“He has her heart?” Laina cried.

Jason placed a finger over his lips when the patrons of the coffee shop where they’d chosen to meet turned to stare at their table. Dressed and rested, he and Selene had met with Silas and Laina to fill them in on what had happened.

“What were you thinking, Jason? How could you hand over the amulet like that?” Silas kept his voice low, but Jason had no trouble hearing the venom in it.

“He had no choice, Silas. Jason couldn’t use the amulet. It takes some kind of… additional magic or experience,” Selene said. “We were naked, trapped in a dragon’s lair on the side of a mountain in Siberia. If Jason had let Nickelova fry Alex, we would have been next.”

“And believe me,” Jason said, “I thought about falling on my sword for the pack. But once Nickie killed us, she’d have the amulet back. It was only a matter of time before she’d find another werewolf to take Alex’s place.”

“But, she’s dead, right?” Laina asked.

Jason ran a hand over his face. “No. Not exactly.”

Selene wrapped her fingers around Jason’s forearm and squeezed. “Nickelova didn’t die when Alex removed her heart; she became mortal. We could have killed her… but we thought we needed her to get back through the portal. By the time we realized what she was doing, it was too late.”

Silas rubbed his temples and sighed deeply. “What was she doing?”

“During the fight,” Jason said, “I dislodged a scale from her dragon form. She used it to form some kind of cocoon around herself.”

Silas growled. “So not only is Alex still at large, but Nickelova is a ticking time bomb in a mountain somewhere.”

“How much do you want to bet that Alex returns her heart to her at some point and wakes her up? I imagine a girl will do a lot for a heart,” Laina said.

“I’m sorry.” Jason glanced at Selene.

She squeezed his hand in support, narrowing a hard stare on his brother and sister. The look she gave Silas alone could solder iron. “I don’t have any family. But if I did, I think I’d be a lot happier to have them home safely.” Selene shifted her gaze, pointing a finger at Laina’s nose. “Your brother almost died last night.”

Silas sighed. “We’re happy to have you back. Both of you. But this changes everything. As alpha, I’m just a little nervous about what this means for the pack. We may need to go into hiding again.”

“No,” Laina said. “Not again.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “Kyle and I have just started to make a life for ourselves. He finally has new clients for his treehouse business. I can’t ask him to trash everything he’s worked for and I certainly can’t close Four Paws again.”

“I’ll talk to Grateful and see if there’s anything we can do to strengthen the wards around Rivergate,” Silas said. “I’m disappointed Nickelova could see and hear these two from beyond the boundary. We’ve got to protect ourselves.”

“I’ll talk to Gerty,” Laina said. “If Nickelova leveraged the curse she had on Jason to find him, maybe she knows how to make sure Alex can’t use that in the future now that he has her heart.”

There was a long silence. Jason stared into his coffee, tapping out a song on the side of his cup. Part of him agreed with Silas that he’d put the pack in danger when he pursued Nickelova on his own. But as he glanced at Selene, the steam from her coffee curling along the fine bones of her jaw, all he could think was he’d do it again.

Silas cleared his throat and stared pointedly at Jason and Selene’s coupled hands. “Not to be the chaperone at the dance who taste tests the punch, but it seems like there’s another topic of conversation that needs to be broached. What’s going on with you two?”

* * *

“I’ll be forever grateful for what you did for me, Artemis,” Selene said as she packed up her room into the same brown plaid bag she’d used since childhood. “I’m sorry if I was a disappointment.”

“A disappointment? You?” Artemis raised her eyebrows. “Never. I could never be disappointed in you. But do you know who you have disappointed?”

“Who?”

“All the Fireborn families with girls Jason’s age. They’ve had to say good-bye to the dream that their daughters might one day snare a spot as the next princess. He’s taken. Permanently.”

Selene sighed. “I didn’t set out with a goal of loving Jason. It just happened. It crept up on me like some wonderful dream as if one moment I was drifting to sleep and the next I was in his arms.”

“What causes people to fall in love? Is it chemistry? Opportunity? The hand of the goddess herself?” Artemis wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “All we know for sure is that love is precious and should not be denied.”

“It’s frightening, though. I’m leaving the only life I’ve ever really known and loved behind, to go shack up with a guy who just recently recovered from a major addiction. It sounds crazy when I say it out loud.”

The older woman smiled. “One must be brave to truly love. What you set out to do is not easy work. It’s not magic. Loving someone is seeing them for who they truly are, the light and the dark, and inviting all of it, the whole person, into your life unconditionally. You can leave or protect yourself if things go wrong, Selene, but true love will stay with you. It will be a beacon that leads you back to him again and again. You’ll always demand the best of him, always pick him up when he falls, always ask the goddess to protect him, and he’ll do the same for you if he truly loves you.”

Selene nodded, a memory blowing into her thoughts like a cool breeze. “Speaking of the goddess, I had a strange experience I need to ask you about.”

Artemis folded into a chair at the small table in her dormitory. Selene sat across from her and rested her coupled hands on the table. “What is it?”

“When Jason and I were escaping from Nickelova’s lair, I was in wolf form, but I swear I remember seeing the goddess lead us to safety.”

“What did she look like?”

“Tall, curvy, with long waves of wild black hair and a dress that clung like a black fog around her, as if it was cut from the night itself. The wind had no effect on her—it didn’t even rustle her hair. And although Jason and I had almost frozen to death before the shift, she didn’t seem cold at all. She called me her dear one.”

“That certainly sounds like the goddess.”

“She led us to the portal, but before I could pass through, I noticed a man standing across from her.”

Artemis stiffened. “What sort of man?”

“A man with large twisting horns growing from his head, like a ram but different, straighter, not as curly. He was naked from the waist up. Hairy. And his eyes were black and dull as coal. He told her she was interfering and that was against their agreement.”

Artemis stood and paced the small room.

“I don’t usually remember things from my wolf form. I’m wondering if my brain simply produced this to fill in the gaps of an emotionally trying night. It couldn’t possibly have been real.”

“Oh, I fear what you saw was quite real. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“How?”

Artemis frowned. “We don’t teach of the horned god here. There’s no way you could describe him as perfectly as you have without seeing him firsthand.”

“The horned god?”

“He goes by many names but in our tradition, he is called Panaal.” Artemis spread her hands. “All existence must maintain balance.”

“Of course. The goddess demands balance in all things.”

“Not just the goddess. Everything. From the largest beast to the tiniest cell, balance is the most fundamental of laws. Disrupt the balance and things start to evolve. Everything, all the interdependencies of life begin to change, to adapt until a new balance is found. Panaal is the balance to Hecate, the masculine to her feminine, the keeper of the underworld.”

Selene’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t understand. I thought Hecate was her own balance. The maiden, the mother, and the crone. Protector of women. Goddess of the crossroads. Mother to all supernatural beings.”

“If Hecate is all about balance and order, Panaal is all about the wild, about chaos, about man’s primal needs. He is the source of the raw instincts that drive us all in the absence of intelligence and civilization. He is the hunter where our goddess is healer. He thrives on disorder. He desires turmoil. He loves war.”

“Sounds like a real ball of fun,” Selene said, swallowing. “What do you think it means that he was in my memory?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he arrived after Alex took Nickelova’s heart. If Hecate is the mother of werewolves, Panaal is the father of dragons.”

“So when Alex and Nickelova were working together there was balance?”

“But now a werewolf has a dragon heart, and the goddess has helped you escape almost certain death.”

“Is it just me, or does this situation make your spine tingle?” Selene asked.

Artemis shivered. “I fear that heart has far greater value than the amulet Alex had before and far greater consequences for our pack.”