Please be safe, Dimitri. Stay very still. I’m with you, she whispered, tears burning in her eyes as the connection between them abruptly ended.

Skyler hated letting that thread between them go. He was so alone, in such bad shape, far worse than she could have ever imagined. Her Dimitri was so strong, so very powerful, it didn’t seem possible that he could be a prisoner, tortured and near his life’s end.

She felt tears on her face. She couldn’t move, she was just too exhausted, but staring up at the canopy overhead as the branches swayed and danced to the music of the wind, she realized how lucky she was. Dimitri was alive. He was close enough that she could reach him and he could connect to her. They would find a way together.

“Sky, I’m going to give you a few minutes,” Josef said, “and then you’re going to have to try to eat something. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and you have to be in shape.”

She nodded, content to lie in her hammock and listen to the sounds of the forest. The continual drone of the insects seemed familiar to her and yet not at all. Wings fluttered overhead as birds flitted from one tree to the next. Marmots scampered and mice infiltrated the vegetation on the forest floor. The forest was alive with life.

She turned her head to watch as Paul set up a safety zone. There were predators in the forest and, although they had Josef with them, they needed to prepare just in case. She lay in her hammock, thinking about their last line of defense, should everything go wrong. If they were discovered and the Lycans attacked them, it was up to her to provide a safe shelter for them all. Dimitri would be weak. If there was no time to give him blood and heal him, they would be tasked with finding a safe place they could defend while he went to ground to recover.

Paul strode over to her, holding a water bottle. “Here. Can you sit up?” He already had his arm around her back, helping her. “Drink this. We’re nearly set up here. Josef has everything in order. Even our findings will stand up under scrutiny. I can’t imagine that the Lycans won’t buy our cover.”

“Josef said the simplest plan was the best, and I think he’s right,” Skyler admitted. She had to lean against Paul to sit up enough to drink the water. “I’m so tired, all I want to do is sleep.” She looked up at him, frowning. “He can’t go to ground or get out of the sun. The last time, the distance was so great I couldn’t see anything around him or even get a sense of what was happening to him. The pain was so awful, but this time . . .” She trailed off.

“He’s strong,” Paul assured her. “He’ll survive.”

“I know how very fortunate I am that he loves me. Knowing he didn’t deliberately move and squirm to allow the silver to pierce his heart when he’s been tortured all this time just to stay alive for me, is an amazing feeling. I don’t know that I could have withstood that kind of agony as long as he has.”

Skyler took another long, slow drink. The water felt good on her parched throat. Dimitri hadn’t fed for over two weeks. What would that do to him? She looked around for Josef. He was busy with the fire pit. He’d always had a thing about fire.

“If Dimitri hasn’t fed in a long while, Josef, what does that do?”

Josef turned slowly, the flames from the fire pit casting eerie shadows. “That’s not good, Sky. He’ll be starved. It’s best that, when we rescue him, I give him my blood first, not you.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. Josef could be quite adult at times, and he sounded very serious—and concerned.

“Can you get up, Skyler?” Paul asked. “We’ve got a chair for you and the fire is warm.”

“I don’t know.” That was dishonest. If she tried to stand, she’d fall on her face.

Paul scooped her up without asking, carrying her straight over to the fire and placing her in a chair facing it. “Josef remembered the marshmallows and chocolate,” he added.

“Sounds fun,” she replied.

Josef came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, putting his chin on the top of her head. “Do you think you’re up for this tomorrow? Should we give it another day so that you can recoup?”

He was reluctant to wait, she heard it in his voice. She knew the chances of their plan succeeding went down the longer they waited. If a Lycan discovered their camp before she was “lost” their ploy wouldn’t work. She doubted she could get close enough to plant a tracking device without their knowledge if she wasn’t injured and needing help. They would have to find another way to track Dimitri back to his prison. She knew she could find him now, with the psychic trail becoming stronger, but it would take time and energy they clearly didn’t have. And then there was Dimitri. Anything could happen on his end—and none of it was good.

“I’ll be ready,” she said. She took the mug of hot chocolate more to appease both of her friends than because she thought she’d drink it. “What I need is to let Mother Earth help heal me. Can you open the soil here for me to stretch out in?”

“Baby, you can’t sleep in the ground,” Josef said. “I can’t cover you and you’d be vulnerable to any attack. Crazy woman, you aren’t Carpathian yet.”

She found herself laughing. “Crazy man, I meant just a few layers. I didn’t plan to sleep there. The insect population alone would stop me.”

“Worms,” Paul added. “They crawl in and out of bodies . . .”

“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out . . .” Josef quoted an old song children had sung to one another in play yards the world over.

“Stop,” Skyler commanded. Just being in the company of her two best friends made her feel lighter. Safer. More grounded. “Eventually I’ll be sleeping in the dirt, and I don’t want to think about worms or any other bugs crawling over me.”

She needed to feel her connection with Mother Earth if her fail-safe plan had any chance of success at all. She didn’t want to talk about it yet, not until she was certain she could do it. Everything depended on what she learned there in that ancient forest soil.

Josef kissed the top of her head. “You really are a squeamish little baby sometimes, Sky. Dirt is not a dirty word. You said it with such distaste. Like a girl.”

“I am a girl, you goof,” Skyler pointed out. She looked down at the chocolate in the mug. Her stomach rebelled again. She was going to need Josef’s aid again. “And no girl likes the idea of sleeping in the ground with insects. I am human, after all.”