Breathe, she told herself, hating the misfiring instincts that poured adrenaline into her bloodstream, making her too jittery to fight, to flee, to do something, anything!
The moon seemed too big, the crater shadows too irregular, the trees on either side of the trail too smooth, their joints too regular. The night crowded in on her, pressed on her.
Breathe, damn it. She focused on the trees and the darkness, the feeling of the bow on her back and the arrows she’d stuck in easy reach. You’re okay. You’re doing this to yourself. You’re—
Brush crackled suddenly on either side of her and huge shapes emerged, furred, fanged and growling. Wolfyn!
“Run!” Dayn shouted to her. “Go!”
Reda gasped and whirled to bolt, but there was already one behind her, then another and another. Within seconds, she and Dayn were surrounded by more than forty of the creatures, all with their heads down menacingly and golden fur spiked down their spines.
She fell back, gaping at the terrifying beauty of them. Candida’s inert body hadn’t prepared her for the shifters’ sheer presence. The wolfyns’ shoulders came up past her waist and their bodies stretched out, looking almost more like those of huge lions than wolves. Their coats had saddle marks that glowed reddish even in the moonlight; their heads were narrow triangles that made her think of wide-open spaces rather than dog parks, and their eyes were a vivid, vibrant amber.
A huge male stepped up to face her. He was the biggest among them, had the brightest markings and thickest fur. His forehead was broad, his eyes wise; they seemed to look into her and whisper, Come to me. I can protect you, cherish you, adore you.
Heat flared through her as she stared, transfixed.
Come to me.
She took a step toward the gorgeous creature. Reached out her hand to touch the thick, luxurious fur.
And all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER SIX
“NO!” DAYN BROKE free from the betas surrounding him, grabbed Reda and jerked her behind him. Then he got right in Kenar’s face and shouted, “She’s a guest! By rights and tradition, back off!”
The pack surged forward, but then subsided, growling as Kenar snarled a full-throated roar and sank back onto his haunches and then sprang erect, his form blurring as he changed. When the magic cleared, he stood there in his human form—slightly shorter than Dayn, bullnecked and square-featured, with heavy, powerful muscles and boxing-glove hands. His face was flushed, his eyes narrow with hatred. “She doesn’t have any rights if she’s traveling with a fucking bloodsucker—and, more, a Forestal murderer. Because that’s what you are, isn’t it, Prince Dayn?”
And, just like that, twenty years of peaceful coexistence were nullified by the crimes of a long-ago war. The wolfyn surrounding him growled and scuffled, their canine faces wrinkled with hatred. They weren’t just there because their alpha had led them; they truly wanted him dead. He didn’t see Keely, didn’t know what that meant. As for Kenar, there was hatred in his eyes, but calculation, too. He was using this somehow, or planning to.
Fumbling a little in his haste, Dayn palmed two blobs of wolfsbene from his pack and jammed one into Reda’s unresisting hand.
“Did the witch’s messenger tell you that she’s a blood drinker herself?” he demanded solely to buy time. Pretending to scrub his face, he gulped the wolfsbene, which was slimy going down, with an aftertaste somewhere between mint and mud. He grimaced but continued. “Or that she tortured and killed Candida?”
He heard Reda cough, hoped that meant she had taken her dose.
The pack members shifted restlessly, some whining at the news. But Kenar bared his teeth. “We killed her servant, which makes us even, claw for claw. More, he was loyal, which was more than I can say for the wise-bitch. How long had she known about you?”
The first shimmers of heat and power filtered into Dayn’s bloodstream, which was good, because the pack was closing in, shifting tighter, backing him and Reda into each other. Talking fast now, he said, “You’re believing the witch’s messenger over Candida? Did he give you any proof, anything more than a good story?”
“Yes!” Kenar roared, and the sound was echoed by his betas. “Yes, he offered proof. He used a spell to show Keely the sick, twisted things you made her forget! She was your lover. How could you feed from your lover? Oh, right,” the alpha sneered. “Because you’re a prince of the realm and you could make her think whatever you wanted. Fucking bloodsucker, disgracing my sister like that. Using her.”
