At first, Sophie told the monster no.

She'd been confident at the beginning. Initially, she'd thought a simple no was enough. But this was before the cruelty of the world came for her. Before she realized she had more to lose.

The monster did not accept that answer.

If she had said yes, maybe the monster would not have kidnapped her sister. If she had said yes, maybe the guilt of it all would not feel like steel wrapped tight around her throat.

Maybe—

"Sophie."

Dr. Sophie Griffin blinked back to the present. She stumbled, the toe of her shoe snagging on a jutting rock.

A firm hand grabbed the back of her collar, catching her before she could tumble to the forest floor.

Pay attention, Sophie. "Sorry."

Next to her, Cael stared down at her. Clouds covered the wide expanse of the sky, making it overcast. The weather made Cael's eyes look more gray than their usual blue. She'd never met someone whose eyes seemed to change in different lighting, but Cael's did. And it was fascinating.

Cheeks heating at her own clumsiness, Sophie clutched the first aid pack closer to her chest and continued forward.

Silence threaded through the air between them. If there was one thing Sophie learned in the last month here in the Southern Shifter Territory, it was that Cael was not a chatty shifter. He never took the time to break the silence, nor did he feel a need to keep the conversation going. If he had something to say, he would say it.

After being blackmailed and held hostage by Bartholomew Reison, she'd been pressured, lied to, and fooled. Despite the silence, Cael was not only refreshing but straightforward in a way that, oddly, settled something inside her.

"How much further?" She asked. Her footsteps crunched the leaves and brush along the forest floor. Meanwhile, Cael's footsteps were silent.

"A mile." He told her. And that was it.

Sophie blew out a breath. Thank Elphyr she'd been good about walking the treadmill most days...prior to Reison.

"Exercise is good for the body and the brain," her sister Katarina used to say. Though that was often when Katarina was trying to get Sophie to join her in some ungodly new exercise routine.

Katarina. Her heart clenched.

A mile felt like a million years, though it was more likely less than 20 minutes by the time she and Cael walked up to a small enclosed cave on the territory.

Among the trees, the cave remained well hidden. A large, flat outcropping of stone rested in the front, a fire pit arranged away from the nearby brush. A breeze swept over them, rustling the ivy coverage above what looked to be a small opening in the rock. If they were not looking for it, Sophie knew anyone else would have walked right past this area.

Sophie shivered as the wind nipped at her cheeks. The nights were getting longer as the weather cooled down. They would see snow soon, after the rest of the leaves changed and fell. Her thin jacket would not be enough for the weather. She would have to stock up on better clothes... or make her way back to her dingy apartment in Veron City.

If her landlord hadn't already evicted her and sold off all her possessions.

She might have nothing left—the thought made her eyes burn.

Cael stopped in front of her. She yelped, stumbling into his back. "Sorry!"

"You say that a lot," he said. He tilted his head towards the sky, listening for something that Sophie's piddly human ears could not catch. She strained her ears anyway.

Nothing but the birds' chittering in the distance, and the gentle rustle of the wind as it danced through the trees.

After a moment, Cael continued forward. Sophie guessed that meant the area was safe. Or as safe as it could be. She followed close at his back as he brushed aside the ivy covering the entrance to the cave-like home.

Inside, Sophie did a quick assessment—a mattress tucked neatly into an outcropping in the rocks, dim lighting along the edges of the floor, a cooking area, and an old ragged rug covering a good expanse of the floor. She quickly pinpointed the basics—a cleaning area, the exit, and additional tools in the cooking area should she need.

A low growl tore through the small cave.

The hair on the back of her neck stood. She froze, her body immediately recognizing danger.

Cael stayed in front of her, his large shoulders blocking her from the middle of the cave. "Soren," Cael's arms were at his side—ready should he need to jump in. "Shift."

It wasn't a request so much as an order. One not to be ignored.

The low growl turned to a soft whine.

"Soren." Cael's tone was cold steel. He would be listened to.

Thank you, Elphyr, for making me human. If Cael hit her with that tone, she'd be shifting in a heartbeat.

A dim flash of light, then—"Shit!"

Sophie rushed past Cael, taking in Soren, a middle-aged shifter currently bleeding all over the tan area rug.

