As a golden cloud gobbled up Michelle before his eyes, it occurred to Ansel that once again, he had fucked up.

He could of course blame Michelle. He had tried to help her but what had she done? She had kicked him in the balls and ran. If he resorted to blaming her, he could also justify walking away from this mess. He could make it to the warm comfort of the Sentinel dispatch in under an hour. Have some soup, maybe some tasty hot acorn crackers. Discuss the planning for next week with Astrid and Mans. It would be as if nothing happened ... but something had happened and he could still taste that something on his lips.

Unable to kick himself, he kicked the dirt. Pixie dust wafted up and tickled his skin but it wasn't enough to make him fly. The cloud had disappeared entirely through the canopy of trees and he had no means of transportation to follow it up in the air.

In an attempt to focus, he licked his nose and sniffed the air. Mold, pixie dust, a hint of gingerbread ... Wood Sprites for sure. He crouched down, drawn to an unusual glint in the leaves. Glasses, Michelle's glasses. His gut squirmed as he turned them over in his hands, the visual of her losing them while struggling to break free from nasty, gnarled claws was enough to make him lose his damn mind. If those damn sprites hurt as much as a hair on Michelle's head, he'd rip their intestines from their scrawny ribcages and smear them on crackers, Fae-code be damned.

A sudden gust of wind brought in a new scent, the one he had been vigilant for all night. Ansel tensed, ready to shift if the situation called for it. Nothing reeked as vile as a wet wolf shifter.

"You ...," he said through gritted teeth when the Prince's wolf stepped out of the bushes in his weird human attire. Basil the Grey had followed them from Michelle's house out here to the most Northern corner of their woods. The honeymoon cabin had been so close Ansel could smell it. They would've been safe there. She would've been safe there.

"Where is she?" the Grey mumbled, "what have you done to Michelle? If you touched her, I swear ..." The wolf was now up in his face, its teeth bared and dripping with saliva, and yet, this wasn't the wolf Ansel knew.

Was it that silly hat that now hung askew over his grey locks or the feebleness of his voice? Ansel wasn't sure but nothing about the Grey struck him as the wolf that was feared by all of Faery. "Back off, dog! As pretty as your eyeballs would look atop my antlers, I'm not looking to get on the Prince's bad side."

The Grey stiffened for a moment. "You didn't take her to the Prince, did you?"

"Afraid I'd beat you to it? I suppose you planned on handing her over to the Prince yourself and feel important for a miserable moment."

More in his usual manner, the Grey's hand shot out and clasped around Ansel's neck. "You daft stag, Michelle's like family to me. I want to keep her as far away from the Prince as possible. Now tell me what you did to her!"

Ansel's muscles tensed. Those were some big confessions on the wolf's part. "Some would call that treason, dog. You better make sure you properly kill me now," he dared the Grey to squeeze tighter.

"Not until you tell me what you did to her."

The wolf was asking for it. Ansel pulled back his hand, formed a fist and punched him in the stomach. Satisfied he could breathe again, he kept the wolf at a distance with his fists raised. There was more where that came from. "Explain yourself, the Grey. How so is she like family to you?"

The Grey stumbled back and slumped against a tree. He looked genuinely distraught. "Her grandfather is sick with worry, you imbecile. I had to restrain him. I've never done that. Would never have done that."

Understanding dawned on Ansel, but no, that couldn't be. The wolf's hatred for humans was notorious. "What is her grandfather to you?" he asked.

"You wouldn't understand."

But Ansel understood the vulnerability in the wolf's sagged posture and liquid eyes perfectly fine. "You love him."

"Does that make you happy, Stag? Knowing something that can discredit me?" The wolf's voice was as bitter as it was brittle but Ansel couldn't smell any lies. The Grey's distress had to be considerable for him to give up his secrets as easily as that. Ansel decided to trust the old wolf–for now. Together, they might be able to prevent a disaster.

"About Michelle," he sighed, "She flew away with some wood sprites. Do you have some pixie dust so we can follow them?"

"Please tell me it wasn't one of Maeve's boys."

"I'm not sure, I ..." but then Ansel remembered the gingerbread scent and the way it had smelled familiar. It was Maeve's gingerbread, the best there was. "Why? What are they going to do?"

"They've been promised an untaxed lease of the Bogum Grove for eternity if they present a human at the Midnight Ball. We haven't had a human at the Midnight Ball for over a decade."

"Of course not. My sentinels work tirelessly to prevent it. That's our task. What we're ordered to do. And for good reason. And now you want me to believe the Prince asked some ragtag wood sprite scum to fetch a human? Our elders decided to abandon that practice after the disaster. It doesn't make sense."

"Even Princes get bored."

"Bored? He is bored?" Ansel wiped some sweat of his forehead, trying not to wind himself up over the idleness of the High Fae and their selfish antics. That sort of frustration didn't help anyone.

"This isn't going to end well. How could you let this happen?"

"I'm the head sentinel. Why wasn't I told about this?"

"You're the head sentinel. You were supposed to prevent this from happening."

Ansel huffed, feeling all too well the truth behind that statement but that wasn't all. He understood the implications of what was said, the picture forming more clearly in his mind. "This way the Prince gets double the entertainment. First, he gets to parade a human around his ball and next he gets to punish a shifter. Imagine the merriment!"

Ansel was so screwed.

"We have to return her to her grandfather unharmed," the wolf said and for once Ansel agreed with him but how?

How was that possible? "The sprites will be almost there by now. There's no way we can catch up."

"We have to be cunning about this. I still have the Prince's ear. You're just going to have to trust me and let me take the lead on this one."

Ansel didn't like where this was going and his face probably showed as much.

The wolf's spirits, on the contrary, brightened considerably as he gave Ansel a thorough once-over and bared his fangs. "Aww, don't sulk, Stag! What's one measly wolf's bite to a big fellow like you?"