Chapter Twenty-Nine

"How about this one?" Baer called out from an opened door. "Looks like there are at least a couple rooms not including the kitchen and living space. I can see some stairs leading upwards too. Given the era style, must have been a rich merchant's house or something."

"Does it look like there are any provisions kept here?" I asked as we all walked over to have a look for ourselves.

"Only one way to find out," Baer said.

He dipped into the building as we all reached him and made his way towards the back of the house where the kitchen should be.

"There's some bread here, and some cheese. Nothing molded, so this place must have the same time freezing over everything that the last city had."

Baer came out from the kitchen, holding up his findings. "This place is like something out of those old movies, based during the Medieval era. It's incredible that this is how people lived during that time."

Aurora smirked and walked over to take the bread from him. She brought it to her nose and sniffed before letting out a deep sigh.

"It smells like it must have been fresh baked just before time froze here. It's heavenly."

I smiled and turned to look at Sasha. My smile fell as I watched her.

She stood at a bit of a distance from me and the others, her arms crossed over her chest and face set to a serious expression. She hadn't taken what I said well, and it was hard for me to understand why.

How could telling her that I needed help to help her be so insulting to her? How else could I have worded it for her to not think I was calling her a burden?

"What do you think?" I asked her, my voice low for only her.

She looked over at me, then shrugged before heading to the staircase.

"I'll see what the upstairs looks like. Let's hope that we can find more than chamber pots for bathroom use here."

"Ew!" Aurora suddenly shrieked as she ran after Sasha up the stairs. "Don't say that! Please, please, please let there be indoor plumbing!"

I watched them both and sighed as Baer joined me.

"You said something stupid again, didn't you," he surmised.

I shook my head. "Seems like that's all I'm ever good at when it comes to her."

"I don't know about that," Baer said with a mischievous grin. "I've heard other things coming from your tent that would say you are good at, at least one other thing with her."

I growled as I looked at him, my wolf not enjoying the cheeky remark of what we do with our mate.

"Calm down," Baer laughed. "I'm a happily mated man myself, remember. I'm simply saying that you two are good together. She is just a little pricklier than her cousin I suppose. Though, I've put my foot in my mouth more than a few times with Rory. Especially those first couple months."

"I find that hard to believe," I said, my wolf still pushed forward on guard. "Aurora seems to enjoy everything you say and do."

Baer laughed again. "No, no," he said. "She used to get so embarrassed by some of the things I would say. Especially speaking my mind to her parents. Her mom was my dad's beta, so there were times that I would push my authority against her a bit and Rory would turn on me in the blink of an eye, ready to rip my throat out."

"What did you ever have to push your authority over her mom for?" I asked, a bit taken aback at the idea that Baer would use his alpha king abilities on someone who wasn't even his pack member anymore. Not since she mated to Sasha's uncle.

Baer rubbed the back of his neck and turned his eyes down a bit. "She was getting pushy with some of the mate ceremony plans. Things that I knew Rory didn't want but was too nice to tell her mom she didn't want it. So, I did."

My eyes widened as pieces clicked into place then. Baer tilted his head as he looked back at me, clearly seeing the lightbulb light up inside my head.

"What?" he asked.

"It's nothing, just seeing the similarities is all," I said.

"Care to share then?" Baer chuckled.

I joined him with a soft laugh and patted his shoulder. "Neither of them really like it when we do what is for the best for them."

Baer choked on his laughter then, his eyes widened as the two cousins returned from upstairs. Aurora looked devastated, a sure sign that there had been no sign of indoor plumping upstairs. Sasha, on the other hand, looked exactly as she had when she went up the stairs.

Completely withdrawn from me.

"Chamber pots," Aurora cried to Baer. "How could anyone have thought those were a good idea? I'd rather use an outhouse than that."

Sasha sighed as she looked at her cousin, then headed for the doorway. "I'm going to have another look around. Maybe I can find us an outhouse after all."

"I'll come with you," Aurora offered as she pulled back from Baer.

"No, I'll be okay. I'll just be right outside here. Besides, if there's no toilets, then there is no running hot water. If we want baths tonight, you're going to need to heat the water for us."

I looked over at Aurora as her face paled more. When I looked back at Sasha, she was already outside the door alone.

"Shit," I sighed as I rushed to follow her.

I could hear Baer assuring his mate that he would help her get bath water ready as the door closed behind me. My head turned back and forth to find where Sasha had gone to, only to just barely spot her as she turned a corner.

