The strength that had returned to Matt's body upon seeing Beth's face vaporized as soon as he lost sight of her through the billowing smoke that rolled across the street ahead and into the alleyway. Gone. Again. Every time she slipped back into his life, she slipped away just as quickly. Even the time he had spent at the Heether pack house in the same damn building with only a few walls between them at most, she was always out of reach.But he knew why. This wasn't eighteen-year-old Beth who would discover she was his mate and fall in love with him. This was the Beth from nearly ten years in the future who remembered everything Matt had done to her, the same Beth he had betrayed so many times and never paid for it, except in grieving his loss when he finally realized what he had done. She hated him. Or rather - she hated who she thought he would become.She didn't know he was the same Matthew Catii who had hurt her time and again until she breathed her last. That was his saving gra
"So why are they after you?""I don't rightly know.""Really? You have no idea?"The man shook his head, and Matt knew in an instant he was lying. Or at the very least, he had to have some suspicion. People didn't put up a dogged chase through smoke to mug a complete stranger. Had this man ducked into the chaos to try to get away from them, hoping to lose his pursuers in the mob? Not a stupid move, but unsafe considering he had been panting and heaving and taking in so much of the smoke. Matt could still feel the effects of inhaling it even now, even after his healing had kicked in to recover his lungs. Whatever those thugs were chasing after him with such single-minded devotion for, the man had to have an inkling about. A bit too old to be messing around with sisters and daughters. Maybe gambling debts?"Really," the man said at his long, skeptical stare. "I don't know. But I didn't want to stick around to find out. They were meaning to kill me no matter what I said or did.""Kill
Daniel was right to think something would happen, in the end. Beth had mastered stalking her quarry in the past life, but in the almost three seasons she had spent in this new one, she had become utterly out of practice. Perilously so. And she realized it only when the man stiffened, turned his head, and sniffed the air over his shoulder. She tried to slink back behind the closest corner only to find that they were both in the middle of a narrow brick alleyway, and there was no escaping detection.The smog that muddied the air was thinner than two and a half streets over where the flames had grown to a raging conflagration, and there was no hiding within it. Beth and the man locked gazes as he turned, and adrenaline thickened in her veins, warning her: fight.The man was trained. Highly trained. The span of time between the instant he saw her and the instant he leaped to attack was less than a second. He didn't just know how to fight; he lived like this, constantly struggling, consta
There was no way they were going to bring this stranger with them. Beth was slower to judgment than anyone else here, which was ironic considering she had already seen what the future could bring, but even she was against the idea of Matthew keeping some old unknown merchant in tow as they fled the vicinity for safer waters. And given Matthew's track record of trusting the wrong people - she hoped in the other life, he and Annalise had torn each other new ones, and plenty of them at that - she wasn't fond of falling into step and going along with his idea that his new friend could be of use to them.Boris was a weathered thing, but it might have been only recent times that had treated him poorly. He had the slightly saggy look of someone who had lost too much weight too fast, but he had the sophisticated manners of someone of the upper economic class, and he still had the jewelry here and there that quietly advertised the wealth he possessed. Well, not at the moment. He had admitted
It had been an exhausting journey made at double-time, and the strain showed on everyone except Daniel. His stamina was unbelievable - impossible, even. Beth had long trained for strenuous work in the other life and had even become good at it despite her utter lack of training in childhood, but she as well as everyone else were on their last leg. Daniel, however, stayed up to guard the captive no matter how anyone protested, and he ordered the other Heether pack members to get some rest. The sister pack werewolves who had accompanied them to and from the botched mission were sent home outright with orders to disclose nothing. And Beth - Beth slept. She slept so hard she didn't even dream, and she woke up with a startled jerk when she realized it was no longer dark in her small room at the end of the large cabin. She must have napped for at least two hours, maybe more. She scrambled out of bed, heart pounding, and sprinted down the hallway, out the door, and toward the cellar doors
"It's Boris, I just got up to go look for him and he was already gone!""And his belongings?" asked Daniel. "Don't overreact. Explain."Matthew raked his fingers through his mussed hair, agitated. "I was the last to see him before he went into the room you lent him. And he said he was going to sleep. He didn't leave through the door either, he left through the window. Otherwise your men would have seen him. The one with the birthmark over his eyebrow already left the back way to see if he can find him, but there's no trail to track! Your people can't find him."The accusatory note in his voice didn't go unnoticed. Daniel narrowed his eyes. Who was Matthew to criticize when Boris was his guest, not theirs? He was the one who should have been keeping proper tabs on the old man since he had dragged him along without even consulting Daniel or Beth. He had been so insistent that the man could be useful, but what now?Matthew could be overreacting indeed, high-strung as he was. But if the
It was true they had gone to try to find Wyatt Troy in the first place when they went to the border village. He was supposed to be in disguise - that too was true. But never had Beth guessed that the doddering, talkative, nervous merchant man was Wyatt Troy after all. And here they had thought Matthew had rescued a bumbling man whose only use might be his connections to the other Alphas of Gold Nation, though even that would have been limited to just fellow merchant-class packs instead of the true warrior packs that would be the most fruitful.And now it turned out Boris wasn't Boris after all, but the man himself, the Alpha King of Gold Nation?Beth stared, but Matthew was far more shocked than she was. When her gaze darted to him to take in his reaction, all he was doing was numbly staring at the man who had all but undergone a complete transformation in the short time he had slipped their leash. There was nothing physically transformed about him - only the increased height and w
They left Matthew stunned on the patio. Or rather, Daniel left him stunned on the patio as he yanked Beth bodily back into the house to pull her down the hallway. His fingers were digging into her wrist so hard they hurt, and she scrambled to loosen his grip when she regained enough of her senses to understand what was happening."What are you doing?" she hissed. "Let go of me! Daniel!"But he said nothing, and no matter what she did and said, he refused to loosen his grasp. They were already nearly to the front doors, and how they hadn't run into anyone, she didn't know, but she wasn't going to let others see Daniel manhandling her like this. She wasn't going to let others see anyone at all manhandling her like this.At last, she shoved at him with her other hand, catching up with a lunge so she could overtake his long, swift strides that outpaced her own. He was not going to drag her around. But her strength was nothing compared to his, and all she succeeded in doing was making him