Chapter 19

Nineteen

WESLEY

I blacked out for a half second, snagged into a dream that tilted and wobbled not unlike bobbing in the water. The dream, perhaps Vision, solidified in a haze of misty darkness around me.

A forest, dark and deep, but in the distance spanned a row of houses. Flickers of lights glowing in a beacon of hope.

Tired, and hungry, I lay with my cheek to the dirt staring at the houses, silently pleading, Save me .

Darkness enveloped me, like the shadows themselves wrapped me in a cloak of inky night. The tendrils of oozing black crept in a rippling shudder of endless movement, around me and from me. Was I made from the darkness? My breath visible in tiny puffs like smoke in the chilly evening air, too fast, but slowing as exhaustion tugged me to sleep.

A howl pierced the silence of the night. The chill intensified my shiver as the shadows shook with anxiety, though it wasn’t them I feared. They sought to hide me from the chase. A dozen more cries pierced the night, a spooky primal wail of recognition. The Hunt had found me. How long had we been running?

The inky form of a wolf briefly solidifying to grip the back of my shirt with its teeth, willing me to my feet. Shadows dripped off him as he nudged and shoved me toward the scattered lights of houses, open backyards, and the gut-wrenching terror of humans.

Not my memory as I’d learned to fear the fae more than any human monster.

I locked eyes with the wolf, a glow of gold told me it too, had fae blood, but the sense of safety and home flooded me with a will to move. We crept through the brush, keeping low, the shadows oozing off the wolf to hide our tracks as we darted from hiding place to hiding place.

The silence of the late night emboldened my flight. No humans about and away from the Hunt, as though there were another option. The beast towered over me with an otherworldly dark fierceness.

Another eerie howl pierced the stillness. Too close.

Lights turned on. A row of spotlights popping up to try to ward off the unnatural darkness. People awakening to the horror that would just as soon take them as it would me. Unseen eyes watched from the fading tree line as I raced for the nearest light. The wolf around me as a silent guardian.

A door opened and my heart squeezed with terror, a thousand faded memories of humans fluttering through my mind without gaining purchase to clarify. A woman raced forward, short hair a mess, in pajama pants and bunny slippers, and a shotgun in her grip.

“It’s a baby, Camille, there’s a baby out here!”

Another howl, and it chilled me to the core. The ice ate up the ground, interlacing beneath my feet as though to grab me and drag me back into their nightmare. The Hunt close enough that my guardian turned to snarl and launch itself at them. I stumbled, slipped and fell, head over heels in a tangle of limbs.

The woman ran my way, another not far behind.

“Wolves!”

“I’ll scare them off,” the first one said. “Get the baby.” She paused to aim, and I wanted to scream, but the shot went over my head, over the shadow wolf and into the woods, the echo of it deafening. A boom of thundering noise as the ice climbed my flesh and reached for my heart.

The second woman reached me, ripping me off the ground and turning in a single breath to sprint back to the house. “He’s freezing! Amber, get back to the house.”

“Get him inside and warm,” the first said, her gun pointed firmly at the dark. The grumble of other humans made my gut churn as I caught the glimpse of the shadow wolf melting into the trees. The Hunt with their icy silver glinting in the returning moonlight, chasing after it.

I gasped for air and reached for the wolf, an ache deep inside I couldn’t articulate.

Torn . Came a stray thought, but the woman carried me inside and I lost consciousness to the panic. Dream ripped away and reality slammed me down into my physical body.

I opened my eyes and coughed, water wrenching from my lungs as I heaved the liquid shadows. The glare of the sun beamed overhead, warming me, and leaving me in a ray of brightness with shadows lingering inches away.

Finn rolled over and choked up water, his lungs sounding wet and pained. Relief slid through my gut. We made it.

The ground shuddered and growled as the waves crashed, spraying water like a geyser. Shivers slid down my spine as shadows dripped from the dark, growing, pool of obsidian water.

