Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Yet he couldn’t walk away. Not tonight. Not when Memory was so alone in her uniqueness. “I love your hair.” The words just fell out of his mouth.

Pausing mid-bite, she shot him a dark look from under her lashes . . . but her lips tugged upward. The entire day got better. Going back into her kitchen, he made them both a coffee, then came to sit beside her.

His thigh pressed against her. It twisted him up how badly he wanted to touch her, how much that small contact meant to his wolf, but he didn’t create distance between them. Neither did she, her skirt fluffing out over his boot. Finishing her meal in silence, she put it aside, then picked up the coffee he’d adulterated with hot chocolate after spotting the new container sitting on her kitchen table.

The heat from the mug seeped into Memory’s palms, but it was the heat of Alexei’s body that held her captive. Her skin tingled where his thigh pressed into her, and as for her scalp, it felt electrified from his earlier playing. He’d had such a wolfish look on his face as he touched her in a way she’d allow no one else.

“Do you think the intruder will come back?” she said, forcing herself to think about the danger rather than the pleasure of sitting with Alexei under a starlit sky. She couldn’t face the subject of Yuri and Abbot again yet, but they were there always, at the back of her mind.

“You said he was out of control, so yeah.” He stared out at the night. “What I don’t get is why the attempt to turn Arrows? Why not attack Es directly?”

Memory sipped at the coffee . . . and tasted chocolate, too. Her stomach grew warm, her toes curling in her shoes. “I don’t know if logic played a part.” Shadows drifted across her thoughts once more. “The attack was a thing of chaos.”

Alexei’s phone vibrated before he could reply. Taking it out, he glanced at the screen. “It’s Hawke.”

Whatever his alpha had to say to him, it had Alexei’s claws sliding out of his hands, his voice turning cold. His last words were, “Yes, I’ll tell Memory.”

Palms suddenly clammy, Memory wondered what fresh horror was about to descend upon them.

“You want to hunt Renault?” Alexei asked after hanging up.

The answer required no thought. “I want to destroy him, make it so he can’t hurt anyone else ever again.”

“Then get ready.” He wove his fingers through hers. “The bastard’s taken an eight-year-old empath named Vashti—he left a note at the abduction site that her parents should contact SnowDancer, that we had something that belonged to him.”

Nausea churned in Memory’s gut, but her dark rage overwhelmed it into submission. Jerking to her feet, she said, “We have to find her.”

“I’m going to let my team know what’s going on.” He broke their handclasp. “Bring what you need.”

After running into her cabin, Memory stripped out of her skirt. She had to be sleek and fast to hunt Renault. In its place, she pulled on jeans of such a deep and vibrant blue that they were midnight. She kept on her pretty top and her sparkly shoes because she refused to allow Renault to erase who she was becoming, who she’d always been.

As for Alexei’s jacket, she didn’t really want to give it back—being wrapped up in his scent was like a constant hug from his strong arms. Glancing out the window, she confirmed that none of the wolves were wearing jackets. Alexei had even shoved up the sleeves of his sweater. He and his packmates seemed all but impervious to the cold.

She kept wearing the jacket, but said, “You won’t be cold?” when they met again.

A quick shake of his head before he led her to an all-wheel-drive vehicle parked on the DarkRiver side of the compound. “Kidnapping took place in San Francisco. Cats had people in the area and they’ve gone in first.”

“Whatever helps to save her.” Memory was more than willing to sacrifice her need for vengeance if it’d keep a child from being imprisoned.

Alexei got them through DarkRiver territory relatively fast, but even with the high speeds permitted on the public roads, the trip to San Francisco wasn’t a quick one. “Have the Arrows had any luck locating Renault on the PsyNet?” Memory asked in an effort to find some way to help the stolen E.

“Not so far.” Alexei’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Aden’s people are nothing if not relentless—they will eventually track him down, but it’ll take time.”

Time was the one thing the kidnapped empath didn’t have. Not only her, but all the women who would die to feed Renault’s twisted psyche; he’d murdered before Memory and she had zero doubts he’d continue to murder now that she’d escaped. “I know him,” she said, turning years of forced proximity into a weapon. “It’s possible that once I see the location of the kidnapping, I can work out where he might’ve gone.”

It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

“I have his scent.” Alexei’s voice was without growl, pure focused predator. “If we can determine where he ended his teleport, I can track him.”

