Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 939(@200wpm)___ 751(@250wpm)___ 626(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 939(@200wpm)___ 751(@250wpm)___ 626(@300wpm)
“Pissed and looking for you.” Of course, they are. “Now answer me. What are you doing out here?”
I hold up my compound bow. “Hunting.” Seth immediately looks skeptical. “Seriously. I caught a buck with one shot. You should have seen it. I was so badass.”
Seth’s subdued gaze studies mine carefully, and then he turns me around, checking me over for injuries. I swear he even sniffs me as if he can scent out the lie about where I’ve been.
See what I mean? My boyfriends are savages.
“Seth, I didn’t try to run,” I say when he takes my bow from me and straps it to his back.
“You were gone for hours, Sunshine.”
“Because you bitches wouldn’t give me a radio, and I got lost!”
“You have a map.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, but it was pretty much useless without a starting point. I don’t know this place as well as you three.”
“All right.” Seth stands back and slips his hands inside his pockets. “So where is it? Where’s the buck?”
“I…she stole it.”
“Who?”
“The wolf…Meera.” It’s the first time I’ve said her name out loud. I’d been toying with it while watching the lone wolf nurture her pups, so I’m surprised by how right it feels.
Seth doesn’t even blink at the ridiculousness of me naming a wild animal. “Seriously? A dog ate your homework? That’s the lie you’re going with?”
“I’m not lying,” I grind out.
My frustration and panic are at an all-time high right now. If I can’t even convince Seth, who worships the ground I walk on, that I wasn’t trying to run, I have no hope of convincing Khalil and Thorin.
Thank God I added the “no punishment” clause when I agreed to stay, but that doesn’t mean they can’t find other ways to make me sorry. I’m still a little torn about the “Blood Rite,” as I call that night I got my period a week and a half ago.
Seth gives an exasperated shake of his head and takes my arm. “Come on.”
I follow him happily like a good pet and pray his mood improves before we meet up with the others. I need him on my side or it will be three against one, and I won’t stand a chance. I hadn’t planned to stray so far or be gone for so long, and I damn sure wasn’t expecting to return empty-handed.
It looks really bad.
Seth radios Thorin and Khalil to tell them he found me and we’re heading back. Twenty minutes later, we’re a mile in, and Seth is still brooding. His eyes are fixed straight ahead as we travel inside a dell—a dried-up stream bed with steep hills on either side. Seth’s expression is stormy, so I wrestle my arm free of his hold and take his hand instead.
The feel of my fingers linking his longer ones snap him out of whatever dark thoughts have taken over his mood. Seth looks down at me, and I tilt my head and smile. It’s a small reassurance but the best I can do without giving my true feelings away.
“I know what you’re doing,” he says in a rumble so dark and terrifying, it sends a chill down my spine.
That voice…
It doesn’t…
That’s not Seth.
I falter a step when the realization hits, and I snatch my hand away. Seth stops walking immediately and stands there like a statue.
A whimper tears from my lips. “S-Seth?”
After a few heart-pounding seconds, he blinks slowly, curses, and then shakes his head violently like he’s exorcising a damn demon or something. I get the feeling that he’s locked in some kind of power struggle, and I take another step away while eyeing my bow strapped to his back.
“It’s me,” he finally confirms. There’s five feet of forest between us now while my stomach caves from the weight of my fear and uncertainty. “It’s me.” His voice sounds strained, as if he’s holding onto a ledge by his fingertips, but… he sounds like him.
He sounds like Seth.
Still, I keep my distance because whatever the hell just happened was too intense to merely shrug off. Seth still doesn’t quite seem like he has full control. It’s the only explanation for why he stays where he is when he turns around to face me.
“Are you okay?” I don’t realize I’m throwing self-preservation away and inching forward until he takes a cautious step backward. I stop and stay where I am. “What the hell was that, Seth?”
His eyes are pinched with worry even as his lips curl, and he spits out the name like a curse. “Bane.”
My blood turns to ice. “I thought you said he doesn’t come out unless Zeke is in danger.”
“He doesn’t. I don’t…I don’t know what that was.” Seth curses again when he sees the terror in my eyes, and then he rips the radio off the clip at his hip. “Change of plans,” he spits out. “I need you to meet us two clicks south of the she-wolf’s den.”