The next morning, the four of them met at a coffee shop a couple of blocks away from the Empire State Building.

“You know, Mom, we could go in your place. You don’t have to do this.” Ryenne still wasn’t convinced this was the smart thing to do. How could they ensure her mother’s safety in a crowd of humans?

“I need to see it through, sweetheart.”

Ryenne hung her head in resignation. Obviously, she got her persistence from her mother.

“Will they bail if they smell shifters?” Gavin asked.

Lucien shrugged. “This is New York City. There are shifters everywhere. We should be well hidden.”

Lucien assigned them each a position. Gavin would be closest to Mom because he was probably the least recognizable to any of the Fangs. Ryenne would be across the street, and Lucien at the corner of Fifth Avenue.

At 11:30, they left the coffee shop.

“Willow, give us about ten minutes to get into position, and then head to the Empire State Building,” Lucien said.

Mom nodded, her lips in a straight line and her chin up in the air as if she was determined to see this through.

Ryenne wanted to grab her, stop her, change her mind. But she’d already tried so many times.

They left Lucien at the corner and Ryenne and Gavin continued along 34th Street. “Don’t let anything happen to her, Gav,” Ryenne said.

“I won’t,” he said. “You know she’s like my own mother to me.”

Ryenne gave a curt nod. They’d been through a lot together. She knew Gavin wouldn’t give up easily if someone were trying to hurt her mother, but she had to say it.

Gavin crossed the street to mill among the tourists. Ryenne watched him from under an awning, where she flattened herself against the wall and scanned the crowd. No one looked suspicious. Mostly, there were business people in suits with glistening foreheads and tourists in shorts, tank tops, and flip flops.

Minutes passed and she didn’t see her mom turn the corner. She pulled out her phone and sent Lucien a text.

RYENNE: Do you see her?

LUCIEN: Not yet. Too many people. I’m sure she’s fine.

Ryenne didn’t need someone else to tell her it was fine; it didn’t feel fine. She texted Gavin to stay where he was and keep an eye out, and she ran to the corner.

Before she reached it, Lucien dashed off north on Fifth Avenue. She ran to catch up, her heart pounding in fear for her mom. When she turned the corner, she scanned the crowd for any sign of Lucien or her mom. She saw Lucien duck into a building and she hurried after him, pushing between a young black-haired woman with a stroller and an older woman with short gray hair, who were ambling along the sidewalk as if they had nowhere to be.

“Hey,” one of them shouted.

“Sorry.” Ryenne kept going.

When she got to where Lucien had disappeared, it was a shop. One of those souvenir shops that were all over Midtown Manhattan.

“Lucien,” she muttered, “where did you go?”

His voice came to her as if on a wind. “Inside the shop. Come to the back.”

How could she hear him? The shop wasn’t very busy, so there weren’t a lot of sounds or voices, but she couldn’t see him. She dashed to the back of the shop where she found a narrow hallway and a door that looked like it led to the outside. As she ran to it, she heard sounds of a struggle from beyond the door.

Outside, her mother was being held by a man she didn’t recognize, and Lucien was fighting with another. She could tell they were shifters. In fact, they smelled like damp earth and trampled leaves, like the ones who had left the note last night, which meant they were fox shifters. She could believe it from their general appearance; one had red hair and one was reddish blond. Both had pale skin and light eyes, and the one holding her mother had freckles.

The space was a small courtyard with an alley leading off to one side. Garbage cans were ranged outside doors dotting the courtyard, giving the entire place a pungent stench in the summer heat.

Lucien seemed to be holding his own against the blond, so Ryenne launched herself at the redhead holding her mom. Anger flooded through her at the sight of this stranger restraining her mom and she aimed a wild kick at his midsection. At first he fought back while continuing to hold onto her mother. Ryenne chopped down on his wrist with the side of her hand, her other fist knocking into his jaw, and forced him to let go of Mom. Ryenne swung her body into his, pushing him away from her mother.

Once Mom was safely out of the way, Ryenne’s actions became less controlled. Rage consumed her like a fire burning its way through her mind. Grunting and screaming, she pummeled the rogue as a red fog blurred her vision.

How dare this man put his hands on her mother?

Punching and kicking, landing most but not all of the hits, she was a whirlwind of movement and anger.

She would rip him apart. She would make him bleed.

Just as she thought she was getting the upper hand on the redhead, his knife slashed her arm through her long-sleeved shirt and the sudden pain broke her attention for a second. Long enough for him to headbutt her in the nose. She saw stars and stumbled backward a few steps.

Lucien grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it, making a sickening crunch. The blond was on the ground, bleeding from several superficial wounds. He scrambled up, grabbed the redhead, and they ran to the alley.

Ryenne glanced at her mom. “Are you okay?” she panted.

Her mom nodded.

Then Ryenne gave attention to her arm, pulling the sleeve around to get a better view. She touched the wound with a finger. “Sticky. The knife must have had the sappy stuff on it,” she said. “Same as when Patrick Grieux stabbed Lucien a few weeks ago. Uh, it hurts, worse than some of the wounds I got in the battle in Paris.”

Her mom approached and inspected the wound and sticky stuff. Ryenne winced at her touch.

“Sorry, darling.”

“It’s okay,” Ryenne gritted out.

“Let’s try cleaning this stuff off and see if it helps.”

Ryenne and Lucien straightened their clothing and followed the path the rogues had taken through the alley.

“Did you recognize them?” Lucien asked.

Both Ryenne and her mom shook their heads. “Never seen them before,” Ryenne said.

“But we’ve smelled them before,” Lucien said and Ryenne nodded.

“Now we know those notes were a trick,” Ryenne said. “They must be Fangs. They want to kidnap you, Mom. Probably to work on this gunky stuff.”

“I’m sorry I put you in danger,” her mom said.

Ryenne put her good arm around her mother’s shoulders. “You didn’t. They did. And they’ll pay.”

They found a casual dining restaurant nearby, and Ryenne and her mom went into the ladies’ room. Ryenne removed her long-sleeved shirt and washed the gunk out of her wound, gritting her teeth through the pain.

“I wonder how soon you have to get it off to counteract its properties,” Mom said. “It shouldn’t slow down your healing for long, now that we’ve cleaned your wound.”

When they finished washing the wound, Ryenne shrugged into her shirt—to hide her useless weapons—and they left the restroom. Good thing the dark color of her shirt hid the blood, but there was nothing she could do about the tear above her cut. She was quiet but inside, she was fuming. She couldn’t wait to track down these rogues and make them suffer for trying to kidnap her mother.