the cave and at once, a golden flame illuminated at the rear. Shadows leaped across his face as he crouched near the fire set up on a premade bed of timber surrounded by a circle of rocks.

“Is this your place?” I called out over the roaring waterfall behind me as I approached him, loving the warmth already radiating from the blaze. Yet a chill still spiraled up my spine from the opening at my back, and freezing droplets rolled over my shoulders from my hair.

“It’s one of my rest places.” He walked to a wall and returned with a blanket and something else in his other hand. “Dry yourself.”

I didn’t protest and pulled the thick fabric over my shoulders and crouched near the fire. “Thank you. Why do you have a blanket here?”

Oryn also handed me a dried strip of meat, which I accepted. “I don’t usually spend every second of the day in my wolf form, and it gets cold in winter.”

Yesterday had been a regular day at my store. Now, I was in Den territory, and I’d met three wolf shifters, made one unconscious, had sex with another, and was now stuck in a cave, naked, with the third. I had zero idea how to even get out of this situation since huge problems awaited me once I returned home.

“So, what is your business in our territory?” Oryn asked, sitting with his knees bent to his chest, as he bit into a meat strip.

“It wasn’t my intention. I ran in here to escape capture, then I fell off a cliff and ended up in the river. The rest is history, I guess.”

“Who was after you and why? Are you a criminal?” He studied me as if I were a microscopic insect just recently discovered.

“Ha, you’re funny. I have never stolen anything in my life or hurt anyone either. But I witnessed something I shouldn’t have and now the priestess wants to imprison me, probably for life. She’s part royalty—did you know?—so no one can overthrow her decision while she rules over Terra. My protests would get ignored, and I need a plan.”

He broke off a chunk and nodded as he chewed. Blood wove down his shoulder and he wiped the scar beneath his eyes.

“Let me tend to your wounds?” I offered.

“I’ll be fine. These are nothing.”

I moved closer to him. “I insist.” Though I didn’t have my bag or any herbs. “Do you have any material I can use? The cut on your arm is deep and at least let’s try to stop that.”

He shrugged and his chin pointed to the wall across from the fire. I climbed up and found shelves dug into the rock surface with another bunched up blanket and what looked like a shirt, but when I pulled it out, it was half a bed sheet. Okay, this would do, so I tore off one end with my teeth and shredded it into long strips.

I kneeled next to Oryn and wiped the blood with the material. “Thanks for saving me earlier. You took on four wolves. That’s insane.”

He chuckled as if his mind were miles away, and considering the dozens of healed scars on his body, just like on Dagen’s, it might have been an ordinary fight for him.

“I survived.” He took another bite of his meal.

“Why did you save me?”

He chewed on his food. “Can’t explain it, you just smelled different to me. Sweet and alluring. And my wolf insisted.”

“So I guess it’s normal for an alpha to face death every day? Sounds horrifying. Not sure I’d want to be looking over my shoulder every moment of the day, not knowing if today would be my last.” Why would anyone be an alpha?

He shrugged. “Is there any other way?”

I sat on my heels. “Of course. Don’t you have time away from being in charge when you can sleep in, go for a stroll in the afternoon, just laugh and not always be on guard?”

He twisted to look at me with an arched brow, his nose red from the cold. “Strolling? Is that what you do in Terra?”

“Sometimes. My grandma used to say life wasn’t worth living if you didn’t make time for family and friends.”

Oryn scoffed and scrunched his nose.

“Don’t be rude if you don’t agree.” I wiped more blood dripping down his arm and wrapped his wound, pulling the fabric tight. Then I cleaned the bite mark across his ear, though it had already stopped bleeding.

He cleared his throat loudly. “I grew up being told if I wanted to survive, I had to fight for everything. Never show weakness.”

“That’s harsh. Your parents—”

“No.” He cut me off with a stern look. “They deserved the death they got. They abandoned me at four years old, then my adoptive parents did the same when I was eight. But I made my way to the alpha position. The Den is harsh; everyone here accepts that. So don’t pity me.”

I swallowed the rest of my words and tied up the loose end of his bandage. We sat in silence, him brooding and staring into the fire. I changed the topic.

“Why did those wolves attack us? Aren’t they part of your pack? Nero told me this was your territory.”

Oryn licked his lips, arms resting on bent knees, his shoulders slouched forward, yet my gaze traced the number of new cuts over the healed scars. He might have had a hard upbringing, facing abandonment, but something inside me did pity him. It was nothing I’d admit out loud, but for him to believe his only path in life was to never back down was a horrendous way to live. For his sanity, for his future, and for all the things he would miss out, I hoped he opened his eyes to doing more with his life. But then again, what did I know about how packs lived in the Den? Yet Nero didn’t have this world-against-him approach and he was an alpha too.

“Those wolves that attacked us are from my pack,” Oryn began. “Over a week ago, everyone started acting strange. Aggressive, stuck in their wolf forms, and attacking each other. I was the same, locked as my wolf, but not as lost to my wild side as the others.” He glanced over at me, his lips pinched. “Until you touched me. It was like a lightning strike, and I felt the shift inside me, unlocking my human side.”

He studied me, tracing the length of my body as I tucked the blanket across my chest in the style of a dress. “How did you do that?”

“Don’t know what I did. I was panicked and just touched you. It’s never happened before.” The sensation had struck me too, just as it had with Nero, and I hadn’t given it a thought when my focus had been on surviving.

He took my hand in his, studying my fingertips. “You’re different. Not like other humans I’ve seen. Cutting down trees, planting wolfsbane into our land.”

I stiffened. “You’ve seen them too? That’s what I saw the priestess doing this morning and her guards chased me into the Den.” I huffed. “I didn’t know why she was transporting and replanting wolfsbane into your land.”

