Despite the trouble Baird had caused her, she’d still left home three hours early. It should have taken her only an hour and a half to reach Argent Castle. She thought she had only a little more than five miles to go, as long as she didn’t accidentally drive off the road and get stuck. Her tires slipped again. She gripped her steering wheel harder, her skin prickling with tension. The roads were worsening, getting icier with every mile, and she was afraid she would slide right off the asphalt at any moment. As soon as she had that notion, a herd of red deer bolted across the road.

“Damn!” Her heart nearly stopped as she slammed on her brakes.

Her car slid on the ice, her heart jumping into her throat. Steering away or toward the slide had no effect. Braking made it worse.

The car sailed off the road into the deep ditch. Teeth gritted, she braced for impact. The car crashed into a tree with a jolt. The dead stop forced her to jerk forward, her seat belt catching her. Thankfully, she hadn’t hit the tree hard enough to do herself any injury.

She gunned the engine in reverse, hoping for a miracle. With a whirring, grinding noise, the tires spun around and around. Ticked off to the max, she peered out through the fogged-up windows. Her vehicle was buried in a snowdrift, the cold, wet flakes reaching to just below her door handle. Great. She tried reversing again. Her tires continued to spin, and the front bumper felt like it was hung up on something because it moved a little, but wouldn’t budge any farther.

As early as the sun set in winter, darkness would descend soon. Only another half hour or so, which was the problem with winter in Scotland. As soon as three thirty arrived, the sun would vanish. She shut off her engine. Without the heater running, the temperature in the interior of the car quickly plummeted. She looked around in the backseat to see if she had anything she could use for traction.

A blanket. Not that she wanted to ruin it, but she always kept one in the car during the winter for emergencies, and this constituted an emergency.

She pulled her cell out of her purse and called Julia, but she didn’t answer. Calla tried Cearnach’s number. He was Ian’s second oldest brother and the only other one in the MacNeill pack she had a number for, but no answer there, either. Fine. She texted both of them so they’d know approximately where she’d left the car, when, and the direction she’d taken to get to the castle.

If she ran as a wolf, she’d most likely get there before her anticipated arrival and no one would think she’d had car trouble in the meantime. Well, that and she’d told them she wasn’t coming until after she dropped her parents off at the airport, which had turned out to be a totally different time than expected.

She tried to open the door, but a wall of snow was wedged against it. She let her breath out in exasperation. She shoved, making a small gap between the door and the snowbank. She’d never make it out of the car that way. Damn it! She closed the door.

Climbing over the console, she peered out the passenger window. The snow was not quite as deep here. She shoved the door open, grabbed her blanket, and waded through the snow. The ditch was maybe three feet deep, with as much snow piled up in it, and she didn’t think she could get her car out on her own. Not to be deterred without at least trying, she placed the blanket against the back tires and then climbed back into the car. She gunned the engine again, but no matter how much gas she gave it, the car wasn’t budging.

She silently fumed, got back out of the car, and retrieved her blanket.

“This really sucks.”

Even though it would get dark soon, and the blinding snow would make it difficult to see, she could still find her way to Argent Castle using her enhanced wolf sense of smell. She wasn’t sitting here and waiting for a rescue.

Inside the car, she yanked off her wool coat and then realized she’d have to leave her purse, phone, and everything else behind… No, she’d use her wolf teeth to grab the strap of her waterproof field pack. That would slow her down even more, but it couldn’t be helped. Tucking her purse into the pack, she tossed everything she could live without into the backseat.

She quickly stripped out of the rest of her clothes, then grabbed her bag. Naked and hoping nobody would find her like this and think she was in some kind of confused, hypothermic state, she squeezed out through the narrow opening. Cold, cold, cold. Snow reached her thighs, and the upper part of her body was bare to the freezing wind. She slammed the door, hit the lock button, threw her keys in the bag’s side pocket, and zipped it up.

Dropping the bag in the snow, she called on the urge to shift. The chill of the snow against her feet and legs was bad enough, but the wind whipping the snow mixed with ice against her back and arms stung like icy needles. Internally, her body warmed as her muscles and bones reshaped into the wolf. As soon as her wolf’s double coat covered her skin, she sighed with relief. For a second, she shivered until her natural fur coat helped to warm her against the biting cold that had already chilled her to the bone.

Grabbing the bag with her teeth, she rethought taking it with her. It was heavier than she’d thought it would be. Carrying it over her shoulder was not the same as dragging it, clenched in her wolf teeth, through chest-deep snow.

She’d gone maybe a mile when she saw movement between a couple of fir trees and stopped dead in her tracks. She thought she saw the gray tail of a wolf. Was it one of the MacNeill clansmen in his wolf coat, coming to greet her? That seemed odd. Unless Cearnach or Julia had gotten her messages and had sent someone to find her. A MacNeill would have made his presence known, though, not lurked in the woods.