Buildings rose all around me. Not skyscrapers, but four- or five-story buildings, most of which dated back a few centuries. I saw a street sign and it had a few marks above the letters no Romance language had—but it wasn’t Cyrillic, either, at least not any version of Cyrillic I was familiar with.

After a few minutes of observation didn’t help me figure out where I was, I took a tighter hold of the threads of pack magic, faint because my pack was a very long way away, and ventured out into the growing darkness.

As I traveled through the city, heading for the origin of the scent of the river, the buildings got older—a lot older by centuries—and the streets turned to cobblestones. There were distinctive red-tile roofs and artwork on the outside of buildings. Probably not frescoes, though that’s what they looked like. My liberal arts education had given me enough of a basis in architecture that I could tell the difference between Gothic and Romanesque with about 70 percent accuracy. It did not tell me what it was called when there were designs all over the outer surface of a building.

The overall effect was an exuberant, almost boisterous, eclectically historical architecture. Here and there, aggressively plain buildings squatted between the beautiful, centuries-old masterpieces like defiant toads set between swans, hinting that this city had spent some time behind the Iron Curtain.

I had my suspicions about where I was. But it wasn’t until an hour later, when I’d found the river and looked down it to see the most famous and unmistakable of its many famous landmarks, the grand old medieval Charles Bridge, that I knew for certain where I was: Prague, the heart of Bohemia.

I knew a little bit about Prague. The first thing that came to mind was that Prague citizens had a habit of throwing powerful officials out of windows—the Second Defenestration of Prague began the Thirty Years War in 1618. There wasn’t another capital city with a First Defenestration that I knew of, let alone a second one. Prague was full of my kind of people.

By leaping a few low stone fences, I found a chunk of ground next to the riverbank (I couldn’t remember the name of the river except that it began with a V and that the Germans called it something else that reminded me of mold) tucked next to and around the edge of a restaurant that was hidden from the view of street, restaurant, and boats on the river. It was not particularly clean or lovely, but it was hidden—and that’s all I would ask for tonight.

And I lay there in the hard-packed dirt for maybe an hour next to the river. After ten minutes or so, I remembered it was the Vltava. Three unlikely consonants in a row. I still couldn’t remember the name the Germans called it. It was full dark, but there were lights all over the city that gave the river’s graceful flow a surreal beauty.

I knew that Stefan had given me good advice. I should just lie low and wait to be found. But I’d slept most of the day cramped up in the belly of the bus, and I was now too restless to sleep.

There were werewolves in Prague. I knew that. The mad and powerful Beast of Gévaudan, who’d ruled most of Europe for centuries, had seen to it that the packs were few and far between, as he did not brook competition. In Spain, where Asil the Moor had ruled, the Beast had left them alone. But he had stayed away from certain other places, too. Milan, where the Lord of Night reigned supreme, had been one of them. I was pretty sure that Prague had been another.

There was something about the werewolves in Prague I couldn’t remember. Something that urged me to caution. I hadn’t expected to find myself in Europe . . . well, ever, really. So I hadn’t paid much attention to them.

The werewolf who ruled here was very, very old—like Marrok or Asil old, I could remember that much. For some reason, I had the picture of a very hairy man in a medieval kitchen with his hirsute arms folded on the top of a rough-hewn wooden table in my head—it made me want to smile. Likely someone had been talking about him when I was a child, and I’d formed an idea of what he looked like. To have been Alpha enough to keep Gévaudan at bay, he was doubtless a scary man. But I’d grown up with werewolves, and being a werewolf was an insufficient reason to be frightened of him.

Even so, running around Prague was probably a bad idea until I could remember what I had heard about the local Alpha that had worried me. I should stay where I was.

I’d lived more than half my life essentially alone. Sometimes in the past few years, I had longed to be alone, just for an hour or two. And here I was. Alone. Sometimes getting your wish really sucks.

I still could not feel the pack bonds unless I was in a trance. My bond with Adam was faint, like a memory of the strong line of communication—or noncommunication, during its contrary moments. I tried not to notice the bond between Stefan and me, and since it, too, was faint, was mostly successful.

Adam had traveled to Washington, D.C., several times during our marriage, and our mating bond had been strong and true—or as strong and true as ever, because it was eccentric. Given the current evidence, the pack magic must have provided the power to keep our bond going over the distance.

Those dreams I’d had in the bus, I refused to believe they were only dreams. The first one . . . might have been, I admitted reluctantly. Though it had felt more real than most of my dreams. But the second one, the one with Stefan—that one was real. And if both Adam and Stefan said that they were on their way to Italy, I had to believe that was what was happening. To face Bonarata.

The Lord of Night had taken me from my mate, and now Adam was going to visit him. There was no way that was not going to be a disaster. Not at all.