What had been a light drizzle fast turned into a downpour. Staring out at the rain beating against the mountainside and harassing the trees surrounding us, we lapsed into silence. It was surprisingly dry back here, and I might have even felt semi-comfortable lying down on this rock, but there was no way I could sleep now and I knew he wouldn’t either.

My thoughts turned back to the hunters. How many other lairs had they reached already? Was the werewolf realm the only realm they had targeted so far? If not, which others had they gained a foothold in? And what was their game plan here? Was it just to send a message to supernaturals that they could just as easily cause havoc in their realms? Or in the end, were the hunters planning to massacre them all, even those who cooperated?

I thought anxiously about Grace and Heath again. I had never witnessed what happened to them. And then I thought of the loved ones I’d left behind on Earth. It killed me to think how worried sick my parents would be right now. I feared that they would come through the portal in search of me and maybe even get captured themselves. Please be okay. My uniform jacket had a tracker installed in it, but I highly doubted it would work in the supernatural world.

“How am I ever going to get back to them?” I found myself whispering aloud, fear constricting my throat. My words shattered through Bastien’s own contemplation and he glanced at me.

“You need a portal,” he said.

Well, yes and no. It depended on where the portal would lead in the human realm. I needed to get back there, but I couldn’t just be dumped anywhere… like in the middle of a wasteland overridden by Bloodless. I had to find a safe portal—one where, on the other side, I could find help to get back to The Shade.

“Do you know of any other portals in this werewolf realm?” I asked all the same.

“Yes,” Bastien replied. “I do know of one other. It is on the shore, some distance away from here.”

I chewed on my lower lip. I guessed I could see where it led to. If it dropped me somewhere terrible, then I would just have to hope I could scramble back through the gate… and ask Bastien to wait for me.

“Would you take me there?” I asked, tentatively.

Bastien looked away, his expression rather morose. He nodded. “We’ll have to hope the hunters haven’t already taken control of it. But I’ll take you there, if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” I said, even as I felt an unexpected stab of guilt. I felt bad for Bastien. The thought of leaving him all on his own, without friends, family, kingdom, or even a safe roof over his head.

“You know,” I ventured, “assuming we can access that portal without hunters getting in the way, and assuming the other side doesn’t lead to somewhere hellish, you might be safer off in the human realm right now… Have you ever heard of The Shade?”

He nodded. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a supernatural who has not heard of The Shade.” Then he shook his head. “But I cannot be lured away, Victoria. I cannot abandon my realm like a coward.” He grimaced at the notion, as though the very thought of it were disgusting. “I must stay and work to drive these men and their beasts off our land.”

I paused, running my tongue over my lower lip. “And how do you plan to do that?” I asked.

“I am still considering the matter… but I believe my first step must be to search this realm until I have found an untouched pack, and then together we must rally more wolves and form an army. Somehow, we must shake these demons from our soil. And it must be done soon. We must not let them spread any more than they already have.”

I really had not the first clue how Bastien and his future army would ever accomplish that. He was right of course that if there was ever a chance of achieving it, it had to be done sooner rather than later. I didn’t know if the base that I’d arrived at was the hunters’ only base here. But if it was, it was still relatively small. I’d only spotted three buildings. Something told me they would be expanding, perhaps setting up bases in the very lairs they’d ransacked.

“Do you have a large family?” Bastien asked, changing the subject. He looked genuinely curious.

“A fairly large one,” I replied. “I don’t have any siblings, though.”

I paused, holding my breath and wondering how to phrase the next question I wanted to ask him.

“Um, I need to be honest,” I began, even as I wrestled with myself to find the right words. “I still don’t understand why you’re helping me so much. I know I freed you from that cage, but I mean, you’ve been putting yourself out for me a lot.”

I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the same time, after he’d delayed our escape just so I could sleep a few more hours, it was really beginning to nag at me. I wanted to better understand this man I found myself trapped with.

To my surprise, Bastien smiled a little, though his eyes stayed fixed on the ground in front of him. “I suppose to someone who wasn’t a wolf, it would seem strange,” he said. Then his mouth straightened, the smile on his face fading. “But if you were a werewolf,” he went on, his tone deeper, “you would understand. It would be instinct to you.”

I paused, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prodded, “I can try to understand. Understand what?”

His eyes, gray and somber, roamed my face. “We form attachments easily in… situations such as this.”

“And, um, what is ‘this’, exactly?”