Page 29 of Kiss of Smoke

But blinking didn’t work this time.

Neither did shaking my head.

I clutched at the door frame as panic shot down my spine. Maybe I wasn’t jet lagged. Maybe there was something truly wrong with me.

Lachlan got blurrier…and blurrier.

And then he turned to smoke.

For a second, my brain couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. Alec was as solid as ever, but behind him, where Lachlan should have been, was a dark, man-shaped haze. It twisted and swirled in a torrent of energy. At the top of the shifting column, a pair of glowing eyes burned like golden fire.

I gasped and stumbled back.

Alec jerked his head up, instantly focused on me. Behind him, the smoky entity did the same.

For a brief, terrifying second, time stood still.

The entity shivered. Then it shot toward me in a long, narrow stream.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t slam the door, and I certainly didn’t stand and fight. Heart lodged in my throat, I did the only thing I could think of.

I ran.

Chapter Seven

ALEC

As Lachlan streaked after Chloe in shadow form, I let out a string of curses. She couldn’t know it, but running was the worst thing she could do. Of course, I could hardly expect her to stand still and let him reach her. She had no idea what she was seeing. No clue her life had just changed forever. She was in my world now. Mine and Lachlan’s. And it was a lot more dangerous than the one she was used to. For starters, she’d probably been taught fairy tales were just stories.

They weren’t, of course. They were heavily edited versions of the truth, sanitized so humans could tell themselves werewolves and witches and other creatures were nothing more than entertaining myths.

If I’d been worried about her mind breaking before, I was doubly worried now.

Fuck. What had Lachlan been thinking? His beast was always close to the surface when he was under the moon’s influence, but he hadn’t shifted unexpectedly like that in years.

What a hell of a time to break a streak.

Cursing and stumbling, I yanked on my sweats—nearly falling over the sofa in the process—and raced into the hall. Chloe’s scent was strong in the air, and I sprinted after it, flying up the stairs to the long gallery. A woman’s scream made the hair on my nape lift, and I pounded across the marble floor, flung open a door set in the wood paneling, and burst onto the roof.

“Don’t move!” Lachlan barked to my left, and it took me a second to realize he spoke to me and not Chloe.

Then I saw her.

She stood on the battlements, her feet on a stone ledge no wider than a stair tread.

And she held a sword. Italian, judging from the hilt. Probably sixteenth century. And far too heavy for her. One wrong step—a moment’s loss of balance—and she would plunge three hundred feet to the rocky ground below. There was no guarantee Lachlan or I could shift fast enough to catch her.

Fear and anger burned in my gut. She was ours, and she was being so incredibly foolish to gamble with her life this way. Nothing was going to take her from us. Not even her will.

But best not to let her know that just now.

“Chloe,” I said, holding my hands away from my body as I took a cautious step forward. “Come down from there.”

She brandished the sword, her knuckles white on the leather-braided grip. “Don’t come any closer!”

I stopped. “Or what? You’ll stab me from across the roof?”

“Alec,” Lachlan said under his breath.

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