As the blood moon edged over the dark tree line, a perfect blue-white circle visible through the windowed wall of the big bedroom, Dayn did up the last button of his plaid shirt and shrugged into his fleece-lined bomber jacket.
“You could stay, you know. Be here when I get back.” He glanced over. A cut-glass lamp shone from the bedside table—a Tiffany knockoff that had been imported from the human realm and converted to run off the quasi-magical energy that powered the wolfyn’s gadgets. The pale glow lit the room’s earthy brown walls and finely carved furniture, both of which were subtly worked with the Scratch-Eye pack’s sigil: four parallel bloodred slashes crossing an amber wolf’s eye. The bed was piled with luxurious crimson-dyed furs, but the room’s true centerpiece was Keely. The pack’s alpha bitch lay stretched, sinuous and satisfied, her scent musky with arousal and the magic of the blood moon. Graced with the toned body of a huntress and the ruddy hair of a bitch in her prime, she was unmated and independent, just like him.
Except that she was nothing like him. Not really.
They met and mated this one night each year, when sex sparked the strongest of changes and the wolfyn stayed largely in wolf form for the next three days, running together, renewing their magic and making or breaking new alliances. She didn’t dare mate with a male of her kind during the blood moon lest he claim the Right of Challenge for the pack leadership, which had gone to her brother, Kenar, rather than down through her as was traditional. So, as the Scratch-Eye pack’s “guest”—that was the name given to the few accidental realm travelers who by some quirk of the vortex magic couldn’t return home through the standing stones—Dayn had become Keely’s choice. She had laid it out with the blunt practicality of a wolfyn: sex once a year, nothing more or less. Which worked just fine for him for a number of reasons.
Their relationship might have begun as a transaction, but over time it had mellowed to friendship. Or what did the humans call it? Friends with benefits. But, friends or not, he didn’t tell her that he was almost certain this had been the last time. He didn’t dare. Instead, he said, “Thanks but no thanks on the staying over. And you wouldn’t have asked if you didn’t know that would be my answer.”
“You understand me too well. So … same time next year?”
“Of course,” he said, and then added, as he always did, “unless you’re mated by then.”
Her eyes flashed. “Kenar is a good alpha.”
That was debatable, but Dayn wasn’t going to get Keely or any of the other pack members to admit that their alpha was more interested in himself than the pack or its traditions. Or that it had been wrong for him to twist those traditions around in order to run off the male Keely’s father had brought in from an outside pack to be her mate and his successor. Granted, the male—Roloff—shouldn’t have left. But that didn’t make Kenar right.
Since there was no point in picking the fight, though—“been there, done that” was a particularly apt human saying in this case—he blew her a kiss. “Until next year, then.” Which was a lie, but a necessary one. In the entire wolfyn realm, only the pack’s wisewolfyn, Candida, knew who and what he truly was, and that it was almost time for him to go home.
“Of course,” Keely agreed. “That is, unless you find a mate between now and then.”
He had his hand on the door, but looked back, surprised. “Me? No. Not in the cards.”
“The Stone-Turn pack’s new guest is pretty.”
“I’m not interested in taking a mate.” Besides, the newcomer wasn’t the woman he was waiting for, the one he’d been dreaming of more clearly every night over the past week, waking each morning with the image of a heart-shaped face, dimpled chin and go-to-hell attitude topped with curly, red-streaked hair. Hurry, he wanted to tell her. Please, hurry.
Keely looked at him quizzically. “If that’s not it, then what’s bothering you?” To the wolfyn, problems always boiled down to politics or family. Since he wasn’t involved in pack politics, that left family—or, in his case, his lack of one.
“I’m fine. I promise.” Sketching a half salute in her direction, he said softly, “Have a good run.” Already, he could see the amber fire at the back of her eyes. And, as he let himself out of her place, he could feel the hum of change magic on the air. It crinkled along his skin, stirring the restlessness that had been riding him harder and harder as the days passed and there was no sign of his guide. Frustration gnawed at him, making him feel itchy, twitchy. He wanted to race through the darkness, pick a fight, howl at the moon….
Instead, he headed for the small log cabin he’d built near the standing stones, zipping his jacket and shoving his hands in his pockets as he hiked along the two-mile path. The blood moon lit the night with the eerie blue-white light that was almost as bright as day, though monochromatic. By the time his cabin came into view, the air already carried a chorus of excited yips and deeper, spine-shivering howls.
His cabin, little more than a single long room with a central chimney and big hearth, was laughably rustic as far as the pack members were concerned. He had used human-style insulated windows, though, and had a wolfyn-tech generator for power. He had left the lights off tonight, though, and the moonlight that bathed the cabin lit it blue-white, making it seem like it was …
Oh, shit. Glowing. Dayn’s pulse kicked, because he knew from past experience that it wasn’t the cabin doing the glowing. There was a vortex forming in the standing stones!
He took off at a run. As he came around the corner, thunder rumbled, vibrating up through the soles of his boots even though the sky was clear. He nearly cheered at the sight of blue-white lightning sparking among the standing stones. The electricity lit the air, charging the ozone and making his hair bristle as if he, too, were going through the change.
Magic surrounded him as he charged up the hill, suffusing him and running foxfire glows along his skin when he came to a halt just outside the circle. Electricity arced from one stone to the next and the next, lighting the entire circle with blue-white power. Then, suddenly, the grass and empty air within the circle grew blurry and started to move, making a slow inward spiral at first, but then spinning faster and faster, tightening within seconds to a gray tornado of everything and nothing.
Magic tugged at him, beckoning. Come, the vortex seemed to be saying. Say the words and come.
Dayn hesitated, though. The vortices had never worked for him before, even with the spell that should return him home to Elden. But what if it was finally time? Maybe his guide wasn’t supposed to come to him, but rather the reverse. Please, gods.
Thunder boomed and magic churned as he pictured the forest he had been snatched from and said the spell. Then, braced for anything, he stepped into the stone circle.
The wind surrounded him instantly, grabbing him up and tumbling him head over ass in a whirling maelstrom of power. Excitement seared through him. It was working! Thunder roared and lightning arced and snapped, and the universe seemed to hold its breath for an instant. In that moment, he glimpsed a modern, human-style kitchen and jolted with dismay. No, not the human realm. Take me to Elden!
Even as he thought that, pain flared behind his eyes, lashing through his skull … and everything winked out.
For a second, there was only darkness. Stillness. Silence. He couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat.
Then everything jolted back into existence around him, and there