When they got to the location of the kidnapping—a small townhouse in the Nob Hill area—it was to be greeted by a leopard changeling who confirmed Renault had teleported in and out. The DarkRiver changeling’s jaw was scruffy, his eyes nightglow. “I picked up an unknown scent in only one area of the home—by the little girl’s desk. It’s in front of a window. Caught the same scent outside the window.”

Memory gritted her teeth. “He saw her, teleported in.” All Renault needed was a clear enough visual of his intended location. “He had to have stalked her beforehand, knew she was an E.”

Alexei’s gaze scanned the area, a steely hardness to him she’d never before seen. “Parents?”

“Single dad. Hard to read, but he recently transferred his daughter to a school that has an E on staff and runs an E training course alongside telepathy and all the rest.”

Memory’s heart hurt for a father who so obviously cared. “I want to go in, see if I can pick up anything.” Maybe Renault had made a mistake others had missed; it was likely a fruitless hope, but she had to try.

Alexei and the leopard came with her, the two having a low-voiced discussion about the circumference of Renault’s teleporting ability and how they could utilize their resources to box him in.

All Memory could think about was a scared eight-year-old girl. That girl’s father sat on the sofa in the living area with his head in his hands. The pale-skinned man who couldn’t have been more than thirty-five looked up when she entered. His eyes hitched on her hair. She knew without asking that his daughter had curls and brown skin.

Walking over to the delicate white desk by the window when he said nothing, Memory went to look out the window . . . and a wave of frigid cold swept over her. Not winter cold. This was the endless cold of psychopathic nothingness. It crept into her bones, chilled her from the inside out . . . and tugged her to the left.

Not knowing what was happening, she searched frantically for a door on her left, but there was only a wall. She ran outside in silence, conscious of Alexei and the leopard following. She’d been scared she’d lose the connection, but it held.

“I can feel him,” she whispered, her chest heaving. “Like we’re connected by an invisible thread.” She saw no evidence of a bond when she glanced into the Net. Renault had probably hidden it. Or maybe . . . “I don’t think this is supposed to exist.” She tried to breathe, think, hold on to that thread. “He can’t know about it or he’d have cut it.”

Her mind raced. “I was under his control.” Inside his shields, suffocated and isolated. “He never worried if, while he was creating pathways into my mind, he was also accidentally creating a path in the other direction.” Was it possible Memory could walk into his mind as he’d done hers?

Revulsion crawled over her, but she tried.

Nothing. No sense of Renault, but the tug to the left stayed steady.

“Can he track you in return?” Alexei’s eyes glowed wild amber.

“Even if he can, he needs physical contact to take control, and I have shields now.” Amara was far stronger than Renault and, as of this week, Memory could rebuff her attempts at an unwilling transfer. “If I can hold off a 9.9, I should have no problems with an 8.7.” Renault might be a serial murderer, but that didn’t matter, not in this.

Memory also had no fear the past would paralyze her. If she’d fought back in the bunker, she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop now that she’d tasted freedom, fought with a golden wolf, and made friends who liked being with her.

Alexei closed his big, rough-skinned hand over hers. “I’ll tear out the bastard’s throat if he tries to lay a finger on you.” A growling promise that reminded her she was no longer alone in the dark. “Emmett, you’ll keep watch here?”

Memory barely heard the short interaction. Anchored by Alexei’s primal warmth, her brain crystal clear, she pointed down the street. “He’s somewhere in that direction.”

“Jeep or on foot?”

Memory squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to gauge the distance between her and the man she hunted without success. She fell back on her instincts. “On foot. I may lose the trail in a car.” With that, she began to run, her sneakered feet hitting the asphalt in a rapid rhythm. Beside her ran a wolf in human form whose wildness was a protective shield around her as the people on the street scrambled out of their way.

She flinched, thinking she must’ve begun to stink of Renault, but quickly realized the pedestrians’ startled faces betrayed no disgust, nothing but wide-eyed curiosity. It was Alexei. Of course it was Alexei. A predatory changeling on the hunt was no unknown to these people, even if they had to be more familiar with the cats. It was clear they recognized Alexei’s changeling nature despite the fact he hadn’t shifted form.

Pain stabbed her side, but Memory blanked out the stitch and ran on. She’d asked Yuri to suggest extra exercises she could use to increase her physical fitness, her development too slow under the lightweight plan worked out by the physiotherapist who’d seen her a few days into her stay at the compound.