Everyone exchanged glances.

“Well,” my father said, “are we all ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” my mother muttered.

She gripped my hand tightly as we piled into the portal. My second time traveling through it was just as unpleasant as the first. The first time, I’d suffered the fear of not knowing what was on the other end, and now, I had the fear of knowing. I just prayed that all the mutants would not still be huddled by the gate.

As we reached the end of the swirling, translucent tunnel, we hurtled out and landed on the damp ground. We rose to our feet immediately and gazed around the now fluorescent-streaked compound. Extra strip lights had been turned on and were illuminating the area.

“These are The Woodlands,” Micah whispered. We all gaped at him. “I don’t need to see beyond this compound to recognize the air of my homeland,” he added in an undertone.

The Woodlands. Why is the IBSI setting up here?

I glanced down at the receiver over Xavier’s shoulder as he knelt on the soil, trying to bring the device to life. Still no signal from Victoria.

“Over there.” Heath pointed to two groups of hunters patrolling the boundaries with leashed mutants. It was only a matter of time before they spotted us. A matter of seconds.

The witches worked together to quickly form a protective barrier around us, and then we all moved forward together with Xavier, my father and my grandfather fearlessly leading us forward.

The hunters raised their guns and moved forward, too, until there were barely six feet between us. The mutants screeched and threw their heads back. But no fire was unleashed. I guessed they were waiting for the hunters’ orders.

“You have my niece.” Derek spoke up, his voice booming around the enclosure. “What are you doing here? What is this?”

“You are trespassing on highly sensitive property,” the foremost hunter replied with a glare. “You must retreat through the portal.”

“In case you are blind,” Derek replied, clutching the badge on his uniform and flashing it to the hunters, “we are TSL. We have special permission—”

“Not permission to trespass, vampire.”

“You have taken my niece, who is also a member,” Derek seethed. “Give her up now.”

“I must repeat, sir,” the hunter replied through gritted teeth. “You must leave the vicinity now, or we will be forced to take measures to remove you. Orders are—”

“Your orders are of no consequence to us,” my father shot back. “I’m sure you have noticed that we are quite capable of defending ourselves from your mutants and whatever other weapons you have stashed away here. You have one of our people. A human girl. Where is she?”

At this, the hunter shifted on his feet. They had technology beyond imagination, but when it came to our very close-knit group, they could not penetrate the power of our five witches holding up a spell around us. It seemed that they sensed this, and their glares relented a little. The hunter my father had been speaking with exchanged an uncomfortable glance with his colleagues before muttering, “We don’t have the human girl.”

“You really are full of—”

The hunter cut Xavier off. “We have CCTV footage.” He nodded in the direction of the buildings. “I can show it to you.”

All of us were taken aback by this. How could Victoria not be here?

Xavier grimaced. “Show it to us.”

We followed the hunters with their mutants across the clearing and toward the building on the far right. We did not approach the entrance, however. We traipsed around the side of the building before arriving at a much smaller one that had been hidden from view—a rather nondescript, rectangular building. Its windows were made of tinted glass so we could not see what was inside.

One hunter strode inside, while the others circled around us and remained outside with their mutants. A few moments later, the building’s front windows slid downward, allowing us to gaze inside a room filled with monitors. Their CCTV control room. The hunter was fiddling with one of the monitors, stopping, pausing, rewinding footage, until finally he tilted the screen for us to see better: An injured Victoria scrambling up against a tree—that was the last Heath and I had seen of her—and then shortly afterward…

What?

A wild-looking young man with black hair thumped to the ground beside her. He scooped her up and then with an almighty leap swung back into the tree with her.

So that’s why those hunters were shooting at the treetops. But who is that man?

“Oh, my God,” Arwen gasped, clasping a palm to her mouth. “That’s the wolf guy!”

Everyone whirled on her.

“The wolf guy in the cage whom Victoria insisted I free,” she said. “That’s the guy!”

This was the first I was hearing about Victoria and Arwen freeing a “wolf guy”.

“If he’s a wolf, why is he in his human form?” Heath asked. “It’s nighttime.”

“Well, yeah, there’s something weird about him,” Arwen replied. “He looks like a wolf, and he said that he was a wolf.”

“I’ve never heard of a wolf who didn’t shift involuntarily at nighttime,” Micah said, frowning hard.

“So you see,” the hunter interrupted, “she was carried off. We don’t have her here.” He approached the door again, jaw firmly set. “Now you have your answer, I must warn you for the last time: return through the portal and leave our territory.”