Tonight was special, I told myself, eyeing the forest like it was my opponent. My last chance, since Blake was returning the next morning. I hated that I wasted three weeks wallowing, hurting and fears...yet here I was, still afraid and stalling.

I hastened on my snowshoes, took a deep breath...and didn't move.

The snowfalls came one after another this November, changing everything beyond recognition. Snow was so deep, it hid the underbrush. There were no sacred trails to follow. Or, perhaps, the glittering snow crisscrossed by blue shadows was a trail...a thought worthy of a motivational poster.

"Come on, Celeste. You can do it." I glanced over my shoulder.

Scarlett didn't see me leave the hotel. I wore brand-new clothes, and no phone, so Harold couldn't track me either. Blake returned later tonight, so the rogues wouldn't dare to attack me.

Everything would be fine, right? I couldn't hide in the hotel forever. I'd never forgive myself, if I didn't go into the forest. I had to go. Tonight. Now.

Above me, a crow cawed, then took off, brushing snow behind my collar with its black wing. I shook it out, squirming and made the first, tentative step under the boughs. "Okay, okay, I'm going. I'm not a coward!"

The woods were so empty; I was bound to meet my wolf tonight, if she was out there, still looking for me after I stayed away for so many days, for so many nights.

***

The mountains and the immense spruces made the nightfall swift. The sky turned dark, but it was freezing, so the full moon seemed to shine brighter than usual in the frigid air. A silent, frosty night...

Then, the howling started, but the sound made the forest seem more eerie rather than less. My heart pounded as I listened to the voices of the wolves and the werewolves, nearly indistinguishable. And there were so many...would my voice be lost in the pack's harmony like always?

I turned my gaze toward the Goddess, pressed my hands together and howled at the Moon. Wolf? Where are you?

Once my call died down in my throat, I listened to the eerie chorus for a response. It rose and fell, but never stopped celebrating the shiny disk of the Moon and our Goddess.

What a beautiful night for a lonely Omega to finally—

The new howl cut through in the air...and my frozen toes curled in my boots.

Goddess help me, they found me! I swiveled my gaze away from the Moon and the sky.

The blood-curdling howl came again, echoing between the mountains. It was closer this time, sickeningly close. At the dying end of it came baying. This was a call for a hunt, and that wasn't the voice of a wolf.

Another hunting howl answered the first two, laced with bloodlust.

The werewolves were on the prowl, and they weren't of Blake's pack. Rogues! Of course, they were rogues! They came for me.

I turned awkwardly in my huge snowshoes toward the hotel, but the loudest howl yet erupted between me and safety.

I sobbed and crushed between the trees in the only direction still open to me. Away from the Olympian...

The branches hooked my clothes, slowing me down. One slapped me in the face, scratching it. My cracked lips bled, as I kept biting back the cries. At some point, I lost my hat and my hair came undone, falling into my eyes and my mouth. I spat and sputtered, too hot and terrified to care.

Going by the bursts of ugly sounds of the rogues' hunting party, they were rapidly converging on my location.

I kept running for any opening in their ranks, but they were faster. There were at least half-a-dozen of them, and I was alone. I kept running, but they were faster.

Goddess, this was no good, but every time I made a step in the right direction, my heart palpitated with hope of escape. But then another hungry howl would intercept me, and I would stomp deeper into the mountains, away from Blake's—or Harold's—area of influence. Then bile would bathe my throat with a foul, acrid taste, and a heavy sense of doom would crush my heart.

Finally, all hope was gone and only the sick certainty remained: the rogues weren't herding me. They were playing with their food.

I was theirs for the taking.

Sobbing, I stopped to catch my breaking breath, grabbed some snow to wipe my face and chew on. Swallowed it, to soothe my burning throat.

As my mind stopped spinning, I saw where I ended up. I was out of the thick spruces and into a grove of mixed deciduous trees clinging to a long, shallow slope—probably a landslide from long ago. Moonlight penetrated further here, because all the leaves had fallen.

Unfortunately, the sound carried better too. The rogues were so close to my location I could hear them yelling between the howls. Shifting into werewolves gave their voices a guttural quality that made their words even more terrifying.

"Where are you, Omega? Come, come. Don't hide. It's useless to hide from us!"

It was useless.