"I hope you have some good cleaning supplies," Sophie joked as she quickly opened the first aid kit and donned some gloves. "Your poor rug has a stain running all the way from the entrance."

Talia had set her up with a good amount of supplies—everything from bandages to sutures. In all the shifters she'd seen so far, none had yet needed the sutures. She hoped they never would. The last thing she wanted was to stitch up a wound while desperately hoping her patient didn't shift from the pain.

Soren would not make this easy, though. And based on the deep red leaking from the wound on his ankle, she just might very well need those sutures.

I should have picked emergency medicine for residency.

Sophie swore under her breath, pulling out a pressure dressing and bracing it on the area at Soren's ankle. Soren growled low again at the pain. "Sorry," she told her patient. "But I need to stop the bleeding first." She'd start with the pressure to see if the bleeding would slow. If not, she'd go for the hemostatic agents in the kit Talia had provided.

Soren was alert and awake. A good sign. A quick glance showed a pretty severe cut, but it wasn't at an artery, which drastically increased his survival rate and also had her mentally changing the next steps in her head.

"Wrestling gators this time, Soren?" She asked, her voice thin but strong as she worked. Although she had the medical knowledge, her experience in the field was limited to the brief two years of her residency. Even then, she was a general practitioner. Not a trauma specialist. A part of her worried one of these days she'd choose the wrong action and one of her patients would suffer for it.

Soren grunted, sweat beading along his forehead and upper lip. "The cliff was higher than I thought," he grumpily admitted. "By the time I noticed and turned, I was already falling."

Sophie's lips pressed into a thin line. Soren was getting up there in age—although he looked middle-aged, with the way shifters healed faster, she expected he was much older. And he had clearly not yet accepted his age. He needed to be more careful.

However, that was not a fight she was willing to get into. The shifters knew what they were and were not capable of. As a human, she could only guess at the intricacies of their biology and how it played with their own internal magic.

She would still tell Cael that Soren needed someone to monitor him. One cut today could be a fatal accident tomorrow.

"You won't like what I have to say about avoiding cliffs," Sophie muttered, more to herself as she pulled out the set of dissolvable sutures. She'd hoped she wouldn't have to use them, but she worried Soren might just remove any bandages she put on. If he went out and reopened his wound because he was not careful, it could mean blood loss and infection. Neither of which Sophie wanted to think about.

"Where at?" Cael asked Soren.

"North side, about four miles."

Sophie carefully cleaned in and around the wound. That done, she took a breath and pressed the curved needle into Soren's skin.

Soren winced.

"Sorry," she whispered. "I have nothing to numb you up."

Her fingers paused for the briefest moment as the words finally registered. "You dragged yourself back four miles?" She wasn't a violent person—as a doctor, it seemed pretty counterintuitive—but she almost wanted to punch Soren. "You could have hurt yourself! Or worse!"

Her gloves made threading difficult, but she wasn't about to do any type of work without the cleanest environment possible...as clean as one could get in a cave.

Soren grunted as her next thread was a little tighter than the previous ones. "You sound like Talia."

Sophie shook her head, trying to get some of her hair away from her eyes. "I have a lot of respect for Talia if she's out here doing this every day." Lower, she muttered, "especially you wolves. I swear I've treated more wolves in the last two days—"

She cut herself off. Then, picking up the small set of surgical scissors, she tied and cut the small thread. There. Five stitches to keep it secured, which were five more than Soren wanted, and five less than she wanted, but at least he wouldn't damage it too much until it healed. Shifters might heal fast, but she didn't have an adequate read on that speed, so every patient was getting human treatment.

"It looks terrible," Soren grumbled as she wrapped it in gauze for an added layer of protection.

Sophie removed one glove, then the other. "Well, I'm a general practitioner, not a surgeon or emergency medical."

As she sat back, her shoulder hit Cael's leg. She jostled, almost losing her balance.

Now that she had treated the wound as best she could, her brain had time to hyper-fixate on how close Cael was. Had he been that close the entire time? He stood strong next to her, expression blank, hands still at his side. Like he was ready. Ready to jump in and get between her and Soren if needed.

Sophie's next breath felt just out of reach. Was the big bad hawk shifter really ready to protect her? Or was he more concerned about Soren?

Her heart deflated. He was definitely more focused on Soren.

