Page 22 of Paris and the Reaper

“I wish I could have stopped him from turning you over at all.”

“He didn’t give you much choice, and if you had, your cover would’ve been blown. I get it.”

“What are we doing out here?” the other shifter asked.

Abigail threw an arm over the blond’s shoulders. “This is my girlfriend, Jenn. Excuse her crankiness. It runs in her family.”

Jenn swatted her stomach, then turned her attention back to Mac, brow raised, expecting an answer to her earlier question. “Well...”

“We’re looking for a giant’s altar,” Mac answered.

Faster than Paris could blink, Jenn spun out from under her girlfriend’s arm and hauled ass back across the road toward the bike. “That’s a nope.”

Abigail flexed all that speed and grace Paris had witnessed on occasion, beating Jenn back to the bike and snatching the helmet out of her hands. “Did you never wonder why I left my pack? Why I came home with you from the bar that night and never left? Why I volunteered for the Cirillo gig?”

The longing in her voice, the sorrow in her dark eyes, made Paris’s gut clench. Then his eyes widened and his breath stuttered as he realized what he was sensing, the sadness and loss in her aura—purple and indigo, black around the edges—but a center of pure green that anchored her to this place.

To Nature.

“Babe,” Jenn said, likewise sensing her girlfriend’s distress. She slid the helmet from her grasp, set it back on the bike, then curled an arm around her.

“One of the giants infiltrated our pack,” Abigail told them. “Manipulated them into doing his and Chaos’s bidding. Helping him hunt. I couldn’t stay.”

“And my father,” Paris said, “had connections to a giant.”

Abigail nodded. “At least one. Maybe the others. Maybe the one who turned my pack against who and what we are. I was determined to find out who he was. This is my fight too.”

Paris approached cautiously, sensing Jenn on the protective edge and not fully trusting him yet. Fair. He raised his hands, palms out, then slowly stretched one out toward Abigail. She placed her hand in his, and he gave it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you again.”

She squeezed back, the green in her aura pulsing brighter, then, swapping his hand for Jenn’s, turned toward the woods. “Let’s go. I know where the altar is.”

Paris shouldered his backpack, stepped to the edge of the woods, then paused. “Um, as the only human here, I have to ask... Should we be worried about being attacked?”

“We’ve got sentries,” Mac said, pointing at the corvids overhead.

“And I don’t feel them here,” Abigail said. “They hunt with him. They must be out of range.”

Except five minutes into their trek, Paris started to hear voices. In his head. Beside him, Mac’s back snapped straight and he tilted his head, an ear to the woods. “You hear that too?” Paris asked him.

He glanced over, eyes violet, and nodded. Above them, Liam croaked a plaintive call; even he sensed something amiss. Mac flashed him a two-fingered gesture, and the raven went scouting ahead. “He’ll check it out,” Mac said, moving closer as they followed Abigail deeper into the woods.

The voices getting louder with each step.

If he closed his eyes and opened his mind the way he had with Mac in front of the mural that day, the way the witches had been teaching him, Paris was sure he’d land in a world of violet the same color as Mac’s eyes.

He reached out and tangled his fingers with Mac’s, giving them a squeeze to get his attention.Are you sure she’s on our side?he mouthed, asking a question he knew the answer to but hoped he was wrong.

Mac didn’t hesitate to nod, and Paris swallowed hard, dreading what the voices meant, what they were going to find at the altar. Even more certain of it when Liam came sailing back through the woods to perch on Mac’s shoulder, his glossy black head bowed.

A scout was no longer needed; a reaper was.

“Abigail,” Mac called. “Why don’t you let us go ahead?”

She spun on her heel, asking “Why?” at the same time Jenn said, “I smell smoke.”

Abigail sniffed the air once, and then she was off and running, Jenn on her heels, Liam darting after them.

“Fucking coyotes,” Mac said, shoving a hand through his hair. “Zero tact.”

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