Page 109 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

It doesn’t ask. Itpulls.

I shift without thinking.

My bones break and knit in an instant, and the cold floor meets four paws instead of two feet. I barely register the movement of the others as I bolt out the half-rusted door of the safehouse and into the trees.

Behind me, I hear movement.

Callum’s voice, low and groggy, barely human. “She’s moving. She’sgoing.”

“Something’s happening,” Elias grunts. “We need to follow her.”

I don’t look back. I don’t stop. The forest is a blur—smells and sound and wind through fur. And still that voice. That name.

Come to me.

It’s warm now. Not demanding.

Familiar.

And suddenly, Iknow.

It’shim.

I follow the scent trail I didn’t know I knew. Past the eastern ridgeline, through a twisted gulley, down a ravine that smells like sulfur and moss way outside of the city.

Callum’s wolf form appears beside me in the trees, silent and steady, his presence like a tether in the chaos.

But I’m the one leading. The one who knows where he is. And when we break through the final line of trees and hit the clearing, Isee him.

Dad.

Barely conscious. Slumped against a stone outcropping. Hands bound behind him, ankle bleeding, but alive.

I shift back mid-sprint, skin rippling, breath tearing through my lungs as I fall to my knees beside him.

“Dad.”

His eyes flutter open, and for a second I’m eight years old again—kneeling beside him after one of his bar brawls, asking if he’s okay, if heremembers me.

But this time, he sees me.

“Kendall,” he rasps. “You heard me.”

“You called me,” I whisper.

“I didn’t know if it would work. But I tried. Through the bond. Through our blood.”

Callum shifts back beside me, already scanning the trees, tense and half-feral. Elias joins him seconds later, panting, but wide-eyed.

“What happened?” I ask.

“They had me,” Edmund says. “Brood scouts. Took me while I was tracking their old ward trail. They thought they needed me to unlock the chamber.”

“They thought wrong,” Elias says grimly.

“Yeah,” Edmund nods. “They were wrong. And when the chamber opened without me? They realized they didn’t need anold key.They needed thenew one.”

He looks at me.

---