The night air hit Mara's face as she stepped out of the Pierre Hotel, sharp with the particur cold that came off the East River this time of year. As she crossed the street, she looked up to the still smoking wreck that was Hunter’s penthouse. Her life had grown considerably more exciting since he walked into it, she had yet to decide if that was a blessing of a curse. She was three blocks away when her phone rang.

  Unknown number. She knew before she answered.

  "Detective Soto." The word tasted bitter. Not a detective anymore. Just Mara. Just a suspended cop with no badge and a werewolf problem.

  "Former Detective, I think you'll find." That voice. British, warm as poisoned honey, with an edge of amusement that made her jaw clench. "Bit careless of them, really. All that training, all that authority, gone because of a little blood in an interrogation room. My blood, as it happens. Did you get in terrible trouble for that, darling?"

  "Riven." She kept walking, scanning the street. Late enough that traffic was thin, early enough that the bars were still lit. "Where are you?"

  "Where I've always been. In your head, Mara. In your blood. In every choice you make that you pretend is yours." His accent made it sound almost philosophical.

  A siren wailed somewhere behind her, Doppler-fading as a patrol car slid through the intersection, lights painting the street in blue and red. For a heartbeat she almost raised her hand, almost fgged them down… old reflex. Twenty-four hours ago those lights meant backup, safety, a system that still had her in it. Now they just reminded her she wasn’t part of that world anymore. She waited for the cruiser to turn the corner before moving again, pulse matching the rhythm of the siren as it vanished into the night.

  "How was your chat with your pack… yout friend upstairs? Did they promise to save you? Put you back in your little cage where you can pretend you're still part of something? Or are you, as you always have been, on your own?"

  She shouldn't engage. She knew better. "You want something, or are you just calling to hear yourself talk?"

  "I want you to stop lying to yourself." The warmth drained from his voice, leaving something colder beneath. "You're not one of them anymore. Not really. You wear the badge, you follow their rules, you sit in pack meetings and pretend you belong, but you know the truth, don't you? You're mine. You were mine the moment I bit you, and every day you spend pretending otherwise is just another day wasted."

  "Go to hell."

  "Been there. Boring pce. Full of bureaucrats and people following orders." He ughed, and it sounded genuine. "You know what's not boring? Freedom. Real freedom. No pack politics, no human ws, no pretending to be less than you are. I can give you that."

  "By killing my partner? By getting me suspended? By breaking out of custody and making me a target?" She was walking faster now, anger pushing her stride. "You’re just a murderer with delusions of grandeur. That's not freedom. That's chaos."

  "Chaos is just another word for possibility, love. And you've got so many possibilities ahead of you. So much still to lose." The st word hung in the air like a threat. "Why don't you come find me? We'll discuss it properly."

  "Tell me where you are."

  "Use that lovely nose of yours. I've left you a trail. Well, my friends have. You remember them, don't you? Big fellow, tusks, subtle as a freight train. And the runner. They’re very excited to get to know you."

  The line went dead.

  Mara stopped walking, closing her eyes, letting the city sounds fade into background noise. Breathed in deep. Past the exhaust and garbage and humanity, past the restaurant smells and perfume and concrete, searching for something that didn't belong.

  There.

  Musk and mud and something ancient. A scent that shouldn't exist in Manhattan, heavy and wrong, cutting through everything else like a foghorn through silence. The mastodon. North and west, maybe six blocks.

  She ran.

  The scent grew stronger as she moved, her body shifting into the fluid lope that wasn't quite human, wasn't quite wolf. Just faster. Just better. She caught other things now, the cheetah's dry-grass smell, sharp and nervous. They'd been this way recently. Minutes, maybe.

  Then she saw the first mark.

  A brownstone on the corner, brick facade gouged with four parallel lines that went deep into the stone. Too high for a human to reach. Too wide for cws that belonged in this century. She touched the edge of one groove, still rough, fresh. The brick dust hadn't even settled at the bottom yet.

  They wanted her to see this.

  She kept moving, and the city became a blur of scent and sound and marks. Another gouge on a fire escape. A dent in a parked car's roof that looked like something massive had stepped there. The mastodon wasn't trying to hide. He was leaving her a road map.

  The cheetah was subtler.

  Mara caught the movement in her peripheral vision, a streak of gold too fast to track properly. She spun, hand going to her hip where her service weapon used to be, but there was nothing there. Just an empty street and the fading scent of a savanna predator.

  Then cws raked across her shoulder bde.

  The pain was bright and immediate, not deep but sharp, cutting through her jacket like it was paper. Mara whirled again, snarling, but the cheetah was already gone. Just ughter echoing off brick, high and breathless and delighted.

  "Come on, puppy," a man's thickly accented voice called from somewhere above. Russian, she would guess. "Keep up."

  Mara pressed her hand to her shoulder, felt the warm wet through her jacket. Not bad. Shallow. But it proved the point, she was being herded. Being pyed with. She was the mouse, and she was running exactly where they wanted her to run.

  She ran anyway.

  What choice did she have? Turn around, go home, admit that Riven had won? Call Hunter before she even found Riven? She would never live that down. No. She'd find them. She'd end this. She'd…

  The cheetah hit her from the side this time, a blur of muscle and momentum that sent Mara stumbling into a storefront. She caught herself on the gss, leaving a bloody handprint, and lunged back at empty air. More ughter, farther away now.

