A cold sweat broke out across Kieran’s face and his heart stopped in his chest. Another blast of emotion from Boman, way out toward the back of the house but now working his way in.

“Kieran,” Thane yelled. “Get Alexis.”

Chest tight, heart pounding, Kieran hurried to the front door and yelled her name. She was already running at him, her face ashen and eyes wide.

“What is it?” she asked, the corners of her lips pulled down. She stopped just inside the door, her focus on Kieran acute. “Why do you feel like that? What’s happened?”

“Sir.” Boman ran through the door behind her. He’d clearly run all the way around the house so he wouldn’t have to cut across Jack’s form to get to the front. “They’ve taken one or both of the kids. They went over the wall—they must not have known about the illusion covering the break in the bricks. There’s a lot of blood, and it looked like it was from drag marks. One or both is wounded but not dead.”

Alexis’s face drained of color. “Daisy. Daisy is gone—” Her voice cracked. Her head snapped up right before she sprinted up the stairs. She must’ve felt Mordecai. And if she felt him, maybe he hadn’t gone the way of Jack.

21

Alexis

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. A hole was eating through my heart and terrible, white-hot agony ripped down my middle. Daisy was gone. Taken. Wounded and probably terrified.

I choked back a sob.

But Mordecai wasn’t. I could feel his soul throbbing erratically. I’d never felt that before. I didn’t know what it meant.

I slid to a stop outside of the open closet door and stared down at droplets of congealed blood. My eyes burned with unshed tears. Taking a deep breath, I braced myself for what I would find inside.

Thane sat on the floor in a puddle of blood, leaning over a lifeless form, his hands shaking as they hovered in the air. Next to my foot lay a sort of mallet coated in red.

I could barely feel my feet as I took another step into the room. Helplessness overcame me. Sobs bubbled up through me.

Thane looked up, and beyond him all I saw was red where a face should be.

“Lexi, I…” Tears dripped down his face. “I…” Thane shook his head, looking back down.

I stood frozen for a moment, too numb to move closer to my kid or kneel beside him. Boman hurried in after me, bending over Mordie’s legs like Thane was bending over his face. Still, I didn’t move.

The numbness spread. To feel would be to crawl in a hole and die with Mordecai. It would be to give up, and Daisy was still out there. She still needed me. I couldn’t shut down. So if I needed to stop feeling, so be it.

A strong hand covered my shoulder. “I don’t see his spirit.”

I blinked stupidly.

“Do you feel his soul?” Kieran continued urgently.

Fog clung to my thoughts. I tried to find reason in what Kieran was saying.

“There’s no pulse,” Thane said, a tear dripping off his jaw.

But there was a soul, still erratically throbbing. A soul hunkered down in a limp body, clinging on to dear life.

Choking back another sob, I dug my nails into my palms. The pain cut through the haze of my thoughts. I sifted through my memories and pulled up what I needed.

You are the yin and the yang of the living world—you can save a life as easily as you can destroy it.

I pushed Boman to the side and then recoiled when I saw the crushed side of my kid’s unnaturally pale face. My stomach swam, but I held on to my gorge. If there was a chance I could do something, it was a fleeting one. If there was time, it was almost up.

“Souls can live as long as the body can house them,” I murmured to myself, trying to work through all I knew.

With my magic I seeped into Mordecai’s chest. All but one of the prongs holding his spirit into its casing had broken. The final one was basically threadbare, holding on by the grace of God.

“All healers do is magically fix bodies,” I said softly. “They fix the bodies, and it is up to the ailing person if they can cling on until their spirit settles again. But Mordecai is his own healer; he just needs to be furry. When in shifter form, they heal at lightning speeds.”

You can save a life as easily as you can destroy it.

“I just need to keep his spirit docked until his body can recover.” I knelt at his side. “He’s strong. He’s been battling all his life. He has experience holding on until I can save him. He’s waiting for me to save him.”

“But there’s no pulse,” Thane whispered.

I stopped from lashing out. “Then give him a pulse, you useless sack of monkey balls!” Kinda.

Kieran stepped over and pushed Thane out of the way, determination lining his face. He clasped his fingers and went to work, performing CPR.

With my magic, I held Mordie’s soul in place while I fixed the prongs, knowing the real challenge would be keeping his soul in place through the shift. The soul casing changed with the rest of the shifter’s body, and for one weightless moment the soul was just hanging out, willy-nilly, with no docking. If it went fast enough, all was well. But Mordecai’s casing was badly damaged, and I wasn’t even sure if I could get him to shift, let alone quickly…