Conner’s palm curved around the nape of her neck and he lowered his head to whisper into her ear. His voice was gentle. Soothing. Like a black velvet cloth stroking her inside and out. “Sestrilla, you can’t panic. We can’t move until I remove the threat behind us and the fire’s coming. I’ll get you out of here. Just stay with me.”

She took a breath and forced herself back under control. She wasn’t the panicking type, but the cat was definitely jittery. “It’s not me.”

Sestrilla. He’d called her that before. The word was foreign and exotic. She’d loved it before, when they’d lain together, their bodies wrapped around one another, but now she feared the power of that small word over her. She went soft and mushy inside. Opened to him. More vulnerable than ever.

“You and your cat are one. It doesn’t feel like it to you, because she’s just rising. But you’re always in control. She’s going to panic at the smell and feel of the fire, but you know you’re safe. You have to trust me and she will too.”

Trust him. Why had he used that particular word? Trust him? She might as well put a gun to her own head. Before she could reply, he pressed his fingers tighter around her neck, growling low in his throat. She froze. Her hands opened and she pressed her palms into the earth. Something heavy was running toward them.

A man burst out of the bushes just to their left, almost on top of them. His eyes widened and he fought to bring his gun around. At the same time, he tried to skid to a halt to keep from shooting past them. A wild yell of warning ripped from the man’s throat, even as Conner squeezed the trigger, firing a single round. She heard the bullet hit, the terrifying sound of torn flesh, and it threw her back in time, to the moment when her father brought up his gun, aiming at Conner’s head. The man’s cry was cut off abruptly, but apparently his partner heard him and sprayed the entire forest with a hail of bullets.

She closed her eyes tight, trying not to smell the mixture of blood and gunpowder, but her stomach churned and bile rose in her mouth. Her father’s body shimmered in front of her, blood splattering along the wall behind him. There was no face, only a mass of blood. So much blood. Daddy? A sob broke from her and Conner reacted immediately, pressing close to her, although his gaze was on the forest.

“Are you hurt?”

She fought for control, a little disoriented, caught between the past and the present. Now wasn’t the time to lose it. What in the world was wrong with her? She could hear the blast so close to her ear, the scream of the bullet loud in the confined room. Her own scream, the shock hitting her body. She tried to reach him, before he crumpled to the floor. She didn’t want him on the floor with all that blood.

Conner swore and rolled to one side, coming up on his knee, his body between hers and the gunfire. He nudged her. “When I fire, get up, stay low and run fast, staying to the right. We’re going up, into the canopy.”

She glanced up at the towering trees. Ashes fluttered through the air, looking like gray snowflakes. Her heart thundered in her ears. He wanted her to run, maybe right into more guns, with bullets spraying around them and a fire coming straight at them. And go up hundreds of feet into the canopy.

“Damn it, I’ll get you out of this but you have to do what I say.”

She didn’t have much choice. If she stayed where she was, she was going to get shot. She nodded, setting her jaw.

He laid down a spray of cover fire and hissed “Go!” over his shoulder.

Isabeau scrambled to her feet and began to sprint to her right in a low crouch. It was easier than she thought, her cat nimble, moving over the uneven ground without hesitation. Once on her feet and in motion, the song of the forest was in her veins again. It was a little more chaotic and frantic, but her senses were acute enough that she could sort out her surroundings even while she ran.

She knew there were only animals ahead of her. She never heard Conner coming up behind her, but she caught the leap of her cat reacting to him. Stupid cat. Didn’t it know he was more dangerous to them than any fire? She hated the surge of relief she felt at his presence, but told herself it was because without him, she didn’t stand a chance of getting out of the situation alive. She resisted the urge to glance at him over her shoulder just to reassure herself that he was really there in his solid, masculine form. He gave her confidence, when he shouldn’t have.

With the world around them turning a red-orange glow against the setting sun and the sound of the wind whipping through the trees generated by the fire itself, she felt more animal than human as she raced through the brush.

Conner caught the back of her shirt and halted her abruptly. “Here. We go up here. They won’t be looking for us in the canopy. They’re shooting blindly to drive us into another group. We can’t be caught in a crossfire.”

She was barely breathing hard, even after the hard run, her lungs and heart working more like the cat than the woman. She looked up the long tree trunk. The first branches were a good thirty feet above her head. “Are you crazy?” She took a step back. “I can’t climb that.”

“Yes, you can. You’re powerful and strong, Isabeau. You’ve lived one life cycle already as a cat—with me. It will come back to you. Trust your cat and let her loose. She won’t fully emerge, but she’ll get you up the tree.”

“Have I ever mentioned, I have a problem with heights?”

“Do you have a problem with bullets?”

She blinked up at him, realized he was teasing her and sent him a scowl. “That’s not funny.” But at his raised eyebrow, a small smile managed to sneak through. He didn’t look worried at all. He looked at her as if he believed she could do the impossible.