Cora scrambled out of the Array, her breath coming in ragged hitches. The world felt... different. She could hear the wind brushing against the leaves three miles away. She could feel the magnetic pull of the North Pole.
But mostly, she could feel Him.
He was moving. Fast. A dark blur of hunger and need, cutting through the forest like a scythe.
"Get out of my head," she hissed, clutching her temples.
"Stay," the voice rumbled in her skull. It wasn't a request. It was a command that made her muscles lock in place. "Stay. Too far... hurts..."
Cora realized with a jolt of horror that as she ran away from the Array, the headache intensified. A searing pain blossomed at the base of her brain. She looked back at the satellite tower. When she moved toward it, the pain eased. When she moved away, it felt like her skull was being split by an axe.
She was tethered. Not to a man, but to a broadcast zone.
She looked at her hand—the one that had touched the crystal. A faint, glowing amber mark sat in the center of her palm. A "Circuit" mark.
A low, vibrating growl shook the bushes in front of her. The trees parted.
He was huge. A wolf the size of a small vehicle, with fur like shadows and eyes that held the weight of a dying sun. He skidded to a halt, his massive claws tearing into the dirt, stopping exactly twenty feet away from her.
He didn't lunge. He didn't snarl. He dropped his head, whimpering—a sound so pathetic it didn't belong in a body that powerful.
Cora held her breath, her heart hammering against her ribs. "You're the Alpha."
The wolf shifted. Bones cracked and reformed in a gruesome display of biology until a man stood there, naked and trembling in the moonlight. He looked at her not with love, but with a desperate, agonizing confusion.
"You're human," Kaelen whispered, clutching his stomach. "Why does my soul think you're a goddess?"