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yet?”
    Now both sides of her mouth curled back, and she let off another unhappy hiss. But after a few seconds, she pushed off him and sauntered back the way he’d come. And when she was past the branch he’d stepped on, she paused and looked at him over her shoulder, her thick tail twitching. The fury had faded from her eyes, and now she seemed to be asking him, “What are you waiting for?”
    Aric couldn’t help the smile that stretched his face as he rocked upward. He probably looked like shit—bleeding, tattered clothes, neck clawed to hell, but he didn’t care about any of that now. All he cared about was Sadey, waiting up ahead for him. When he stepped into line with her, he brushed his fingertips down her back, and she moved off again, content to walk beside him back to her house.
    And this was the moment. This was the instant that an old, almost-forgotten feeling unfurled in his chest. Everything had been so heavy since he’d been Turned, but out here in Sadey’s woods, a familiar sensation came over him. For a few seconds, he couldn’t put a name to it, but when she looked up at him, filling the night woods with the thick rattle of her content purr, it struck him.
    For the first time in a really long time, he felt hope.

Chapter Six
     
    Sadey pulled the long-sleeved sleep shirt over her head in a rush, and then padded into the living room. She sidled around a stack of boxes that stretched up to the ceiling and shoved her feet into a pair of snow boots that had toppled over beside the door. She moved to leave, but on second thought grabbed the card out of her purse before she stepped outside.
    Aric was on the front porch, shoving all the papers back into the box she’d shredded after her accidental Change.
    She cleared her throat nervously. “It’s been a long time since I Changed unexpectedly like that. I usually have a lot more control.”
    “It’s okay. I wanted to lose my shit after you left, too.”
    Aric seemed like the quiet type who could go from zero to terrifying vamp in seconds. He also seemed like a man who kept himself in tight control.
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “Because Garret called a meeting and told my people what happened.”
    “Right, because you’re King of the Winterset Coven.”
    Aric huffed a breath and ran his hands through his hair. His eyes were the soft gray of a dove’s breast right now, and much less intimidating than the pitch black they turned when he was riled up. “I’m actually the King of the Asheville Coven. Or…” He frowned. “I was.”
    “Are you not staying in Winterset?”
    He looked around pointedly at the boxes strewn about. “Are you?”
    Oh, he was an evasive, sexy vamp. Fine, if he wanted to answer questions with questions, she would play his game. “What happened at your meeting?”
    He shook his head for a long time, gave his attention to the woods beside her house.
    “Your coven doesn’t like me much, do they?” she asked.
    With an irritated sigh, Aric sat down on the old porch swing and draped his arm over the back, kicked it into a gentle rocking motion with the heel of his boot and stared at her until she gave in and sat beside him. And then he explained. “Choosing you would’ve been different six months ago.”
    “How so?”
    The creaking of the swing was the only noise for a while, and it occurred to her that Aric was very careful with choosing his words. Maybe he had to be because he was a king, she didn’t know.
    “I was barely able to avoid a war with the shifters.”
    “Which shifters?”
    “All of them.”
    Sadey’s eyeballs nearly bugged out of her head. “What happened?”
    “My maker, Arabella, was very old and undergoing The Sickening. She was the queen of my coven, losing her mind slowly, and she became cruel. She stalked a shifter—a grizzly. And she badgered and bribed him until he agreed to be her consort.”
    “Consort?” Why did that word taste like poison on her tongue?
    “Yeah. She fed from him when she