  "This way, this way," the cheetah sang. "Don't be slow."

  The mastodon's scent was overwhelming now, so thick she could taste it. Close. Very close. Mara followed it around a corner, down a side street where the lights were older and the buildings sat closer together, industrial remnants in a neighborhood being slowly digested by condos.

  And then she saw the building and her breath stopped.

  Red brick. Four stories. Windows boarded or broken. A rolling metal door on the loading dock rusted at the bottom. She knew this pce. God, she knew this pce.

  Her feet stopped moving.

  Two years. It had been two years, but she could still see the squad car parked where the dumpster was now. Could still hear Raphael's voice, "Dispatch said the suspect headed inside, armed and dangerous", could still feel the weight of her service weapon as they approached the entrance. It was just a normal stop, the same as they had done dozens, if not hundreds, of times before.

  The crack of the rifle shot.

  Raphael going down, blood spreading across his shirt, too much blood, his hand pressed to his side, and his face going white. She followed protocol… got him behind the car door, cover from the shooter. She called in for backup, while trying to staunch the bleeding but movement in the windows of the building kept drawing her eyes. Her partner knew her all too well.

  "Go," he'd said. "Go, I'm okay, go get him,"

  And she'd gone. Protocol was there for a reason, but her adrenaline was going, and it told her she knew better than the rules.

  She'd chased the shooter into this building, through corridors that smelled like rust and rot, lost him in the maze of rooms and loading bays and machinery. She'd searched for twenty minutes, methodical and thorough, before giving up and heading back outside.

  Where she'd found Raphael.

  What was left of Raphael.

  He'd still been alive when she left him. The bullet was clean, through and through, pressure and an ambunce, and he would have been fine. But something had found him while she was gone. Something with cws and teeth and no mercy. They'd torn him apart on the pavement next to the car, painted the asphalt with him, left pieces of him scattered like trash.

  She'd held what remained and screamed until other units arrived.

  They'd never found what killed him. The official report said animal attack, species unknown. Her captain had looked at her with something between pity and suspicion and told her to take time off.

  She'd known, even then. Somewhere deep in the parts of herself she didn't like to examine. She'd known it was Riven. Her Rauk. The one who bit her. The one who made her what she was.

  He'd been the shooter. He'd led her inside, kept her busy, then circled back to finish Raphael while she was gone. She'd left her partner bleeding and alive, and when she came back, he was dead, and it was her fault. Her choice. Her failure.

  And now Riven had led her back here.

  "You remember, don't you?" Riven's voice in her ear again, her phone ringing, and she answered without thinking. "I can hear it in your heartbeat, love. Racing like a rabbit. This is where you learned the first lesson."

  "What lesson?" Her voice came out raw.

  "That you can't protect them. Human partners, human ws, human lies. You're not one of them, Mara. You're one of us. And the sooner you stop fighting it, the sooner the dying stops."

  "You killed him."

  "I freed you from him. From the illusion that you could be both. You chose to chase me instead of staying with him. You chose the hunt. You chose what you really are." His voice was gentle now, almost kind. "You'll make that choice again tonight. And again tomorrow. Until you finally accept what I already know."

  "And what's that?"

  "That you're mine. That you've always been mine. That everything else is just pretending." He paused. "Go inside, Mara. My friends are waiting. Let's see what else you have left to lose."

  The line went dead again.

  She stood there, staring at the building. The mastodon's scent rolled out from inside, thick as smoke. The cheetah was somewhere close, watching. She could feel eyes on her back. Another scent hit her nostrils, one that was impossible to be there. Two years since he died, but for just a moment, she could smell Raph’s blood in her nostrils once more. Her arms trembled, feeling the weight of his torn body cradled there once again. She took a breath, steadying herself in the moment once more, eyes lit with determination as she scanned the building for threats.

  The rolling door on the loading dock groaned, metal scraping metal, and began to rise. Slowly. Deliberately. Light spilling out from inside, yellow and industrial. An invitation. A dare. A trap.

  Riven wasn't inside. She knew that. She could sense the mastodon and the cheetah, but not him. This was just the opening act. Just his lieutenants, softening her up. Pying with her the way the cheetah had pyed with her through the streets.

  She should call for backup. Hunter had promised he'd come when she needed him. She had his number. One call and she wouldn't face this alone, no matter what else he might be doing. They had fought together, bled together; he wouldn’t abandon her.

  But Riven wasn't here. Just his pieces. And if she called for help against his pieces, what did that say about her? What would Riven say when he found out she'd needed a wizard to handle his leftovers?

  More than that, what would she say to herself?

  She touched her shoulder where the cheetah had cut her. The bleeding had already stopped. Werewolf healing, fast and efficient. One of the few gifts from Riven she couldn't refuse.

  The door was fully open now. Waiting.

  Somewhere inside, something massive moved. The sound of concrete cracking under immense weight. The cheetah's ughter, closer now, excited.

  Mara pulled out her phone. Looked at it. Put it back in her pocket.

  Then she walked toward the open door, into the light, into the pce where her partner had died because she made a choice.

  She was about to make another one. The moment her boot crossed the threshold, the rolling door groaned again, grinding down behind her.

  Metal met concrete with a shuddering boom, cutting off the streetlights and plunging her into the dark. The st sliver of night outside vanished, and with it, her way back.

  “Only way around is through…” Mara muttered to herself, steeling herself for what was next.