Silly Sophie.

Shaking her head at herself, Sophie started putting her tools away. "I need you to stay off that leg for two days," she told Soren in her best stern doctor's voice. She still hadn't quite mastered the voice. It wasn't something they covered during her residency. "Keep the area clean and do not irritate it. Otherwise, I have to come visit again and neither of us want me here. Got it?"

"Two days?" Soren's gruff question was on the edge of a rumble.

So growly, these wolves.

Sophie raised a brow. "If you were human, I would have told you a week."

Soren grunted, but slowly stood. Sophie jumped up, quick to reach out and help, but Soren snapped. "I'm not a weakling."

Well then. "No one said you were," she fired back. "Right, Cael?"

At Cael's silence, Sophie glanced over. The tall hawk shifter starred in the distance, just past Soren. Although normally expressionless, something about the absence in his gaze made Sophie's stomach drop. She glanced at where Cael was looking. Nothing but a cave wall. "Cael?" She waved a hand near his face. Still nothing.

"Cael?" She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Cael immediately locked in on her and took a step back. He blinked once. Twice. "What."

Sophie's eyebrows scrunched together. "Are you okay?"

"Fine." Cael cleared his throat.

Cleared his throat. Cael was a zombie most of the time, though she saw a few tiny emotions from him. But even for Cael, that vacancy in his eyes was odd.

"Tell me the cliff location," Cael said to Soren. "I will mark it for patrol."

As Soren did so, Sophie made herself relax. Cael was probably stuck in a thought—the way she often was.

Besides, he was not hers to worry about.

***

Gavriel watched Arietta pace in front of his desk. His office had been their bedroom for the last day and a half while they waited for Miguel and their trackers to come back with news on the small isolated medical facility on the southeast side of the Wielder Territory.

The hawk shifters were frequently assigned to tasks like these—they excelled in scouting missions. A leopard, wolf, or bear could not sneak their way into the enemy territory without being tracked or noticed. After all, it was hard to miss a bear wandering around. But the hawk shifters had an easy time blending in with a normal bird population. The wielders never paid too much attention to the hawk shifters—they assumed a hawk could not do much damage.

Clearly, they had never met Gavriel's people.

"Etta, please sit." His leopard shifted uneasily inside him. The animal side of him never enjoyed seeing his mate in even the tiniest bit of distress.

Arietta shook her head. One, two, three steps forward, a half turn, and then one, two, three steps back the other way. "If they find her, we have to be ready to go. We have to—"

Gavriel rounded his desk, placing a hand on his mate's shoulder.

His mate. He would never tire of the word. He wanted to shout it from the mountaintop, wanted to make sure every single being and creature in this territory knew that this strong, beautiful woman was his. Only his.

At his touch, Arietta stopped. Gavriel pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. His hand found the skin at her hip, just beneath her t-shirt. Skin to skin contact always helped settle the shifters. He was quickly learning that his Etta was much the same.

"When we find your mother, we will do everything we can to keep her safe," he promised her.

Arietta's fingers gripped the back of his dark t-shirt. Her nose pressed gently into the skin at his neck.

He wondered if she knew how much of a shifter mannerism that was. And how much she had already subconsciously picked up from his people.

On his desk, his laptop pinged.

Arietta pulled back immediately. "Go. Go check."

If he did not hate how much anxiety his mate was carrying, he may have laughed at her dedication and eagerness. His mate was ready to do whatever it took to keep those she loved safe.

It was a gift. And a concern. It was his job to not only keep her safe physically, but to keep her from worrying about others. Only a month into their mate bond, and he was still messing up.

All clear. Miguel's message read.

Gavriel's lips thinned.

"Nothing?" Arietta's shoulders sagged. She wobbled on her feet.

He was there in a heartbeat, his hands a firm guide on her elbows as he helped her sit on the sofa.

Arietta rubbed at her chest. "Nothing," she whispered.

Gavriel's hands came up to cup her cheeks. Her skin was soft against his. But it was the glimmer of tears in her brown eyes that made his leopard roar inside him. If only this was an enemy he could fight. He would do anything to take the concern and grief from her.

But he did not even know his enemy yet.

"We will find her," Gavriel promised his mate.

As he comforted his mate, he prayed Galetta would help him keep that promise.