Oh. Shit. Reda’s gasp had Dayn’s heart dropping, even as guilt knotted tight and sharp in his gut over what he’d done to Keely. Not just because of the feeding and the cover-up, but because he saw the politics now. “You son of a bitch. You’re going to use this to boot her out, aren’t you? I bet you’ve just been waiting for a good excuse.”
The wolfsbene was flowing hard and fast in his veins now, but there was nowhere to run. He went for his crossbow, bringing it up.
Kenar’s eyes lit with vicious fury. He signaled the pack forward and shouted, “By Right of Threat—kill them!”
Dayn nailed the closest beta in the haunch, aiming to wound but not disable. As the male went down howling and snapping at the bolt, Dayn grabbed Reda’s hand. “Come on!”
They made it only a short way before the ranks closed again. Reda had his back, fending off the creatures with sweeps of her unstrung bow as he sent two more bolts into the crowd. And over his shoulder, he said, “I’m sorry, Reda.”
But apologies didn’t fix anything, did they? Never had.
Grief and guilt rose up within him like old friends as he pulled his short sword. “I’m going to try to make a hole. Be ready to run and hang on to that map.” Because she would be running without him. There was no way Kenar would let him live now.
“Dayn.” Reda’s voice was choked, but that was all. And he didn’t blame her for not knowing what else to say.
Roaring, he swung the weapon in a glittering arc and surged forward with her right behind him. He made it through the first rank, knocked aside a big beta in the second, and—
Without warning, an arrow seared so close that he felt the vibration on his skin as it passed him and carved a nasty furrow across the next animal’s back.
“’Ware the woods!” Kenar yelled as another arrow sang past and glanced off the shoulder of an older wolfyn in the outer rank.
Not stopping to question the rescue, Dayn grabbed Reda’s hand and hauled her toward the gap that had just been punched in the line. “Come on!”
They flew across a section of open road, then across to where a huge rock face rose up thirty or so feet to a sloping plateau. With the wolfsbene flowing through his veins and the entire Scratch-Eye pack lunging after him, Dayn made it up the sheer stone face in two big bounds, dragging Reda with him.
They crested the top and charged along the downslope, which put them on a narrow ridgeline with dense scrub on either side, forcing the pursuing wolfyn to run parallel to them, howling and barking in challenge, anger and threat. But Dayn’s heart pounded and his muscles burned, propelling him faster than any human, faster even than most of the wolfyn. And Reda matched him stride for stride.
They soon outdistanced the bulk of the pack, until only a few of the fastest wolfyn were keeping pace where the ridge swept lower to flat ground and the scrub thinned along a narrow plateau that ended in the canyon: a wide chasm that was spanned right at this point by a narrow rope bridge.
As they charged down the steep incline and their pursuers closed on either side, Dayn said, “Stay behind me, but keep up. If we can make it across that bridge, we can pull the pins from the other side.” There were other ways across, but they involved a half day’s detour. She made a noise that might have been assent, might have been a whimper, but there was no time to stop and discuss options.
And there weren’t any other options.
Dayn’s pulse throbbed, thudding in his head and beneath his skin, and power seared in his veins, urging him
on. When they broke from the last of the trees to the flat plateau that led to the bridge, there were only two wolfyn still following. Those two, though, closed in fast. Then, as if choreographed, they split and attacked, one from each side.
As they leaped, Dayn shouted, “Down!”
He and Reda hit the dirt and the wolfyn actually collided in midair. The larger one drove the smaller back and down; they landed hard a few feet away and scuffled.
Dayn dragged Reda up, ready to run again, then stopped dead as he saw that the two wolfyn weren’t struggling to get up and continue the chase. They were fighting.
And one of them was Keely.
The battle was short but vicious; within seconds, she rose to her feet, leaving the other lying stunned and still. Then she shimmered and changed, becoming her familiar self. Except that she suddenly looked entirely unfamiliar—still tall, gorgeous and stacked, but…he didn’t know what the “but” was, actually. It was there, though.
