Page 1 of Alan

Prologue

Keira

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

I read the email again, like something would change if I did. Like that would make it better.

“Son of a bitch.” I pushed back from the table and wasn’t sure whether I would throw up or scream. Maybe both, one at a time. I never thought she would do anything like it, or else I would have tried harder to keep her away.

Stupid me, thinking the more I tried to keep Emelie away, the more she would want to see what was up. The last thing I needed was for her to poke into my new life.

“Tamhas?” I called out when I burst into the corridor.

Most of the clan was in the common room, watching an American football game.

Apparently, the clan from Appalachia had gotten them into it when they crossed paths in St. Lucia. It sort of made me feel more at home to hear the announcers and the names of the teams.

Tamhas was in there, sitting with Dallas and Owen.

I hated to break in on his good time, because it did seem like he was enjoying himself.

When he saw the look on my face, the good times were over—though he was smart enough not to give himself away when he stood and joined me outside the room.

“What is it?” he asked as I dragged him down the hall toward the room we shared.

I held a finger to my lips to quiet him until we were completely alone with the door closed between us and more than a dozen pairs of interested ears.

When we were alone for real, he turned to me. “Okay. Now, what it is?”

“Emelie.” I wrung my hands together and shook my head as I paced the length of the room. “She’s here. Somewhere.”

“Here?” he gaped at me.

“In Scotland. Somewhere in Scotland. God, how could I have been so stupid? It was naïve to think she wouldn’t want to find me!”

“All right, wait a second. Calm down.”

I hated that he tried to calm me down when I had every reason in the world to be upset. “Calm down? How can you even say that? You know what this means.”

“You don’t know she’ll find us. Don’t worry yourself too much about it when you don’t yet know what’s come of her.”

“She emailed me a week ago, Tamhas. A week ago.”

This seemed to knock him crooked for a second. “Oh. I see.”

“Another stupid fault of mine,” I muttered. “I should know better than to let so much time pass without checking, but…”

“But you feel as though you’re further and further removed from the old life,” he murmured with a knowing smile.

“Yes. That’s exactly right. I shouldn’t have forgotten about her like that.” I sat on the bed with a thud and bent to hold my head in my hands. “She was all I had back before I met you, and I was all she had. How could I forget about her? She deserves better.”

“Hold on, now.” He sat beside me and draped an arm around my shoulders. “I wouldn’t let it get that far without first knowing what she found—if anything. Remember, now, the woods surrounding the mountain are all but impossible to navigate for a human. That is part of our protection.”

I raised my head slowly, telling myself not to glare at him. He was only doing his best to make me feel better, after all. “You’re telling me she might have starved to death out in the woods by now.”

“No, of course not.”

“Because now, I’m seeing her dead body in my mind’s eye and I can’t shake the feeling that something bad happened to her.” I bent to pull my hiking boots from under the bed and shoved my feet into them.

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