CAINE
The truck’s tires skid through mud as I slam to a halt beside the camper. I don’t bother turning it off—just fling the door open and launch myself into the rain.
Every heartbeat is louder than the last, drumming insistently through my veins as I wrench the camper door open. The entire thing rocks as I storm inside, halting only when I see three kids standing in front of me, eyes wide and smelling of fresh panic.
I scared them.
Idiot, Fenris mutters, like he wasn’t the one to send me the get back here as fast as you can message less than ten minutes ago.
Ron, shirtless and bleeding, stares blankly as he holds a towel to one of his wounds.
"What happened?" The question rips from my throat even though I already know. Fenris told me—Bun lost control. Granted, the worthless lump of fur and fang was short on detail and ignored me when I demanded more, saying he was a too busy to explain.
Ron immediately stiffens, shoving the bloody cloth behind his back. "Nothing."
His jaw sets, defiant despite standing half a foot shorter than me and looking like he went three rounds with a mountain lion. The kid has balls. He doesn’t want me upset with the baby.
He has no idea I already know.
"Bun’s asleep," he adds, dropping his to a whisper. "Be quiet."
And if you wake her, I’ll bite you myself, Fenris murmurs.
Oh, now he talks.
I was busy.
There’s a deep, visceral urge to snarl aloud at my own damn wolf, but I throttle it back. Ron already thinks I’m glaring at him, not privy to the conversation in my head.
I force my shoulders to relax and close the door softly behind me, shutting out the storm’s howl. Water drips from my clothes onto the floor, pooling around my boots.
Should probably turn off the truck, too.
A small gasp comes from the only girl of the trio. What’s her name again? She avoids me for the most part, but I’d been under the impression she was getting better about it. Apparently not.
"You’re getting everything wet," she whispers, something close to horror in her voice.
Before I can respond, she bolts toward the back bathroom and returns with a faded blue towel, which she hurls at my feet like she’s afraid to come within arm’s reach.
You’d think I was the monster in this scenario, and not the toddler who carved up two of her packmates.
Fenris growls. Take care of the pups while Grace sleeps.
I freeze, one hand halfway to the towel. "Grace is asleep too?"
Ron says, "I don’t know. She’s with Bun, though."
But, of course, I wasn’t talking to him.
Yes.
Strange. Why would she sleep when the kids are still bleeding? Perhaps all of this stress has been too much on someone still recovering. Humans are so fragile.
The need to check on her burns through me, but I force myself to assess the situation. Three sets of wary eyes track my every move. Jer’s small face has a few scratches on it, though they’re already mostly healed. The girl... Sara. Right. She’s unharmed, though her eyes are glued to the puddle at my feet.
Ron has the most wounds, but it only takes a glance for me to see they’re already healing. Within an hour, he shouldn’t be bleeding anymore.
But they’re all more than stressed. They’re terrified.
"Go sit in the living room," I order all three of them, spreading the towel at my feet to soak up the water I’d brought in.
None of them move, and I look up with narrowed eyes. "Now."
Just a tiny hint of dominance whips out and cracks between us, and all three scramble to obey. Even the slightly rebellious teenager.
I follow behind, leaving the towel on the floor. "Tell me exactly what happened. From the beginning."
The three exchange glances. Ron speaks first.
"We were just waiting out the storm. Then Bun..." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "She started shifting. But not normal. Her eyes went all wrong."
"Wrong how?"
"Black," Sara whispers. "Not like animal-black. Like... empty-black."
I frown. "That’s not possible."
"It is," Jer interrupts, his small face pinched with fear. "We saw it. She went all weird and growly and then—" he gestures at Ron’s chest "—she did that."
I study the wounds more carefully. Deep puncture marks, claw rakes across the sternum. Defensive wounds on the arms. It looks like an adult attack, not something a toddler could inflict, shifted or not.
"Did something trigger her? Something that scared her?"
Sara shakes her head. "Just the storm. We were playing hide and seek."
"No, we weren’t," the younger boy corrects her. "We were playing hide and seek before, but then we were just sitting here when she went crazy."
"She’s not crazy," Ron snaps. "She just lost control for a minute."
It wasn’t normal cub aggression, Fenris admits. Even for an unstable shifter. Something else is at work here. She fought my dominance, too.
I’ve seen countless shifts over the centuries. Young cubs getting their first claws, adolescents struggling through moon-cycles, even adults driven to frenzy in battle rage. But a toddler generating this kind of violence? The damage Ron’s sporting would require significant strength and intent—neither of which a child Bun’s age should possess.
"Has this happened before?" I ask.
Ron hesitates. "No."
Something in his tone indicates there’s more he isn’t saying.
"Explain."
"She’s always been... different. But never dangerous."
"What do you mean, different?"
The teenager scratches at the back of his neck with a sigh. "Jer and Sara only have a few forms they can shift into, right?"
I arch a brow in a silent bid for him to continue.
"Well, Bun and I are different."
"How so?" My voice is still sharp, but it doesn’t deter him.
"We don’t have a limit." He pauses, taking a deep breath, then releasing it in a sudden whoosh. He grimaces. "More than no limit. I could shift into a dragon if you really wanted me to. Or a griffin. Anything I can imagine. I can even change what I look like as a human."
I believe it, Fenris says as I stare blankly at this large child. She was not forming into any recognizable creature, and she often mixes her shifts.
I blink at the kid, trying to gauge whether he’s serious or just trying to sound impressive. Dragons? The sheer ridiculousness of it almost distracts me from the reality we’re facing.
Caine.
"What?" I snap, and Ron flinches. "Not you, kid."
Grace isn’t asleep.
He speaks with urgency, and I turn with a frown, staring down the hall.
"What do you mean?"
I think she’s unconscious again.
I’m moving before he’s finished the sentence, darting across the tiny camper with inhuman speed.
Grace is curled up around the little toddler we call Bun, her breathing steady and her face pale. Her scent should be strong and overpowering this space with the fresh-baked blueberry muffin smell, but it’s faint. Almost unnoticeable.
The baby, on the other hand, is rosy-cheeked and looks quite peaceful after such an ordeal.
It takes only a second for my brain to click through what I already know.
Grace is capable of transferring her energy into me. And when she did, I felt... calmer. More in control of myself.
She calmed the child, Fenris admits.
As I thought.
I yank the toddler out of the bed, feeling guilty when she stiffens and flails, screaming as she reaches for Grace. "No," I snap, holding onto her tightly. "You can’t touch Grace."
"No!" Bun shrieks, twisting herself into a toddler-sized pretzel. "Mama! Mama!"
"You can’t play with Mama right now, Bun."
Doesn’t that mean something else? Fenris asks.
Jer’s curly-haired head pokes in. "Bun? Where does it hurt?"
The toddler freezes in my arms, her lower lip stuck out as far as it can go as her giant baby eyes fill with tears. "Mama."
"Does it hurt on your head?"
She shakes it.
"Your hand?"
Another shake.
"Did you hurt your feeties?"
She screams.
"Does your heart hurt?" I ask, rubbing at her chest.
The scream stops abruptly, and she hiccups. Then she nods. "Mama."