“Then what was this!” Hunter began to walk in a circle, dragging his fingers through his disheveled hair, tearing the leather thong away from his ponytail to fling it on the mist-covered cavern floor. “It’s come back before, lain dormant in my system for years, then erupted… I’m going back to our pack’s north territory in the Uncompahgre. I need to be as far away from New Orleans as possible. Right now I can’t risk an outbreak that could jeopardize you, my pack brothers, your human team, or even my blood brother Shogun again. He is on his way here; Sir Rodney is counting on us, and I’m unstable?”

He turned to leave and she caught his arm.

“We beat it before down here at Tulane Hospital… me, you, Doc, and Silver Hawk. The PCU’s top biochemical expert, ’Rissa, is here-and she and Doc make a solid team. The core clan leadership is here in New Orleans. No one is back home, Max.”

She hated that her voice had become so panicked, but if Hunter left, anything could go wrong, and that simply wasn’t an option.

“Ethan’s wife Margaret even helped sway the critical human physicians that we needed on our side at Tulane.” Sasha bodily blocked Hunter as he shrugged out of her hold. “Max Hunter, listen to me for two seconds-you owe me that much. Think about it. If you’ve got the virus spiking in your system, all of your best enforcers are here-which means innocent women and children from the pack will be at your mercy up north. Do you honestly want that on your conscience? You could spread it up there, where no contagion currently exists, if that’s what it even is. Plus, you’ve also got me and your brother down here, along with Bear and Crow. Alone up there, who can hunt you but us, if you have to be put down?”

It was insane logic, but her argument was what he’d needed to hear. She could feel it as his body relaxed and his eyes held uncertainty. Every fiber of her being knew the last thing that Hunter would be willing to risk would be an outbreak among the innocent, practically defenseless, members of the remaining Shadow Wolf pack.

“And what happens a few nights from now, when the moon waxes full… and it’s your birthday, and we’re out at Sir Rodney’s ball? What happens if we are called upon for battle, and I may be an enemy within that you hadn’t anticipated?” Hunter chuckled sadly and stalked away from her. “When are you going to just give up on me, Sasha, and finally put that silver bullet in my temple?”

“No time soon,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and willing the quaver out of her voice. “Answer me this… When did you start feeling like you were losing it?”

Hunter let out a long, frustrated breath, keeping his back toward Sasha, and then jammed his hands into his fatigue pants’ pockets. “I don’t know. It just hit me all of a sudden.”

“Think, man! Tell me when you felt the shift!”

“When we went back to Ethan’s, all right!” He spun on her, eyes beginning to glow amber around the edges of his irises.

“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.” She walked closer to Hunter, holding his gaze. When Hunter shut his eyes and swallowed hard, she stopped speaking.

“I never heard a word the staff was saying this second time we went in there-all I saw was you.”

She hugged herself and turned away. This was definitely worse than she’d thought.

“Couldn’t take my eyes off of you,” he admitted in a deep rasp. “I could only focus on the way each pore leaked the smallest bead of perspiration… until your shirt clung… every shallow breath you took, trying not to breathe, but your breasts rose and fell. I had to walk away… had to go deeper into the room you interviewed them in to find a cool, dark place to stand, away from you. Every now and then the conversations you were having would fade… I’d simply hear the tone of your voice, Ethan’s voice-the way a wolf would… without understanding the words, simply relying on the tone, then speech would return to me. At points I felt like I was blacking out. Then the pain came.”

“Pain?” Sasha murmured, going to him.

Hunter nodded. “I’ve wanted you before, but never like I felt in there-no offense, just truth. I told you before I was no liar. But standing apart from you felt like an ache that twisted my gut into knots as a blade stabbed… Suffice to say, it hurt.”

“It wasn’t like that when you had the demon-infected Werewolf virus… was it?”

“No,” Hunter said in a quiet rumble. “There was rage, there was hunt hunger, there was the painful transition and the increased desire, but wanting you was never a physical ache that hurt worse than a gunshot wound.”

“A Phoenix flamed in that cellar in a totally weird way. Ethan can’t hold his Fae glamour, albeit he was terribly upset… but still. Then you-and you weren’t all right until we got outside of the normal dimension. Even outside on the street-”

“I was losing my mind.” He looked at her without an apology in his eyes. “Truth.”

“Yeah… you were,” she said with a slight half smile.

“It’s still there, you know,” he said without a trace of humor in his expression. “Just not as acute, and requiring a great deal of concentration to keep it at bay.”

“Oh… I’m sorry, I just thought… Never mind.”

Hunter nodded. “But that does make me feel better, just knowing that in the shadow lands I have some measure of restraint. The more I think about it, before, when the contagion hit, shifting through the borders of dimensions made the virus spike in my system, so perhaps this is something else.”

“In here,” she admitted, “I’m not as angry…” Sasha lifted her hair up off her neck. “Did you notice last night, every time we went into the shadows, we might have been fighting, but we seemed to get clear once we came out?”

Hunter just nodded and stared at her.

Clarissa held her cell phone away from her ear as the others in their ragtag, human-wolf combo squad watched her try to calm Ethan down.

“Ethan, Ethan,” Clarissa soothed, “they are investigating, and uh, they will be back soon-you know Sasha and Hunter are on top of it.”

Woods almost spit out his coffee as Bradley slapped his forehead. Winters snickered and just shook his head while both Shadow Wolves sat stone-faced, drinking their coffee and staring out the window. Clarissa gave the guys who were smirking the evil eye, telling them with colorful hand signals to knock it off.

“Why don’t you tell ol’ Ethan the truth, ’Rissa,” Fisher said, shoveling eggs into his mouth with a wide grin. “The big guy got horn-”

Bear Shadow’s grip on the front of Fisher’s t-shirt stopped his comedic banter.

“That’s my sister,” Crow Shadow warned with a growl. “Be cool up in this diner, and any family business stays family business-understood, familiar?”

“You didn’t have to get personal and call me a familiar, man. I was just joking around.” Fisher yanked out of Bear Shadow’s hold and stuffed a piece of bacon into his mouth. “Could everybody just chill out and eat? My bad, all right?” he said, chewing, which made both wolves visibly relax.

Bradley leaned forward, lowering his voice, glancing around the table while Clarissa continued to try to appease Ethan on the phone. “But don’t you think all of this is a little strange?”

“What’s strange?” Bear Shadow said with a low growl. “Ardent affection toward one’s mate in season is natural.” He shoveled a large forkful of sausage into his mouth, followed by a healthy hunk of pancakes. “It is the way of the wolf, human. You wouldn’t understand.”

Ignoring the affront to his human heritage, Bradley pressed on. “You two have not been able to normalize your eyes since Hunter came out of The Fair Lady. That’s not normal. Ethan’s glamour was completely gone when I went back in to get directions to this diner.” Bradley stopped speaking as the waitress came over to refresh everyone’s coffee.