She looked at Reda. “You’re his guide?”
“So he tells me.” The women shared a look that excluded him, left him baffled.
“You knew?” he demanded of Keely. “How?” Then, because there was only one possible answer, he said, “Candida told you.”
“She wanted someone else to know, in case anything happened to her. When the witch’s servant came, I pretended I didn’t know, and tried to think of a way to get a message to you, warn you of what was going on, but I couldn’t.”
The guilt was a raw ache inside him. “I’m sorry. I would have told you everything, but…Kenar.”
“Kenar,” she agreed. And there was something in her voice that hadn’t been there before. Anger, maybe, or defiance. He wondered whether that was new or if, like her collusion with Candida, there were layers to her that he hadn’t seen.
“Thanks for helping us get away,” he said, knowing that must have been her. His eyes went to the still form of the unconscious wolfyn. “Will you get in trouble?”
“I’ll blame it on you.” She glanced back along the ridgeline, where growing howls warned that the rest of the pack was regathering. “You should get across the bridge and pull the pins.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Which way are you headed?”
“Northwest,” he said without hesitation, giving her his full trust, though far too late. “To Meriden Arch.”
She nodded. “I’ll tell them you went south, then. We’ll head for the log crossing down by Candle Pass.”
That would put the pack a solid half day behind them. “I’ll owe you one. Hell, I owe you, period.” He paused. “Keels, I’m sorry about the mindspeaking. I just…I had to feed.”
She shrugged, and her voice held only wolfyn practicality when she said, “I was pretty freaked out when Candida first told me, but she helped me get over it. And in the long run, it was a fair trade—I used you for sex, you used me for blood. That’s what people like us do—use each other.”
It was a hell of an indictment. And he couldn’t deny it.
He swallowed hard, very aware that Reda had drawn away from him; her arms were wrapped around her body as if she was freezing and she stared out over the chasm as if she couldn’t look at him. He wanted to pull her aside and tell her that wasn’t how it had been between him and Keely. Except that it was exactly like that—she had nailed it. They had used each other, and each been content with the deal. Now, though, with the wolfsbene running in his veins and Reda in the picture, the arrangement echoed cold and bloodless.
He didn’t have the luxury of time to pull her aside, though, or even try to reason through the sudden change inside him. They needed to move now, talk later.
To Keely, he said, “Be careful, okay? And be happy.”
“Go.” Her amber eyes went from him to Reda and back. “And hey…you be happy, too, okay?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, so he just nodded. “Thanks for everything. Business deal or not, you helped make the past twenty years bearable.” He didn’t kiss her goodbye, just as he had rarely kissed her hello. Theirs had never been that sort of a relationship. Instead, he nudged Reda toward where a low line of trees hid the edge of the canyon. “Come on. Keely will buy us as much time as she can, but we need to get across the bridge and drop it from the other side before the pack gets here.”
She didn’t say a word as they jogged toward the trees, but he didn’t know for certain if that was because she was shell-shocked by the wolfyn attack, upset over the Keely thing, or something else. Or all of the above.
But he did know for certain that his arrangement with Keely had nothing to do with his feelings for Reda. One had been business and practicality, while the other was entirely impractical and ill-advised. Yet even knowing that, he couldn’t keep his eyes off Reda. Part of it was the wolfsbene, yes. But most of it was her.
He wanted to crowd her, nip her, hurry her along. Instead, he stayed by her side, pacing her and guarding her flank as they reached the chasm’s edge and headed for the bridge. There were enough trees that they didn’t get a clear look at the spindly structure until they were nearly on top of it.
Reda stopped dead, her face going stark in the moonlight as she said, “Oh, hell, no.”
“It’s safe, I promise.” But, admittedly, it wasn’t the most inspiring sight. Four long ropes were strung from one side to the other: two suspending a sparse walkway of wooden planks that glowed nearly white in the moonlight, and two more lines at shoulder height for balance. Shorter lengths tied at gallop-stride intervals supported the fluid structure, which moved and rippled in the air currents that convected up from the depths. He nudged her forward. “You can do this. I’ll be right behind you.”
