Krista squealed as an enormous pair of jaws seized her. She writhed, anticipating the crushing pressure that would tear her in half—a fully grown bear could swallow a vixen in a single gulp—but instead, the brute shook her, hard, until she flopped unresistingly in his jaws, playing dead.
Her last thought as the bear carried her away into the forest—to eat or to Hunt—was that she should have trusted Blake after all. The person she should never have trusted was her mother.
* * *
Blake was very likely racing towards his own death—and he’d never run faster in his life.
His backup?
Hattie and her bridge playing biddies.
He was dead. They were all dead.
Because as soon as he realized that Krista had tricked him, he noticed that all the bears had vanished from the party, along with Bo Durien.
And Hattie noticed, too.
“Are they going after Krista?” Hattie said, suddenly going pale. “Did they follow her?”
As soon as Hattie told Blake what was really happening, Blake had put in a call to Stef, and then Mal, and then Dexter—but nobody had answered. Stef and her team were in a communications dead zone—which was probably one of the reasons that Maybelline had sent them up there.
He was so angry at his own stupidity that he was ready to tear his own fur off. He’d said it himself—Maybelline lied. Why had he fallen for it? Why had he sent his entire team in the opposite direction of where he needed to go? Because what she said sounded believable, because they were desperate to find Ethan…
Hattie quickly told him where Krista was headed and why. Apparently, Krista believed that Gummi had Ethan, and was keeping him in one of Gummi’s old hideouts.
While Blake was frantically trying to reach anyone on his team, Hattie marched over and slapped Floyd so hard she knocked him off his feet.
“Traitor!” she yelled at him. She kept haranguing him, but Blake was too busy to listen—he was frantically calling the main Shifters, Inc. headquarters to tell them where he was going.
Then he stripped and shifted.
He wanted to argue when he saw that Hattie and crew were following him, but he didn’t have time to stop and try to talk sense, and realistically, they wouldn’t have listened anyway.
His heart thudded against his rib cage as his legs slashed through the air. Krista thought he’d betrayed her, spied on her. He had no idea who’d put the bug in Krista’s purse, but it wasn’t him. And she might die never knowing that.
The thought lent him wings, and he raced faster and faster, a furious gray missile slicing through the forest. The ground blurred under his feet, Krista’s scent filled his nostrils and he prayed harder than he’d ever prayed in his life that he wouldn’t be too late.