McNeil needs you. You can save him, but it has to be your choice.

The words of the odd man, Ben, whom Paul had brought to see her, echoed in her head.

I can save him how?

Misty had no idea. She was a florist—she knew flowers and plants and how to sell them. Other than that, her specialty was feeding boys and absentminded fathers, and not being offended when they never acknowledged what she did. She’d known they’d appreciated it, in their own way, but had been too caught up in their own worlds to say so.

Misty wasn’t a warrior, or a being of magical power, or even a Shifter. She didn’t know anything about Fae—hadn’t even heard of them until one had tried to take her and Graham.

“Oh, yeah,” Dougal said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans. “I forgot. Reid told me to give you this.”

He handed her the little book of flower spells Misty had let Reid borrow. Misty shifted the cubs’ weight to take it, clutching the familiar leather cover between her fingers.

Her heart beating faster, she stepped into her living room, still carrying the cubs. Dougal leaned on the wall in the hall, watching her with Xav.

Misty opened the book. Inside, she found the sticky note on which Ben had written his name and telephone number the day he’d come to the shop. She was sure she’d left that sticky note in her office, but here it was, inside the book on the vellum that separated the picture from the title page.

Beneath Ben’s handwriting was another. Call Ben, it said. Ask him to help you. It was signed, Stuart Reid.

Misty stared at the note for a long time. Still looking at it, she went numbly into the kitchen, fished her cell phone out of her purse, and started tapping.

 • • •

Graham looked around the shallow cave he and Misty had found when she’d been trying to take him back to the Fae one. He’d left Dougal’s motorcycle near the shack at the bottom of the little hill and hiked his way up.

All the while, Oison kept up the noise in Graham’s head. You are mine, battle beast. Come to me. Graham gave up trying to shut it out and fighting the need to go to him. He hadn’t been able to ride the motorcycle anywhere but here without being in excruciating, dizzying pain. He’d explained everything carefully to Reid in the phone message—Graham could only wait and hope Reid did what he was supposed to.

For now, Graham stood in the dry, shallow cave, the temperature rising outside.

“I’m here,” he called out. “Where the hell are you?”

Change.

Graham didn’t want to. He wanted to stand upright and tell Oison what he thought, right before he strangled the f**king Fae.

“I’ve come to kill you,” Graham said. “I’m going to beat down your body then drag it back up, and beat it down again. Sound like fun?”

Shift!

The command flashed through Graham like the worst of the Collar’s shocking pain. Without him willing it, he started peeling off his clothes.

His body began to shift before he was finished. The last of his shirt and underwear fell in shreds from him as his wolf limbs took form, and Graham landed on all fours, a huge black wolf. He snarled, then lifted his muzzle and howled.

The mournful wolf’s cry echoed through the small chamber. At the same time, the wall at the rear cracked, shards of stone rattling down to the cave floor.

Then the wall disappeared entirely and so did the dry cave. A black, glassy obsidian floor swallowed up the dirt one, the trickle of the fountain pounded into Graham’s brain, and flowering vines flowed toward him, their scents strong. Graham backed up, but the vines reached him and twined around his feet, climbing up his legs.

Graham fought them, but the vines grew tighter, flowing back as soon as he pushed any aside. One wrapped around his muzzle, and he bit the vine in half.

These plants were relentless. In Misty’s yard, he’d thought her flowers pretty, but the ones here were terrifying. Trumpet flowers opened like mouths, and the puffball-like flowers grew until they were smothering pillows.

Graham kept fighting. He didn’t notice Oison until the Fae was standing in the middle of the cave, near the fountain. Oison wore his chain mail and silver cloak again, with the sword in his hand, his white hair hanging in braids to his waist.

He spoke in Fae, but Graham understood every word. “If you think your dokk alfar will help you, think again,” Oison said. “You tipped your hand, playing your ironmaster too soon. I fortified myself against him. There he is.”

Oison pointed with the sword. At one end of the cave, which Graham could barely see through all the damn flowers, was a wall of ice. The ice floe was huge, hundreds of feet high and at least fifty feet wide. In the middle of it was a dark smudge, only just discernable.

“Dokk alfars are beings of earth,” Oison said. “They master it. I trapped him with the element I master—water. The dokk alfar is still alive, enjoying every pleasure of being frozen almost to death inside ice.”

Graham snarled, still fighting the vines. He made himself shift back to his human form, though it hurt like hell. His Collar went off, driving pain into him, but Graham forced himself through, ending up on his human feet.

Fighting the flowers and vines was easier with his hands, and he managed to drag them from his face.

“I’m not fighting your wars for you,” Graham spat. “Forget it.”

“Not war. Not yet,” Oison said, sounding far too calm. “My colleagues are right that it’s too soon for war. But they’re wrong that it’s too soon to bring in the Shifters. You will pull others to me—you have a hundred of what you call Lupines under your command, do you not? I will train you to obey and to submit. You will also breed new Shifters for us. Once you have multiplied, in a few generations, then it will be time for war. Good thing we made Shifters to be long-lived.”

Graham snarled, pulling another vine from his face. “Not gonna happen.”

“Yes, it will.”

Graham kept up his defiance, but his body felt as icy as the wall that encased Reid. The vines wove relentlessly around his limbs, pulling him down to the black floor. They doubled in speed, pinning his body to the ground, spinning over him in a mesh that soon blotted out all light.

 • • •

Misty unloaded Dougal and the cubs from her truck, unlocked her store, and let everyone in. No one had come to work on the place this early, but Misty could see that DX Security and the Shifters had done a great job so far. The broken glass and ceramic had been swept away, the shelves rebuilt. The front doors still needed to be replaced as well as the main counter, but the store was coming along.