“No.” She backed up until she bumped into him, her back to his front, stirring heat and echoes of the earlier kiss he was trying to keep at the edges of his mind. “There’s got to be another way.”
“There isn’t.”
“What if—”
Hearing the first ominous hunting howl behind them, he came around in front of her and cupped her face in her hands. “We need to keep going forward, Reda. It’s the only way.”
He had meant only to take her attention off the bridge, but when he touched the soft skin of her jaw, heat washed through him, and something deep inside said, Mine. And when her eyes came up to meet his, need tightened to a fist in his chest, and that same something said, Now. He didn’t fight the urges, though maybe he should have. Instead, he crushed his lips to hers, swallowed her gasp and took them both under in a kiss that shouldn’t have been pure perfection. But was.
ONE SECOND REDA WAS terror-stricken, and the next she was on fire.
There was no transition, no warning, nothing but the sudden press of a hard male body and the demanding shape of his lips and tongue against hers. She should have yanked away, but couldn’t find those synapses amid the heat and needy, greedy desire that flared instantly through her.
Oh, she thought, as fear melted beneath the onslaught. Oh, yes. Was it from the wolfsbene, whose power she could feel floating in her veins? Possibly. Probably. But she suddenly didn’t care.
He slanted his mouth across hers, taking the kiss deeper, and fire kindled in her blood. Something fierce and possessive welled up in her—a sharp-edged need to dig into him and leave a mark—and that had her pouring herself into the kiss, into the moment and the man. He jerked against her, his fingers at her nape and hip, hers fisted in his shirt. And in that moment, there was only the two of them and a kiss that made her heart shudder in her chest and her entire conscious self say, Yes, this.
This was what she had been missing with the other men she had dated, the ones she had tried to convince herself were Mr. Right, Mr. Good Enough or Mr. Prince Charming Is a Fairy Tale So Get Real. This was what she had been searching for: the wrenching burn of lust, the grasping inner greed that said she had to touch him, kiss him, have him. And more, this was the gut-deep knowledge that it was mutual, that he was going crazy with the need to touch
her, as well.
“Gods.” He tore away from her and stood for a heartbeat with his chest heaving and his eyes fierce and wild. Then he grabbed her by the waist, spun her off her feet and deposited her on the first of the moon-silvered wooden slats.
She gasped and grabbed for the handhold ropes, panic sparking as the whole assembly dipped and swayed and pebbles skipped off the edge of the precipice and didn’t make any sound of hitting bottom. She lurched back, but slammed into a yielding wall that was as immovable as a cliff, yet warm and muscular. And she could feel his heartbeat, quick and aroused, and echoing into her where it settled in a throb of liquid need.
“Go on, you can do it,” he whispered in her ear, his voice deep and sensual. Then he shocked her by nipping her neck hard enough to bring a pinch of pain that took her mind off the yawning chasm below them. He crowded her with his body, bracketing her with his arms and legs. “One foot in front of the other.”
Thrown off balance when his knee nudged the back of one braced leg, she took a stumbling step forward, then another when he repeated the move on the other side. “Stop it.”
His only reply was a low growl as he nipped her neck again and crowded her more, herding her along the narrow bridge.
Heart hammering, she let herself be driven. The little bites sparked an atavistic heat that stripped her of her civilized outer shell and left only her primal brain behind. And that part of her reveled in the way he was dominating her, pushing her past her comfort zone and into uncharted territory.
She was aware of the yawning drop beneath her feet, the warm updrafts that came from below and the way the bridge swayed even though he steadied it by stretching his arms and legs as wide as he could against the taut ropes. But those inputs were secondary to the pounding heat that flared through her veins, carrying a brilliant, throbbing power that came only partly from the aphrodisiac side effects of the wolfsbene.
The rest of it was him.
“Go,” he urged, his voice a low growl that spoke of things other than crossing a bridge. “Faster, Reda. Hurry!”
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