We flew through the sculpted hedges and past the stillness of the marble fountains in the estate gardens.
Are you sure you can trust him? I could hear the angry edge in his question.
Yes. Don’t worry about Ren, worry about getting us out of here. We haven’t made it yet.
We both shifted into human form when we reached the manor’s steps. Shay unlocked the door and grabbed my hand, and we ran to the stairs. Our footsteps rang in the empty corridors as we dashed through the east wing toward his room. Moonlight poured through the tall windows; long, spindly shadows ebbed and flowed over the walls and pooled like ink on the pale marble floors. All my nerves were screaming, but I managed not to jump when we passed the sculpture of the incubus.
Shay flung open the door to his room. “Okay, let’s grab what we need and get out of here.”
He grabbed a hiking pack from his closet while I paced by the door. Hands still full of clothes, he stopped and looked at me.
“Do you want to borrow some jeans and a sweater? They’d be too big but probably better than your dress.” He looked me up and down. “You’re stuck with whatever shoes you’re wearing, though. Sorry.”
My cheeks burned as I glanced down at my dress, its hem soaked by melting snow and almost black from the dirt of the forest floor. “It’s okay. They’re ballet flats, so it’s not torture to walk in them. But changing into your clothes sounds good.”
He watched me for a long moment, and the heat spread from my cheeks, tiny flames stroking my skin.
Finally he cleared his throat and tossed me a pair of jeans and a black lamb’s wool sweater. “Here, these are on the smaller side. I’ll . . . uh . . . keep my back turned while you change.”
“Okay,” I murmured, trying to stretch my hands around to unbutton my dress. After three failed attempts I swore, wondering how Bryn had expected me to ever get out of the gown. Then I thought of Ren and blushed, full of guilt and conflicting desires.
“You okay back there?” Shay asked, but kept his back to me.
My heart began to pound. “I need you to unbutton my dress.”
“What?” Though I couldn’t see it, I could easily envision the thunderstruck expression on his face.
“My mom designed the dress, and Bryn helped me put it on. It has a bazillion tiny buttons and I can’t reach them. Please just do it so we can get out of here.”
“Uh. Okay.” He came to my side, but I immediately turned my back on him.
He had about half of them undone when he paused and I heard him suck in a sharp, startled breath.
“What?” I asked, turning slightly, but I couldn’t twist my neck far enough to see his face.
“You’re not wearing a bra.” His words came out with a rush of breath.
“It’s a specially tailored bodice. The bra is built in,” I said. “Come on, Shay, just get the gown off me!”
He was silent for a moment and I felt him continue to unbutton the dress. He began to laugh.
“What is it now?” I snapped.
“That’s not exactly the way I imagined you asking me to take your clothes off,” he said softly.
“The way you imagined what?” I gasped, trying to step away from him, but he held the now-open back of my dress firmly in his grasp.
One of his hands released my dress and slipped around my waist while the other touched the bare skin between my shoulder blades and slowly moved along my spine toward my lower back. I shivered, closing my eyes. His lips pressed against the curve between my neck and shoulder. Soothing warmth pooled at the site of his gentle kiss, poured over my shoulders, and cascaded through my limbs. The world fell away, as it always did when he touched me.
His hand slid beneath the loosened bodice from my back to my bare stomach, pulling me against him. I could feel every inch of his body touching the length of mine, the strength of his wanting matching my own, breath for breath. His fingers slid down and I gasped. My eyes wandered to his bed. It was so close. He could easily carry me there.
We can’t. Not like this, not with everything that’s happening.
“Don’t,” I murmured, head and body battling each other. “Please don’t.”
I twisted away from his lips, fighting the flood of emotions his soft touch provoked, needing to quell the ache his hands had left lingering deep within me.
The faces of my packmates passed before my tightly closed eyes. Faces I feared I might never see again. Ren’s face. I swallowed the thickness in my throat, pulling the bodice tight across my chest.
“Right. I remember. No kissing without loss of limbs. My limbs, that is,” he said. “Sorry, I was caught up in the moment.”
Shay resumed his task of unbuttoning in a more-chaste manner.
I cleared my throat, wanting to sound more confident than I felt. “It’s okay. We just need to hurry. No distractions.”
His hands dropped from the fabric. “You should be able to wiggle out of that now. I’ll wait in the hall.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
I shimmied out of the dress. With considerable relief I pulled on Shay’s jeans and sweater and then braided my hair, ripping a ribbon from my dress to tie it.
A faint cracking sound reached my ears, sharp and brittle like too much weight on thin ice. My breath came more quickly.
“Calla,” Shay called from the hall. “Without your nakedness to distract me, I’m remembering that we’re in serious trouble. Hurry, please.”
“All set.” I grabbed the Keeper’s text from Shay’s nightstand and left the room, throwing it on top of his hastily packed clothes. “Haldis?”
“Already in here.” He patted the bag. “It was hidden in the back of my closet.”
“Let’s get out of here.” I grabbed his hand and we ran back down the hallway. When we turned into the main corridor, I froze. He paused beside me.
“What’s wrong?”
I pivoted, staring at the thin flakes of marble that littered the floor.
“Where is the statue?” I murmured. “The incubus?”
“What?” His voice was hoarse.
A soft rustle like the wind lifting a pile of dead leaves came from above us. I glanced up.
The incubus grinned at me, spreading its wings and unhooking its talon-like nails from the ceiling.
“Run!” I shoved Shay forward and shifted into wolf form. In the next moment a golden brown wolf ran beside me.
Our toenails scraped the marble floor as we tore down the hallway. Something whistled past my shoulder and the incubus’s spear clattered on the stones a few feet in front of me. The sound of beating wings filled my ears. Shay glanced over his shoulder.