I tugged Finn away from the menacing waves eroding the shoreline, heart skipping a beat when the water dripped shadows, and the sunlight stuttered through the trees as though afraid to illuminate the nightmare. The outline of the dragon stretched itself over us.

“Not this again,” I said and shoved myself to my feet and stood in front of Finn. “If you think we are going to be mates, you’ve got to stop trying to kill him.” The dragon’s scales gleamed obsidian in the sunlight, its eyes burning with an otherworldly fire tinted with gold.

“Mine,” the dragon rumbled.

I glanced at Finn, the memory of the short dream churning in my head. Maybe I had read this all wrong. Weren’t we tied by some fate bond? It had called me mate, what if it meant, “Finn is yours?” The shadow wolf in the dream and the dragon, one being? And the child? Had it been Finn?

“Mine.”

“Not really into sharing,” I said. “You should have sought the original fox.” Kiran, the Spring king, had two mates, and that worked great for them. I wanted a relationship more like the Summer king and his alpha. A yin and yang. “If I’m your mate, how is he yours?”

If Finn belonged to the Autumn king, why did the realm keep trying to kill him?

The dragon towered over us, shadows twisting and dripping. Then it shrank, shifting and churning, darkness splitting and coloring until before me stood the man I’d seen the Summer king call Apa . Wolf King, Alpha of Alpha’s, Monster in his own right. The wolves whispered of the terrifying thing he could be. Handsome and sculpted like male flesh in a fantasy novel, he’d left behind his will to hide what he was, not ordinary or in any way mortal. This was fae, power of a king, nightmare and angel all in one.

Too perfect . Wasn’t that what Sebastian thought whenever he encountered the tempting forms of the divine? I could sculpt my glamour to show beauty and perfection like this, but it would be a lie. All glamour hid something, and this man, the wolf king, buried something beneath the perfection.

“Mate,” he said, voice gruff, more like a wolf’s howl than a man used to speaking. He reached for me, fingertips caressing my face, careful, yet rough, as if he’d forgotten what it was to touch another.

I fought to hide my flinch, but his touch brought a warmth of magic, and a pool of quick rising heat to my groin. He could take my will, force me to my knees in submission. I was a simple beast after all. The Stag blood would rise and demand either intimacy or death. My mortal soul could scream and flail in protest all it wanted. The magic made me little more than a slave. I expected him to lean in and overwhelm me with endless waves of lust. An easy way to mate, perhaps, but the swirl of his magic retreated, as Finn’s arms wrapped around me from behind.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Finn asked, his body spooned against my back, cold and shivering from the water. A human shouldn’t have the strength to stand before the power that lapped at me in waves of excruciating need. I longed to sink to my knees and bow in submission despite knowing the pain it would bring. “Don’t make him, please,” Finn begged, holding me up. He shivered at my back, a grounding touch of comfort as we stood before absolute power.

“Mate,” the king said again.

“But does he want that?” Finn asked. “Doesn’t he get a choice?”

The king snarled. His fingers slid over my throat, threatening and pulsing with scorching heat, but Finn held tight. I swallowed, uncertain, body betraying me with physical desire while my mind wove circles to justify my feelings. Fate left few choices. The Summer king made me hope love was necessary for that equation, but faced with fate myself, I suspected, like death, fated love would hardly be kind.

He could have choked me, caused pain, or added fear to his firm grip on my throat, but he caressed my jawline with his thumb as if studying me. His golden gaze blazed as our eyes met, and I sensed his desperation, but couldn’t pinpoint why.

“Mate,” he said again, more a whisper than a growl. His hand slipped away and the water swirled up around him in an enormous splash that carried him and all his darkness back to the depths of darkness.

Everything stilled except my pounding heart. The tiny creek returned, and Finn shivered at my back, holding tight, face pressed into my hair. The fear we shared added a sour unease to the air. I wanted to shove him away and pretend the last few minutes had all been a nightmare, but I knew if he let me go right then, I’d have unraveled.