Jessie shuddered in revulsion and terror. Troy grunted. He released her so suddenly that she fell to her knees.
When her vision cleared, he was gone.
6
To humans, the forest loomed dark and scary at night.
To a Sabre, there was very little difference between daylight and darkness. Kade’s eyes perceived colors and textures that a human could never imagine.
Every square inch of his surroundings spoke to him. The scents told him who had been here, and when. His hearing detected the whisper of an owl’s wings on the wind.
It was his smell and hearing that indicated he dreamed. They only revealed what lay directly beneath when usually, they informed him about life for many feet in every direction.
Dreams narrowed his world to the immediate. It wasn’t always a bad thing.
Kade lowered his nose to the ground and curled his upper lip back over his massive canine teeth. He scented Dire. Dires were more wolf than cat. As he took another deep sniff, his hackles rose. Kade had been tracking this Dire ever since the death of his bond brother. This scent had been all over Cas’s body.
He snarled. His powerful limbs drove him along the trail. Dream or not, he would find this rogue. And deal with him.
Nose to the ground, he raced through the forest. Then a second scent joined the first. Another Dire, but something about it tickled at Kade’s brain. It was familiar, and yet, not. Kade shook his craggy head, struggling to identify it.
He broke through the trees, entered a meadow, and slid to a halt.
In the center stood a Dire but not the one he sought. This one was much smaller, finer boned. The muscles beneath the dark fur hugged tighter to the frame.
Kade stiffened. A female Dire. Almost as rare as a female Sabre. She raised her head and stared at him with silver eyes.
Silver, like the moon.
The woman from his dream.But she’d been human when he’d last seen her. Now she was a Dire?
She was sleek and beautiful. Had she been human until someone had bitten her? Forbidden. That was forbidden...
Kade’s heart hammered. Something about her touched his soul. She stepped closer to him, sniffed along the side of his shaggy head. Then she licked him, her warm tongue running across his muzzle.
Electric tingles raced through him from the contact, making every hair stand erect and his entire body stiffen. Her scent was intoxicating, but also disturbing. Because overlaying it was the scent of the rogue Dire. Why was his scent all over the female?
Something moved out of the trees behind her. A hulking Dire. One side of his face was twisted by a horrible scar.
Kade snarled. The rogue. Killer of his bond brother. He took a long leap toward the male Dire, but the creature’s jaws dropped open in a toothy smile. Before Kade had come within ten feet of him, the Dire dissipated like smoke.
He turned back to the female, but she was gone as well. And the meadow vanished beneath his feet.
Kade stared up at the spinning ceiling fan and fought to control his breathing. He’d dreamed of that Dire many times. But the female... he was so sure she’d been human in the last one.
Dreams could be deceiving as hell. Human dreams were simply the brain’s misfires as it conducted its nightly housekeeping. It was different for shapeshifters. They often lived real events while they slept. Both Kade and Cas had dreamed of Isa long before they’d met her.
The spiritualists among the Cryptids claimed it was because the shapeshifters had been blessed by Fate. Kade didn’t consider it much of a blessing. Because sometimes, the dreams were just that—dreams. And it was often impossible to tell the difference.
Did these dreams mean anything? Who was that woman? Was she human or Dire?
Dires were closely related to the Sabre Weres. The two subspecies of shapeshifters differed widely, however, in temperament. Where Sabres served the Cryptid council and worked to enforce the rules for the good of all, Dires were loyal to one thing and one thing only. Their pack.
It was a crucial difference. Historically, it led to many clashes between Sabres and Dires. Clashes that had only grown worse in recent times.
Kade rubbed his hands over his face and yanked them through his hair, pulling it into undisciplined tufts. Why was that woman in his dreams? Perhaps he just needed to stop falling asleep on the couch while watching TV.
Kade rose and padded his way to the kitchen. Passed by the primary bedroom. And the spare room, which had been outfitted as a nursery, still had the crib and changing table draped with sheets. Neither had ever been used. All those bright hopes for the future died with Isa and their child.
