LET'S CELEBRATE! IT'S MY BIG DAY: A WHOLE NEW BOOK, A WHOLE NEW WORLD, A WHOLE NEW HERO! Check out the excerpt at the end of this chapter (added after the chapter was published so you aren't charged for the words). I hope you love Zev as much as I do!

*****

AARYN

When they finally left the cave together, neither of them talked much. Aaryn inhaled the pretty scents of the morning—dew on the grass in the meadow, the tracks of small animals that had passed in the night, earth being slowly warmed by the new sun…

His heartbeat was a drum in his head, beating the rhythm of fear for his mother. Rhodha had asked him to wait until breakfast, but he wasn't sure he could. He'd told Elreth he'd go with her to discuss the final decisions around bringing in Hholdyn and making a plan to discipline the disformed, but he knew the moment the breakfast hour began, he would be gone.

She walked calmly alongside him, her scent tense, but not angry or fearful. She felt the weight of responsibility keenly. Every time her eyes fell on him she smelled of compassion and concern. And every time she looked away, she smelled like dread.

She was not looking forward to where this day would take them.

That made two of them.

It was nice, though, walking in the early morning while the air was so still and the birds sang their greetings to the Creator.

Then they heard footsteps approaching.

Aaryn caught Tarkyn's scent first and tensed, putting a possessive hand to Elreth's back, then removing it when she shot him a look.

He didn't apologize, though.

They rounded a bend in the trail, and Tarkyn was revealed, in his human form and obviously relieved to find them. "I was just coming to the cave and worried I might wake you," he said, bowing his head to Elreth then, after a hesitation, to Aaryn as well.

Aaryn nodded back, but let Elreth lead, standing at her shoulder when they all met on the trail and stopped.

"What's going on?" she asked him quietly, and that dread in her scent thickened.

Aaryn almost put that palm on her back again, but to offer comfort. He knew she wouldn't appreciate it though, so kept his hands to himself.

"Hholdyn hasn't returned, and I've been approached by two guards who are questioning what happened yesterday. Gossip is getting ahead of us, and as much for the disformed and their future, as for anything else, I want to move quickly. We need to speak to the whole group—guards, disformed, everyone—and explain what happened. And we need to disciplining Hholdyn. Which means we need to find him."

Aaryn nodded. "Do you have a team ready? He's very good at evading notice. You'll need your most experienced trackers."

Tarkyn's mouth twisted. "I do. They're standing ready. But that was why I was coming for you. I want to know if you think the disformed would be better and finding him—since they've all been trained in similar approached, which are somewhat different to ours—and if you do think they'd do it… can they be trusted to do it?"

Aaryn knew the answer immediately. And knew the Anima involved would not appreciate him volunteering them. But did he have a choice?

Aaryn looked at Elreth, then back at Tarkyn. "Yes, and no. I think… I think the person you want is Gar."

Elreth snapped her head to look at Aaryn at her side. "Gar isn't a tracker."

Aaryn scratched the back of his neck. "No officially," he said warily. "But he helped train the disformed and… I think you'll be surprised at what he can do. He has a nose like a bloodhound. But I think the real reason you want him is that he knows all their tricks. He taught them most of them. And he won't hesitate to crack down on someone. Anyone. He doesn't care who they are. If they've done wrong, he'll come down on them."

"Then why hasn't he been keeping them in line to begin with?"

Aaryn huffed. "The challenge is figuring out what Gar thinks is wrong enough to go after a person for. He's… a lot more relaxed than me about certain things."

It was so hard to keep Gar's secrets, and still communicate clearly about what the male was capable of. Not for the first time, Aaryn silently cursed Gar for putting him in the middle. He didn't want to break Elreth's trust. But he didn't want to break Gar's either.

On balance, though, if it was unavoidable, it was high time Elreth won, Aaryn decided. He'd been uneasy about hiding Gar all this time. Now that she knew he was involved, there seemed little point in allowing Gar to continue being precious about this.

Besides, the male seemed to have had a change of heart recently. Aaryn was still curious what had been the catalyst for it. Maybe what Gar needed was something like this—where he could be the hero, but also was forced to be honest about his role.

Elreth folded her arms and glared at Aaryn. "You keep bringing my brother into this."

"Your brother is central to what we do."

"And what is that, exactly?" Tarkyn said, an edge of warning in his voice.

Aaryn met his eyes in full challenge, immediately, and Tarkyn dropped his gaze. Aaryn huffed. "We do exactly what you've seen—we train people. Strengthen them. People that the rest of the Anima forgot, or ignored."

"I told you, we have never held ourselves apart from the disformed!" Tarkyn growled.

"Well, you never reached a hand out towards them, either. How were we expected to know that your attitudes were any different, unless you stated so?"

"You could have asked?" Tarkyn said, one eyebrow up.

Aaryn opened his mouth, but Elreth jumped in. "Look, we're all stressed and tired, and none of this has come together the way we wanted it to, okay? So can you two stop snapping your teeth? If Gar can help, we'll ask him. If he refuses, we won't use him. It's simple. Once we have Hholdyn back, we'll have a strategy meeting. We'll get the whole picture of what the disformed do and how. And we'll decide how to bring them into the wider guard—safely," she added, with a look at Tarkyn who was about to interrupt, "and with all the responsibility and accountability of all the other tribes."

Tarkyn nodded, though still didn't look at ease. Aaryn wondered if his face seemed as stony.

His mother's face flickered to mind then, and he stopped listening, turning towards the City, wondering where she was, what the wise women had found.

Would he be searching the woods for his mother today?

He prayed not.

Please, let her be safe. Please.

*****

NEW BOOK OUT NOW! My entirely new character and world is now live! It's still in the process of being vetted by AllNovelFull, but you can find it if you search "Rise of the Dark Alpha":

Zev prowled towards her, all shining, brutal beauty, his chin low and those incredible, piercing eyes fixed on her. He didn't stop until they were toe-to-toe and he blocked her view of every other male in the circle.

His eyes dipped to her mouth as he leaned in, his whisper playing on her skin.

"You. Are. Mine."

His deep voice twanged in her belly as the howls of the wolf pack rose from behind him to echo across the mountains of Thana, while the other Chimera protested his claim.

Fighting the urge to stroke his broad, bare chest with her shaking hands, Sasha forced herself to tilt her head and raise an eyebrow. "So bold for a pup who just found his fangs."

The other males hooted with laughter.

Ignoring their taunts, Zev's eyes sparked and he leaned even closer, the scruff on his jaw tickling her cheek as he smiled. "So bold for a human who already knows the pleasure of gasping my name."

She shivered when his teeth grazed her ear.

(SEE THE FULL SUMMARY IN THE AUTHOR NOTE BELOW)