I was a human in snowshoes. They were werewolves with feet like flippers, and supreme physique of the creatures born to cross the woods in any weather. I lost this game the second it began.

Sniffling, wiping my tears with the snow that felt colder and colder, I stumbled from tree-trunk to tree trunk, until my back ran into one, and I slumped against it, preparing to die.

The rogues stepped out of the trees—monstrous, drooling, revolting—and circled me by my tree. I pressed my back closer to it, like it could wrap me in its bark and hide me from them. I counted the rogues.

Seven.

The number didn't make a lick of difference to me. Anything above zero was an overwhelming force against me.

"Look at her," the Brute said. "Look at her shivering. What a beauty!"

My jerk landlord—because he was like an old piece of gum on the bottom of my shoe—whined excitedly. "Let's take her, Boss. Let's take her now!"

"Give her a second." The Brute bared his stained teeth. "Maybe after she stops hyperventilating, she'll shift and give us a bit of a fight. I like it when they fight."

I couldn't even sob. I hiccuped. My chest ached, because my life was over. Even if they didn't kill me today, what they were going to do to me was a slow, painful, humiliating death. And I wasn't ready to die...wasn't ready to never see Blake again...never kiss him.

I obviously had despair written all over my face, because the Brute smiled. "Yes, you're right. Nobody is coming to help you."

"The pack..."

"Your pack shuns you. The wolves don't care, unless we threaten a human they're close to. Do you have a wolf, Omega?"

"Blake..." I trembled so much, my teeth rattled. "I have Blake."

"Your Alpha is far away. And even if he wasn't, outside his lair, he is only a werewolf. A big one, but so what? I'm as big as he is. You ventured too far from home, Omega."

I tossed my head, hoping that my hatred for him would scathe him. "Blake will punish you if you take me. He'll paint the streets red with your foul blood."

The Brute sucked his teeth. "To paint the streets with our blood, Blake needs the pack's warriors to follow him to Seattle. But with you gone, his Luna will be the voice of reason. Take the fight to Seattle? Why? One stray, barely an Omega? Versus the genuine possibility of losing actual pack members...plus, where is the evidence that this Omega was taken by force?"

A chill ran down my spine. That would be exactly what Scarlett would say. Blake would never believe her, but the pack...the pack shunned me and worshiped her.

Slowly, I lifted my eyes to my only protector, the Moon...and gasped. The Moon's silver face was no longer silver, but the color of rust. The reason I had such high hopes for tonight, why I had come to the forest...it was here, upon us, at the moment of my utter failure.

The full lunar eclipse had started. My eclipse.

I couldn't take my gaze away from the changing Moon, and the rogues spared the Moon some attention as well.

"Eclipse," my old landlord muttered. "The good one."

"So it is," the Brute said. "It's the rogue's moon. A good omen for our enterprise."

I yelped in frustration. The eclipse was supposed to turn my luck!

"Boss!" My landlord pointed at something behind my right shoulder. They all looked.

I twisted and yelped again.

A shining orb, the size of a tennis ball, exactly the same in color as the Moon, hung between two slender white tree trunks.

The orb expanded rapidly, growing out threads of light that wrapped around the trunks, weaving the orb to its place.

"What's that?" one of the rogues asked.

"The Moon Arch," I whispered. Just as I had hoped after failing on the nights when the Moon was new. Eclipse was my last hope to find the Arch.

The Brute nodded. "So it is."

And much good it did me. The rogues blocked the access as surely as they cut me off from the hotel.

I still instinctively stepped toward the Moon Arch, attracted by its light like a moth by fire.

The portal stretched upward and outward, taking over the gap between the two birches. The light was dissipating as it spread out, becoming see-through, rather than blinding.

Beyond it was more forest, but the leaves of the mirror birches on the other side blazed the red of blood and burnished copper. A path wound between them, strewn with leaves, bordered by the snow...a red carpet that could lead me to my true self or my ultimate doom.

A wolf's howl, pure and beautiful, came from beyond the light. The call of the wolf from the other side decided me, and I ran for the Arch. If my doom was hiding in the realm revealed by the Lunar Eclipse, so be it. I'd meet my wolf and my doom there, rather than submit to the rogues' vile dominance here.

Rough hands grabbed me from all sides as I ran, clutching all my body parts, leathery fingers and claws digging into my flesh even through my clothes.