Oryn’s upper lip curled, reminding me of when he was in wolf form. “I know what she was doing. Stealing our turf by extending the line of wolfsbane. Seen it myself.”

I hugged myself. The priestess had always hated wolves, declaring them demons at every town gathering and threatening to eradicate them. But she’d been saying it for so long that everyone put it down to her obsession. No one had expected her to act on it. Except I’d witnessed her ordering wolfsbane into wolf territory.

“What she’s doing is wrong. Can’t you stop her?” I asked, well aware that over a century ago, the leaders of each race in Haven had come together and agreed to split Haven for the sake of ending the bloodshed. And for years, everyone had remained in their own realms in harmony. So why was the priestess disturbing the balance?

“That was the plan when I first discovered her actions. But then my pack acted weird, and my priority turned to helping them.” Shadows crowded under his eyes, darkening his expression.

“That’s why Nero and Oryn are in your cabin, isn’t it? To help with your pack. Are they your brothers?”

“Yes, they are helping me. The three of us have been friends since before we became alphas. We met at the annual hunter meet. I stumbled on Dagen cornered by a huge bear that had come down from the mountains. So I jumped in to help him and halfway through, Nero burst into our fight. We scared the bear off our lands and bonded ever since.”

That reminded me of the time I had wandered in the woods behind my place after my grandma had passed. I hadn’t been sure life was worth living, and I’d felt lost, alone. I’d slept for a week straight out in the forest. Bee had found me as she’d searched for ingredients to heal her father from a burn. We’d chatted about her potion, and I’d suggested using the aloe vera, as it carried strong healing properties for burns. I hadn’t cared that she’d seen me use my ability on the plant, and that was when she’d told me she practiced magic. So I’d joined her and together we’d healed her dad. Then we’d become inseparable.

“Sometimes,” I said, “when a stranger helps you for no reason, that action can ignite the most incredible friendship.”

He nodded. “So what did you do to Dagen?”

Okay, his question had come out of the blue, but it wasn’t surprising. I gave him an explanation of how my citrus spray had gotten tangled with the wolfsbane and it might have been what had knocked out Dagen.

“Wait!” His voice darkened, and he twisted to face me. “You brought wolfsbane into my home?”

An icy chill captured me. “Didn’t you hear me? I didn’t enter the Den on purpose.”

“How do I know you’re not working for the priestess? Over the months, I’ve seen you several times near the border of our lands picking wolfsbane.”

“That was you? I knew I felt someone watching me. But I’m not working for the priestess. I’m an apothecary. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have used the wolfsbane in the cabin on all three of you and killed you already.” Hmm, okay, I hadn’t meant to sound threatening, but Oryn had driven my response.

His snarl hung in the air, and he trembled. “I was wrong to trust you.”

“It wasn’t as if I had time to think when I was running for my life.” I leaned away from him. “You attacked me, remember?” My muscles flexed.

His fingers twitched against the stone ground between us. Would he transform into his wolf? What if he lost control like his pack and killed me?

I gulped for air but couldn’t get enough into my lungs. “Look, I would never harm you or any of the wolves. I want to return home and I pray the priestess hasn’t burned down my herbal store.”

Oryn’s body shuddered, and his pupils vanished upward, leaving only the whites of his eyes.

I scrambled to my feet and retreated. “Oh, crap, you’re turning, aren’t you? Please don’t. Please.”

Retreating to the entrance, where sprinkles of water struck me from above, I peered out from a tiny gap near the curtain of water. Two wolves fought over my pants. That could end up being me.

I turned to find Oryn on hands and knees, his spine arching.

My heart pounded against my ribcage. If I was to ever experience a stroke, this was it.

But I’d helped him transform with a touch before. At first, my legs refused to budge, but I couldn’t do nothing. I bit down on my lower lip and hurried closer. With a shaky hand, I reached over and touched his arm. He snapped around, growling, his teeth elongating.

I jumped backward. “Fuck!” I cursed.

Oryn raised himself on two feet, convulsing. A strangled, broken howl burst from his throat.

Shit, the other wolves would hear, and… I rushed toward him, despite shaking like a leaf, and slapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut up!”

He pushed my hand away and stepped toward me, holding on to my shoulders, his eyes wild. His teeth were normal-sized, but his skin shimmered.

I retreated, and a strangled cry pressed on my chest. I hit the wall. A tiny cry flew past my throat. “Oryn, please.”

He smirked, as if my fear turned him on. Bastard.

“Sharlot,” he growled, and as much as it annoyed me how he pronounced my name, I worried more about him ripping out my throat at the moment.

He quivered against me. His emotions filtered across his face from terror to a starved hunger.

“Don’t do this. I’m not food or your enemy.” A spark coiled across my fingers.

A deep guttural rumble shook through him, and his grip on my arm tightened.

I ground my teeth, shallow pants feeding my lungs.

His exhales brushed against me, his chest rising and falling faster.

He lurched closer, and I turned away as he sniffed my neck.

I held on to a scream.

“Mine,” he demanded.

That single word unraveled the tightness in my gut, and a river of warmth cascaded through me. Just as it had with Nero. An insatiable desire claimed me, throttled me.

Oryn remained inches from me, unblinking. His dark side left me shaken. I lifted my free hand and placed the palm against his chest, the static from my fingers sizzling and bouncing across his flesh.

He shuddered backward from my touch and unleashed a snarl.

I snatched Oryn’s arm and kept him upright. “Hey, I’ve got you.”

His eyes shifted to the brightest blues… gone was his wolf, and only the man remained. “What are you?”