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As he neared, his ears pricked with the low, mournful sounds of human suffering. It was faint, muffled by logs and plank-shuttered glass. But the anguish was clear. A female was weeping inside the cabin.

The predator crept up to the side of the domicile and pressed his eye to a crack in the wooden shutter that covered the window to bar the cold.

She was seated on the floor in front of a dying fire, drinking from a half-consumed bottle of dark amber liquid. Before her was an emptied box of printed images, scattered in disarray all around her. A large black pistol lay on the floor next to her bent knee. She was sobbing, incredible sorrow pouring out of her.

He could feel the overwhelming weight of her grief, and he knew that the weapon was not beside her as a means of protection. Not tonight.

The scene gave him pause, but only for a moment.

She must have sensed his eyes on her. Her head snapped to the side, her reddened eyes fixed on the very spot where he stood, concealed by the closed shutter and the darkness of the night outside.

But she knew.

She rose, picking up the gun as she wobbled to her feet.

He backed away, only to move on silent feet toward the front door of the cabin. It wasn’t locked, not that it would have barred him if it had been. He squeezed the latch with his mind, pushed the door open.

He was inside the cabin and had his hands wrapped around the woman’s throat before she realized he was there.

Before she could open her mouth to scream, before she could command her drink-impeded reflexes to pull the pistol’s trigger in defense of the sudden attack, he bent his head and sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her slender neck.

Alex sat at the table in her kitchen with Luna resting at her feet. Every light in the house was turned on, every door and window locked up tight.

It had been nearly two hours.

She didn’t know how much more waiting she could take. While Luna slept calmly, blissfully oblivious, across her toes under the table, Alex’s mind had been spinning. Churning over questions she hardly dared to ask, and worrying for a man who had left her wondering just who—or what—he truly was.

But the small voice inside her that so often urged her to run from the things that scared her was silent when she thought of Kade. Yes, she was uncertain after what she witnessed today. Frightened that the path ahead of her might be even more unsteady than the past she’d left behind her. But running was the last thing she intended to do—not now. Not ever again.

Idly, she wondered how Jenna was holding up. It couldn’t be easy on her, hearing about the deaths in town when she was nearing the anniversary of her own personal grief. Alex reached for her cell phone, wanting to hear her friend’s voice. She was just about to punch in Jenna’s number when there was a soft rap on the back door.

Kade.

Alex put down the phone and stood up, dislodging her canine foot warmer, who groaned in protest before dropping her head back down to sleep some more. Alex drifted toward the door where Kade waited. Now that he was there, looking so dark and immense and dangerous through the glass window, some of her courage faltered.

He didn’t demand or force his way inside, even though she knew without the slightest doubt that there was little she could do to bar him from entering if that’s what he intended to do. But he merely stood there, leaving the decision entirely up to her. And because he didn’t force her, because she could see a shadowed torment in the piercing depths of his silver eyes that hadn’t been there before, Alex opened the door and let him in.

He took one step inside her little kitchen and pulled her into a hard, long embrace. His strong arms circled her, held her close, as though he never wanted to let her go.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pressing his mouth into her hair. “I hated to leave you alone.”

“I’m all right,” she said, drawing back to look at him when he finally released her from his hold. “I was more worried about you.”

“Don’t,” he said. Scowling,