"Let me—" I sputtered, fighting against the inevitable, devouring the saving light with my eyes. My wolf's howl came closer. "Let me through!"

The rough paws barely strained—and I was thrown on the ground, away from the glowing Arch. I crashed into a tree, air knocked air out of my lungs. My head hit the wood so hard, black flooded my vision.

As I fought a thickening swoon, the rogues advanced on me, closing the view of the Arch from me with their hairy bodies.

"No," I whimpered. "I must..."

Then a roar shook the trees.

Blake?

The intensity of the sound sent a blast of snow into my face. The true master of these woods had come to dish out justice to the trespassers. One of the rogues hunched over, squeezing his bleeding nose. The others turned to meet the incoming attack.

"The girl?" my former landlord whined.

The Brute shoved him, so he fell to his knees next to me. "Guard her, while we deal with the Alpha."

"But, Boss," another rogue argued, "we need everyone against the Alpha."

"He's tired out from his roar. Hunt, brothers. Hunt, sisters!"

The rogues surged forward, even the guy who had nearly collapsed from Blake's roar. Some of them ran more sprightly than others, suffering the effects of the Alpha's roar. My heart wanted to break open my rib cage and race the gang to Blake.

Blake, yes. This was his Alpha's roar. Diminished by the distance, but far more powerful than anything Harold could conjure...if Harold would have bestirred himself on my behalf.

Blake was back, earlier than expected. And Blake was in terrible danger, because the hateful Brute was right. Last time Blake roared over Grauberg with this much power poured into the roar, it nearly destroyed him.

I gritted my teeth and lifted my splitting head from the tree, struggling to sit up.

The landlord's werewolf snout, as ugly as his human face, loomed before my eyes. I nearly threw up.

He snarled at me. "Stay where you're, bitch, and Colt might give you a little gift."

I spat at him, and he slapped me across the face. "How about the Alpha's pelt to wear? Nah, too good for the likes of you."

"Your pelt...that's what I want."

"What did you say?" He slapped me again, bringing stinging tears into my eyes.

"Only...only I wouldn't wear it. I'd wipe my feet on it..." With a groan I smashed my pounding head into his maw. The impact and the stench that came from his teeth nearly dropped me to the ground again.

Unfortunately, his bones were like steel. My head-butt hurt me more than him.

"You're gonna pay for it, bitch! And for the bites." His claws tore a strip from my jacket, making it fall open. "The Boss called dibs on the first go, but I'll square it away with him."

I wrapped myself into my arms, as if I could hide behind my puny flesh.

"Don't be shy!" He aimed his next strike at my belt—

And a smokey-gray missile landed on his shoulders. Blake's wolf and the werewolf went rolling through the snow. Snarling, clawing, biting...

Dopey from pain, I swiveled my glance away from their two writhing shapes and the blood-stained trail they plowed through the snow.

The way to the Moon Arch was opened.

With a groan, I pushed to my feet, but fell back, too dizzy to stand. I spat bile, blew the hair out of my face, kicked off the snowshoes and went on all fours. If I couldn't walk, I would crawl.

The sounds of a far bigger brawl than the werewolf-wolf duel pushed toward me rapidly. Blake was still alive and fighting his way to me. Single-mindedly. Taking hits, judging by howls of pain and triumph...I'd know his voice in any state, in any shape.

I crawled to the Moon Arch, my hands and legs freezing as they fell through the wind-blown crust into softer snow, but sweat poured down my face.

The fight between the landlord and Blake's wolf ended with an inhuman scream cut short by a squelching sound of tearing flesh and then lapping. The smokey gray wolf streamed by me, his muzzle dripping steaming blood, and his lean sides working like bellows.

The wolf nuzzled me toward the bigger fight, where Blake was fighting his six versus one, and dashed to the Alpha's help.

I glanced at the Arch.

There was a wolf on the other side waiting for me. I might convince her to help. I might shift immediately into a werewolf. The two of us would tip the balance against the filthy rogues...

I glanced at the knot of fighting shapes between the trees. So close now, I could make out Blake. And the Brute. He was wrong—Blake was bigger, but only just.

If the miracle didn't work out for me, and Blake sensed my passing through the barrier...if he tasted my betrayal...did any man have strength to win with a dagger in his back?

Goddess, what should I do?