Page 21 of Predator

His features twist into a thoughtful expression. What’s that about? “Hey, Luc? Can you hear me?”

The wind’s picking up as night slowly begins to fall. The sky is a purplish-pink, though I can still see him perfectly as he nods, then moves toward me.

But he doesn’t say a word as he meets me near the midpoint, then eases past me.

“Stay here,” he says, careful not to put any sort of Alpha command in the words. “The blood ward might be gone, but there’s something I should check.”

It takes a second, but I suddenly know exactly what he means. The last time I insisted on going to get a better look at the blood ward, I brought Eleanor with me. Well, I had no choice; she was coming whether I wanted her to or not. She couldn’t sense the blood ward at all, and when it held me back, she offered to test it.

It wasn’t the blood ward that ended up knocking her out. Oh, no. It was the curse—the stasis spell snagging her—that had her crumpling on the rope bridge as they years started to catch up to her.

Thanks to the damn ward, I couldn’t save her. Reacting to my scream and a fledgling bond between us that I hadn’t known existed at the time, Lucas came to help me. He pulled her through the ward for me, and when Eleanor came to about fifteen minutes later, she had a new set of wrinkles bracketing her lovely hazel eyes.

That’s why none of the supes leave Winter Creek. They don’t need a blood ward trapping them here, not when the spell aging them again does the trick.

The same thing happened to one of Marie’s witches. Armand. She sent him out of the town to steal my blood, and by the time he returned, he’d aged almost two decades.

Lucas and the rest of the pack believe that, when the curse ends, time restarts. They get to live their lives from that point on, the age they were when the curse first affected them. I was worried about that. If I broke it and—bam—they were ninety, wouldn’t it be better to let things stay the way they were?

Of course, I’ve never existed for seventy years with nothing changing. An existence like that… maybe it would’ve been better for it to be over.

Good thing that’s not supposed to happen. The curse breaks, Lucas isn’t a feral anymore, and the rest of the pack get their lives back. That’s what was supposed to happen.

It isn’t.

I know what Lucas is doing. Just like I needed to check on the blood ward, he suddenly decides to make sure that the curse really is broken. That, if I chose to leave and he needed to follow me, he could and the spell wouldn’t try to keep him back.

If I did what I was supposed to, he should’ve been able to keep on walking. Like me, he probably wouldn’t have gone all the way to the train platform. Just a few steps in that direction, testing the magic of Winter Creek would’ve been enough.

And that’s all it takes before the curse reacts.

It happens so quickly. I can’t even tell that Lucas knows he’s been snared by it before he—like Eleanor had—freezes up and drops.

Drops.

Holy shit.

He drops.

Eleanor got lucky. When the curse stopped her from leaving, she crumpled to the rope bridge before landing on her back. She wasn’t too heavy and the wind wasn’t this bad so she didn’t tumble and fall off the bridge. Me immediately clutching the rope, going still so that I didn’t accidentally tilt her probably helped.

But whether it was the way I shouted for him, rushing forward, or his much bigger body slamming into the slats without finding any purchase on it, it doesn’t matter. His eyes rolls back in his head, he topples backward like a felled tree, and when the bridge can’t hold him, he disappears over the edge.

I rush to the other side of the bridge just in time to see Lucas get swallowed up by the raging Winter Creek.

My first thought is to pray to whoever’s listening that he managed to avoid the rocks and boulders. But then I realize that he’s unconscious. He didn’t fall asleep where the water could wake him up before he drowns. When Eleanor knocked out, she was out. We couldn’t wake her until the magic released her.

If I leave my mate in the water, he’ll die. Full stop.

I won’t let him.

Okay. I told myself when Eleanor collapsed that, if she fell, I’d dive in after her. Sure, they pack would probably end up dragging out two bodies after that, but I wouldn’t.

And if I had no problem jumping in after a friend, what makes you think I won’t jeopardize my life for my mate’s?

He sacrificed so much for me. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to let him die when I just found him. And since I’m pretty sure the Luna’s not about to give me a third chance at a happily-ever-after with Lucas, this one’s on me.

But he’s too heavy. Add in dead weight and the rushing currents, I won’t be able to do it. Not on my own.

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