“We’re in this together. You’re strong. You’re smart. You’re magnificent.”

She smiled through her frustrated tears, and he kissed her cheeks, tasting her pain and upset. Taking that into himself and giving her back love.

She turned into his touch and her lips met his and he took her mouth. Slowly, surely. She was his. He knew it. She’d agreed and certainly he was hers. There was no need to rush. Just learn and be with one another. He didn’t know what the next days would hold for Allie. But he knew Michelle would be with him either way.

His wolf seemed to find that satisfactory and eased back a little.

She slid her hands up his chest and to his throat. Her hands strong but so very soft, warm as her thumbs caressed the hollow at the base and then up to his jaw as he continued to kiss her.

“Thank you,” she murmured when he broke the kiss.

“For what?”

“For being here for me. For being so supportive. For talking me off the ledge. For opening the door into this life I could never have imagined. I’d have fallen apart if you hadn’t been helping me with this.”

He shook his head. “No you wouldn’t have. You’d be muddling through because that’s who you are. But I’m so glad I’ve been here with you. So glad the witch whose delightful ass I was checking out turned out to be you.”

“You checked out my ass?”

He snorted. “Is that a question? I came into the lobby and there was this woman there with the nicest ass. I checked you out before you’d even turned around. That it was attached to you, and that you’re my mate? Well that’s cake.”

“I’m sort of drunk. You put a lot of liquor in that tea. I figured I’d sweated it out in the bath.”

“How about I order in and we watch a movie? You haven’t eaten in hours, and you should know wolves need to eat about every three hours to keep up with our metabolisms. Though…do you get horny when you’re drunk?”

She rolled her eyes. “It seems that I’m permanently horny when I’m in your general proximity. It’s sort of disconcerting.”

“Not for me.” He shrugged and stood.

A ringing phone woke her up just after dawn, three days after he’d revealed to her that she was his mate. Josh was already up, moving around. Probably in his office playing catch up on his own work as he’d been spending so much time away from it, driving Michelle all over the city looking for that SUV or for signs, any signs, of Allie. They’d even headed up to Seattle, stopping at all the rest stops north and south on the way back for any signs of the mages, and found nothing.

Guilt flashed through her again. Sure he’d told her he had things in hand, but she felt bad for taking him away from the office.

Rolling from bed and sliding into the robe, she moved to the bathroom to brush her teeth, the muffled sound as he answered and spoke to whoever rumbled in the background.

And then she paused, a chill running through her at the change in his tone.

She rushed out and down the hall as he was writing something down. “Yes, yes. On the way. I need to wake her up. Yes, I know. I’ll rush. Try to hold off calling anyone else until we arrive.”

He hung up and turned, he was so pale she knew it was bad.

“What?”

“Get dressed. One of the teams of wolves I sent out stumbled on a house with the scent of the mages. And something else. Pam is there, she’s holding things down until we arrive. Damon is on the way as well.”

“What is it? You’re pale.”

“They smell death inside. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s her. Just, let’s get out there now.”

With trembling hands she got dressed before rushing into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She pulled her hair into a ponytail in the car on the way to the scene, trying really hard not to think about it. Hoping that the scent of death was anyone but Allie.

He parked on the side of the road and turned to her. “We’re not going to get any closer in the car. I don’t want any evidence of our presence that close. Not until we know more.”

She got out, and they jogged down a street and then up a dirt road. “It’s a mile or so up here, Pam says.”

Michelle got caught in a web of despair about five minutes later as the house came into view on a vista just ahead.

“Yes, they’ve been here.” She tried not to gag on the fetid, rotten-meat stench of that magic they used. Wrong energies. Dark.

Pam was waiting for them, along with Damon and one of the wolves she remembered from the lobby that first day she’d come to ask for Pacific’s help.

“We haven’t gone in yet.” Pam looked to Josh and then to Michelle. “You ready? You go low, I’ll go high.”

Michelle had worn her vest and she was glad. And she hoped the spell she’d learned the day before from Gina to defend herself would work.

The closer they got, the worse the stench was. From the faces on the Weres all around her, it wasn’t just a magical stench but a physical one. And then she smelled it, death. Not just death magics, but the smells that indicated someone had died and died badly. Still fresh enough that it probably had been within the last eight or so hours.

Josh kicked the door in so hard it flew off the hinges, and as they’d planned, Pam went high and left while Michelle kept low and went right.

They swept through room by room. The house only had four rooms, and so when they found nothing, they went out the back door and that’s when she saw it.