“Damon Daye isn’t just an ally,” Boone muttered. “He’s one of us.”
“A shifter?” Quinn asked, the word sounding strange from her lips.
Dade sighed and nodded. “He’s a much bigger shifter than we are.”
Mason chuckled. “It’s nice to meet you, Quinn.”
She reached around the driver’s seat and gripped his offered hand. “Nice to meet you, too. So, are you one of them too then? A bear shifter?”
Mason ran a meaty hand over his shaved head and took a sharp right onto the main road that bisected a stretch of piney wilderness. “Close, but no. I’m a boar shifter.”
“A boar? Like a pig?”
“Ha!” Boone said from the front seat. “She just called you a pig shifter. Mason isn’t one of those plump hams that roll around in the mud. Think more like the streamlined, wild predator with long tusks.”
“Oh.” The word came out as soft as a breath, and Dade squeezed her hand to reassure her she was safe.
“Moira said you don’t remember much about what happened,” Dade murmured.
The crowd thinned and Mason picked up speed.
“I remember the fire. And someone locking me in. Shayna, I mean. I never saw her. Has she been arrested?”
“She’s in the wind, but don’t worry about her,” Mason said in a steely voice as he turned onto the main road lined with woods as far as the eye could see. “Mr. Daye has hired trackers to take care of her. She won’t be bothering you anymore.”
“Here,” Boone said, handing Quinn his phone.
Dade fought the instinct to hide what he’d done for as long as possible. She’d find out eventually, though, and the sooner she dealt with what she’d become, the better.
She let his hand go to grip the phone in both palms. She hit the tiny triangle play button on the screen.
Footage from the local news station played, beginning with a somber woman reporting on “bear men” with supernatural abilities living among the general population. The video of Dade pulling her arm to his mouth and clamping down followed. A soft gasp left Quinn’s lips as Dade began to strip off his turnout gear beside his brothers. The cell phone video wasn’t the best quality, but it had picked up almost everything they’d said. When it panned to Quinn’s Change, Dade turned away and looked out the window.
Cody had played the damned thing on repeat at the meeting he’d called, and there was only so many times he could watch Quinn suffer like that. The first Change was always the worst.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “That’s not me. That’s not me! I’m not that thing.”
That thing. He was that thing. The disgust in her voice gutted him. He watched the passing lodgepole pine forest and agonized at the hitch in her voice. At the soft splat her tears caused against her legs. At the heartbreak in her voice when she asked, “Why? Why did you do put that thing inside of me?”
Swallowing his grief, he closed his eyes and shook his head. “I was trying to help.”
“You’ve turned me into a freak, Dade! What kind of normal life can I lead now? Let me out. Let me out! Pull over, Mason.” Panic laced every word, and her eyes darted wildly. She was cornered and scared, and a trapped, injured she-grizzly was the most dangerous kind.
“Do it,” he murmured when Mason looked at him in the rearview with his dark eyebrows lifted high.
“Dade,” Mason warned, “we’ve got two news vans behind us.”
“Ooow,” Quinn groaned, grabbing her middle. When she dragged her frightened gaze to him, her eyes were blazing green-gold, the mark of the Keller bears.
“You want to deal with a newly Changed grizzly in your nice ride, Mason?”
“Oh, here we go,” Boone muttered. “I’ll take care of the news crews. Just get her far into the woods or Cody is going to string us up.”
“Well, he’ll have to take a freaking number.” The human lynch mob would be here shortly.
Dade pushed open the door as soon as Mason slammed on the brakes. Quinn was shaking and pale as a phantom. The light freckles across her nose were stark against the porcelain color of her skin, and when she released her breath, it trembled.
“I don’t feel well,” she whispered, her eyes rimming with moisture.
Shit, this woman slayed him. He wanted to kill everything. Every. Single. Thing. And for what? She wasn’t in danger from any outside source. She was in danger from the animal he’d put inside of her. Dade was grit—worse even.
Scooping her up, he swore, “Everything will be okay,” but even he could hear the uncertainty in his voice.