‘Mate can't be alone,'my wolf growled. ‘There could be danger hiding here.'

"I know," I said out loud.

Flashes of the griffin attacking her at the last city flashed in our mind as I ran to catch up. I couldn't understand why she was moving so fast or where she thought she was going. Not until I rounded the corner myself and found her leaning against a large rock and looking down at the path leading away from the city.

I slowed down as I approached her, my eyes scanning our surroundings and the sky above her as I walked. The closer I came to her, the clearer the area became, and I realized just what it was she was inspecting on the ground.

"More prints?" I asked, though I could see them clear as day.

Sasha looked up at me, only a little startled. She gave me a nod before looking back at the trail leading away.

"I thought I saw them when we first came by, but we were all so invested in finding our housing for the night that I couldn't take a closer look."

I walked closer to her, my gaze moving between her and the trail of footprints leading off down the road. It was strange to see so many of them when before I had only barely made out the shape of one. I touched the ground and reached out to the roots beneath the ground, my reach going out farther than it had the last time I searched for any sign of the witch's location.

"You feel anything?" Sasha asked me, though her eyes remained on the ground.

I shook my head. "No, it's odd though. She's gone all this time without any sign that we were following the right path, and now here we are staring down the best set of prints yet. Enough that we could even follow them from here, yet she isn't anywhere that I can find."

"Maybe she got careless because she thinks there was no way we could have followed her this far. I mean, it's been like a month since we chased her down that alley. She may not even know we found the portal at all."

"If that voice you keep hearing is involved with her, how could she not know?" I asked, hating the idea that I could pop her bubble any more than I already had.

Sasha sighed and nodded. "You're right. She probably does know we're here, but she still could have gotten careless not thinking we could catch up to her yet."

We sat there in silence, both our backs pressed against the large boulder as we stared out into the world where the prints lead.

"What do you think we'll find?" Sasha suddenly asked.

"Find?" I asked.

"With Minerva. Nothing in all my studies before leaving home showed a hint of what the darkness she was after really was. All I know is that The Fates seemed to think it was a genuine threat to all of the world."

I frowned as I thought it over, then shrugged. "I imagine it will be an ancient being just like any of the others our families dealt with in the past. We'll have to fight it just like our parents fought theirs, and we'll have to think fast on how to take it down before it's strong enough to leave the Forgotten Realm."

"What makes you think he can't leave this realm?" she asked then.

I grimaced as she called the darkness a him, knowing that she was thinking about the voice that had haunted her all this time.

"Because, if the evil being was strong enough to leave, we wouldn't be searching for them here."

Sasha thought it over before nodding. "I guess you're right. That's good then. Means we might still stand a good chance then."

I smiled and nodded. "Yeah, always a silver lining."

My finger brushed hers for a moment. Sparks flew up my veins at the slightest touch, my heart soaring even further when she hadn't pulled away from the brush of our skin together.

I could feel the same shivers that I felt coming from her through the bond. Even when she pulled back her hand, I could still feel the electricity between us, that same magnetic pull of the bond pulling us back together.

I wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her. To assure her that I didn't mean to insult her before. That I only wanted to make sure she was okay, and that she got all the help she could possibly need to fight against whatever it was that targeted her mind. Be it a strange creature we have yet to know about or the true dark being we sought.

Part of me wondered if I shouldn't tell her about the dark fate mentioned in the book that had already taught me so much about this world. But I didn't. I just couldn't bear the idea that she would believe the voice that called to her belonged to that evil. Especially not without proof first.

Instead, we watched as the sun fully disappeared beyond the horizon, my attention to our surroundings never faltering as we sat there. And as the stars began to come out and illuminate the darkened sky, I gave her a soft nudge with my hand.

"Come on," I said. "The others will be wondering where we went off to."

She looked up at me as if she had something more she wanted to say, then simply nodded and straightened up beside me.

We returned to the house in silence, though it didn't feel quite as heavy as the silence between us before. As we walked, I began to get a sense of being watched. As if something were following us within the shadows.

I reached out with my power to search and came back with nothing. Not even a mouse scurrying through the buildings around us.

‘Be mindful of the shadows,'my wolf growled in my head. ‘There is something unsettling about them. It's like they are moving in closer.'

‘I feel it too,'I agreed.

I paused in the doorway of the house we had taken up residence in, my gaze scanning the shadowy buildings all around as Sasha entered the lit house. Only when she was safe inside did I turn away from the shadows. But even still, that sense of being watched remained.