Tears ran down my face, scalding my frozen cheeks as I pushed myself to my feet and jogged across the clearing. The fire was hot, but not hot enough for me to preserve my body heat without clothes. Yet I went for my purse first, dropping to my knees beside the pile of brush it had landed in when Steve kicked it.
My teeth chattering, I pulled back the zipper, praying my phone hadn’t broken. When I flipped it open, the screen was bright in the flickering firelight, the battery charged and ready for use. I shivered as I stood and scrolled through the contacts for my Alpha’s number, then pressed CALL as I dropped to the ground again next to the careless pile of our belongings. I’d just spotted my hiking pack beneath the portable charcoal grill when he answered the phone.
“Abby? What’s wrong?”
“Jace, I need help. Fast.” My teeth were chattering, and I sniffed back a choked sob. “How soon can you get here?”
Springs creaked as he stood, and I heard him walking. “Where are you? What happened?”
I hauled my pack from the pile and peeled back the flap, already digging for my change of clothes. “I went camping with some friends, and now they’re all dead. All except Robyn, my roommate.”
“Wait, first of all, are you safe where you are?” His voice was solid and steady, a vocal cornerstone for me to build on.
“For the moment. But I don’t have much time.” I stood with the phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder and stepped into my underwear, my teeth chattering so hard I could barely talk.
“Okay, start from the beginning. You went camping…?”
“Yeah. Just a sec.” My shirt was next, and I had to set the phone on the ground to pull the material over my head. “We’re in Cherokee National Forest, just south of the Tennessee border.” I gave him the coordinates we’d used to find the campsite, forever grateful for GPS technology. “I went for a run—the private kind—and while I was hunting, my friends started screaming. When I got back, there were three men at our campsite, carrying big hunting knives. They’d gutted Mitch and Olsen and tied up the girls.”
“Wait, you walked in on a murder? In cat form?”
“They didn’t see me. I was in the bushes.” Like a coward.
“Good. They’re human?”
“Everyone but me.” I stood and shook out my insulated cargo pants, phone pinned to my shoulder again while I stepped into the fuzzy inner lining. “It doesn’t make any sense, Jace. I know one of them. He sits behind me in psych. He’s always so friendly, but now he’s … crazy .”
I sank onto the cold ground and swallowed another sob, trying to speak slowly and clearly, and to give him just the facts. Anything else would only slow me down and put Robyn in more danger. But Jace saw through my false calm.
“Abby, are you okay?”
“No! They know I’m out here too. I don’t know if they followed us or what, but while they were waiting for me to come back, they tried to…”
The words froze in my throat, the edges sharp, like I’d swallowed glass. I coughed, then started over. “They had knives, Jace, and the girls were so scared. Robyn was screaming, and she couldn’t stop him. The other one held his knife to Dani’s throat. I couldn’t just watch, and I couldn’t leave them there.…” My explanation trailed into fragile silence, but for the crackle of the fire.
“What did you do, Abby?” Jace still sounded calm, but now his voice held a dark note of dread.