Prologue - Ado

The red flare streaks up into the night ahead of us. It bursts with bright light, hovering beneath the clouds, and under the crimson glare, lit in harsh contrast, I see the faces of my unit around me upturned toward the blast.

"Half a mile ahead now; it's not far," I hear someone say ahead of me. I think it must be Aris. "Let's keep going."

He doesn't say what we're all thinking—that we're running out of time, and fast.

The camp is lit with the bloody-looking red glow, and I see its corrugated iron rooftops reflecting the light first, high above the hanging cover of the trees. I feel for my gun at my waist, holstered in wait.

Ten years ago, this encampment was run by ferals. The authorities up top thought the problem would take care of itself—they were isolated enough not to risk infringing on those living in the villages near here, on either side of the thickly overgrown green valley.

But sometime in the last three or four years, a new group moved in and set up shop in a tentative alliance with the ferals: the Bloodtooth pack. I heard someone call them while we were preparing to set out on this mission. It didn't take long for young wolves, all of them girls, to begin disappearing from neighboring towns.

Three months ago, when Keira took the offer to go undercover, I tried to convince her out of it. I was sure if I just warned her of the dangers, she'd listen to me, and we were good friends by then, or something like that. But I remember how she looked at me, the fearless glint in her hard blue eyes, as she told me she knew and didn't care. She had known the families of a couple of those girls. She wouldn't be dissuaded.

Her coded messages haven't stopped the whole time she's been here, so I'm certain we'll find her alive when we get in to extract her. The mere thought makes my wolf grumble with longing.

Two guards linger at the edge of the fenced-off property. I catch sight of a feral lounging near their feet, snout rested atop his paws, fur matted with grime. Both men hold rifles in ready position, resting in parallel lines toward the ground.

Aris glances over his shoulder at me; I see, beneath the fading red-light Keira must have sent up, that he knows we have minutes at most until she is captured wherever inside she resides. We make eye contact. It's all on his face.

He gives me the order. His hand flicks.

Taking out both guards is almost too easy. I creep up and snap the first's neck. As the second whirls on his foot to face me, eyes tearing through the dark, I palm the back of his neck and crack his face down against my knee twice. He goes limp.

The feral, two or three feet away, lunges for my thigh. His yellowing fangs glint with light. A member of the team guns for him before I can; I watch Percy, one of only two of us in wolf form, wrestle him to the ground and sink his teeth through the feral's throat.

We drag the bodies behind the fence, out of sight of the base's watchtower. Aris and the rest of the team crouch low in the darkness. I spy my captain's hand signal: 'move in, maintain cover'.

The base is structured like a leaf; paths diverge from a central cord, northeast, and northwest, and along each are crowded tents, slum-like shacks, and the occasional brick hut. At the northernmost point of the encampment is the Bloodtooths' central base, a tall, ex-military building with a circular tower emerging from its center that makes it look like a prison.

I split off at Aris' order. It takes me two minutes and fifteen seconds to find Keira. It's two minutes too long.

Cross-legged on the mossy floor of a wooden hut the size of a garden shed, she is caught between the glare of two computer screens. I see green text flash across a dark background on each; I see it all reflected back in her eyes when she flinches and turns her head to look at me.

"Ado," she whispers. "Thank God. I didn't know if your unit would see the flare."

"They're onto you?" I ask. I stand at the door, hand on my gun. I hear shouting across the street, if these winding, unkempt dirt paths could be called streets.

"They will be soon." I see her set her jaw.

My wolf rages inside me. He wants me to run to her, to take her in my arms. Her soft, light hair is swept back out of her face into a knot at the base of her long neck. Somehow, months of deep cover in this hovel have only made her more beautiful.

"We need to go," I whisper. "Hart, come on. We need to get out now."

"Just a few more seconds, I'm almost done." Keira's eyes flicker past me into the darkness. She meets my gaze. "Ado, something terrible is happening here. We need this information. We—"

A louder alarm blares on the street. I hear hundreds of bodies moving in the buildings and tents around us. It's almost as if I can feel them rather than hear them. There are far more residents of this place than we had thought.

I run to her, prepared to carry her out of here, kicking and screaming if I have to. "Keira—"

But she's done. Her small, nimble hand snatches a USB from the side of one of the laptops.

She tosses it to me. I grab it out of the air, and we take off.

On the street, ferals and figures alike flash through the shadows. The light of the flare Keira must have sent up from the boundary fence has faded, but everything is still tinged faintly in red.

"Stay behind me," I tell her. Our arms brush as I reach out to push her back. “Your only job now is not to die.”

"No way," she says. I hear her draw her glock, the only gun we could sneak her in with.

Guns at ready, crouched with our shoulders narrow, we dart across the street on silent feet. The USB chip burns in my pocket. Soon, we'll be back at base, and I can bring Keira one of those chocolate bars she loves from the vending machine. Soon, we can sit on her bed; soon, I risk thinking, we could do more than sit on her bed.

A tall man bursts out of the shadows with a shout. Keira screams. I see her raise her gun and fire, and I know before the shot has even finished sounding that the bullet has gone wide. It streaks over the man's shoulder. He grabs her.

I surge forward and fight to press the muzzle of my gun against his neck, but he swings hard to the left. His hands are on Keira's upper arms. He drags her toward the floor, and one of his arms crooks around her neck in a chokehold, holding her body between him and me.

I freeze, gun up. It's as if the world has gone silent. I hear only one sound piercing out of the muffled din of screams and alarms, a low, rumbling, clicking noise. I realize it is a growl emanating from my own throat.

"One move, and the bitch dies," the wolf warns. He tightens his arm. Keira's pale face is turning purple. Her hands scrabble helplessly against his grip.

She looks into my eyes, and I see her fear as my own.

"You kill her, and you'll die in a heartbeat," I warn.

Keira's soft lips part, gasping. "Ado...!"

"I'll kill you," I say again. Why do I sound like a desperate man, a man praying? "I'll put twelve bullets in you and then twelve more. You want me to start with your kneecaps? Let. Her. Go."

The man doesn't buy my bluff. I watch his eyes slide from my face into the space behind me. Some part of my body, an instinct ingrained deeply by years of service, knows that I should dodge now, should turn and fire.

But Keira's face is purpling still, and I watch her perfect eyes begin to flutter, pupils flickering upward toward the sky she painted with her own tenacity.

I feel my lips say her name. Something hard lands against the back of my skull.