Page 32 of Craved By a Wolf

He expected her to do ashewanted.

She steeled herself, denying the urge to go after him and apologise, to even go as far as offering to help him. No good would come of it. It was better she felt guilty than she found herself shackled by a mate bond to a wolf who would treat her no better than the nymph king.

She had no intention of sacrificing her independence.

Although. She looked at the flask he had placed on the counter and recalled the way he had looked at her at times, with a softness that had warmed her soul and stirred her heart in a way no other man had. Maybe if she found a man worthy of her, one who would walk by her side and not seek to restrain her, would be her equal, she might just do it.

She might fall in love for the first time.

Hella put everything back into her carpet bag, including the book, and shut out thoughts of the wolf.

There was no point in going after him to offer him assistance with breaking his curse.

She wasn’t done with him. He would be back and madder than ever, and she would deal with that when it happened.

But right now, she had an entire nymph army and their obsessed king to escape.

She had to move.

Literally.

Chapter 11

MacKinnon was furious.

Again.

He yelled as he fell from the air and hit a freezing lake from a great height, his exposed balls taking the brunt of the harsh landing. Momentum plummeted him deep into the frigid water and his muscles cramped as it stole the heat from his body, had his lungs feeling too tight. Good thing breathing was a bad idea right now.

He kicked upwards, focused on the clear surface above him, on reaching it before the need to breathe became too strong to deny.

Kin breached the surface, lurching into the air and gasping at it, greedily sucking it down into his aching lungs. He sank back into the water.

And his jeans materialised and dropped on his head.

He growled and swiped them from his face, looked up at the clear sky and wanted to yell again, cursing Hella’s name and demanding his ancestors give him the strength to deal with her. Wily wasn’t a strong enough word for his wee witch. She had tricked him into drinking a potion designed to make him leave, tearing him away from her.

Damn her.

He frowned as something else materialised above him.

A folded scrap of parchment.

It fluttered down towards him, dancing in the air like a butterfly, using the two halves of it as its wings.

Kin reached a hand up and caught it when it was close enough, flipped it open and read the single word scrawled on it.

Sorry.

“Sorry, my arse,” he muttered and scrunched the paper into his fist.

The witch was playing games with him. They both were. Neither cared that his life was on the line. Well, he didn’t care about them either. He was done with them.

He turned in a slow circle, treading water, and arched an eyebrow as he realised Hella had dropped him in a glen close to his home. Did she know this place, or had the spell picked it because itwashis home?

He clung to his jeans with one hand and swam towards the shore, his eyes on the evergreens that hugged it, a deep band of green between the dark blue of the water and the lighter green of the mountain that rose beyond the forest. His muscles protested with each stroke, the ache in them worsening as the cold continued to steal his strength, and he was freezing by the time he reached the pebbly shore.

Kin stomped up the shallow incline to the shadow of the trees, where mossy grass provided some protection for his feet. His teeth clattered as he struggled with his wet clothes, trying to get them on.

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