Her breath caught. It was a tiny sound, barely there, but I felt it like a physical jolt.
Drake felt it too. I had to clench my jaw to keep him from purring like a goddamn cat—now was not the time. f**k it.
“We need to move,” I said, forcing my mind back to the forest. My internal compass locked onto the direction the kids had taken hours ago. “I caught a scent... before the bloodbath.” I winced at the word, hating that I’d brought the gore back into the air between us.
Her entire posture snapped shut. The assessing woman vanished; the mother was back. Her nature overrode the fear, overrode the mate bond, overrode everything.
“I’m shifting,” I told her. “You’re riding with me.”
It came out too sharp, a command rather than a request, but the memory of her on Ellis’s back—wrapped around
