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“I was curious about what you would do. Save yourself? Go after the other omegas who one of my men saw you talking with before.”

And now suddenly something else becomes painfully clear. “You let me think I was alone so I would go and speak to them, didn’t you?”

“I had Shane step aside.”

“Why?”

His smile grows as he closes the distance between us. “Because I wanted to know if you would tell them anything interesting or if there was any information I might need to know.”

“And did I?”

He comes to a stop a foot away from me. “No. Nothing I didn’t already know.”

He pulls his hands from his pockets and stretches a hand to my face.

I’m leaning away from his touch when suddenly Shane is there, inserting himself between us.

“You don’t have to hurt her,” Shane says, out of breath, like he ran all this way.

Shane must have dressed in a hurry for him to be so disheveled. He didn’t even stop to put on his shoes before he came after me. I didn’t put shoes on either, but I left mine back in Winter Lake when he kidnapped me.

“You said you were going to keep an eye on her, Shane.” Franklin smiles as Shane presses me back with one hand on my belly.

“Yes, and I will. You don’t?—”

I flinch when something hot splashes my right cheek. I’m lifting my hand to swipe the moisture away when Shane collapses at my feet.

Then I see Franklin’s left hand, which he had been holding low by his side, is no longer a hand. It’s a claw.

Blood drips from the tips of those claws, and slowly, reluctantly, already knowing what I will see and wishing I didn’t have to look, my eyes settle on Shane.

He’s on his back, one hand lifted as if to stem the blood pumping from the wound on his throat.

I swallow hard, choking down the bile that threatens to erupt.

Shifters are not easy to kill.

But we can die.

A wound that deep…

Shane is staring at me, skin bleached white from severe blood loss, more blood sliding from the corner of his lips.

He’s trying to say something, lips moving.

I never know what it was he was trying to say.

His hand thumps to the ground and his eyes glaze over.

I never thought I would be anything but happy to never see him again. He hurt me so much that I thought I wouldn’t care the least if someone were to tell me he had died.

But this…

The back of my eyelids prickle.

Unexpectedly, this hurts.

Franklin clears his throat and I jump, my eyes flying to him.

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