Page 48 of Craved By a Wolf

His instincts said she was his mate and that was all that mattered to him. He didn’t care whether she wanted him or not. He wasn’t here to woo her and court her, to take her on dates and get to know her, and make her fall madly in love with him.

He was here to take what he wanted.

And she couldn’t allow that.

So she went to her carpet bag, opened it and rummaged through it until she found a small tear-shaped vial. She removed the wax and stopper and drank the potion, closed her eyes and waited for it to take effect. It was slow to come, telling her that she needed more than this rejuvenation spell to restore her magic back to its usual level. She would rest later, once she was safe from the big bad wolf.

Hella summoned the shackles she had used on him before, carried them to him and sank to her knees near his head.

And hesitated again.

Her gaze shifted from his wrists to his face and her stomach turned, her heart aching and growing heavier by the second. Could she really do this to him? By his account, he hadn’t meant to bring those nymphs to her door. He had been trying to make amends in his own way, and he had helped her escape Ethyrian’s men and had brought her to another safe house.

“Too late now,” she muttered. “When he comes around, he’s going to be furious.”

She stroked the line of his brow. It was relaxed now but she could easily picture the glare he would aim at her when he regained consciousness. It was better he wasn’t free to launch at her in a rage when that happened.

Maybe she could explain things quickly and make him see that she would help him if he could manage to be reasonable and keep his paws to himself.

She highly doubted that.

He wasn’t going to be in the mood to listen to her when he woke to find himself chained to a bed.

She looked up at the old wooden ceiling. If there was a bed here.

Hella stood and went upstairs to check, and sure enough, there was an ancient four-poster bed in the single room there. It looked ready to fall apart, so she used a little magic to make it sturdy enough to withstand an angry wolf, and then went back downstairs to him.

Another spell made it easier to drag his dead weight upstairs, but it also made her head turn. She settled for using what physical strength she did possess, which was nothing compared with his, to manoeuvre him into the room and onto the bed. It took several attempts, during which she accidentally lost her grip on him twice, causing him to faceplant on the floor again. At this rate, he was going to wake angry and with a headache.

When he was finally on the bed, she hesitated again and then forced herself to chain him to it.

And hurried away from him so she didn’t have to see what she had done.

She went downstairs and used the last of her magic to cast a protection spell on the building that would keep out foes and dampen the noise MacKinnon was going to make when he came around.

Her head fogged and she stumbled to an ancient brown leather armchair near a long bench table and sank onto it, fatigue rolling up on her.

Her eyes slipped shut and she sank towards what she hoped would be a deep, restful sleep.

Only MacKinnon was there waiting for her in her dreams.

Chapter 15

Hella wove her way through the saplings that lined the mossy bank of the dark loch, drifting from tree to tree. The lingering heat of a summer’s day caressed her skin, had her stroking fingers over her cleavage to catch the dampness that gathered there and had her itching to remove her black corset and shed her skirts to cool off in the water. The air was thick in the birch forest, hard to breathe as she meandered towards the lake, drawn to it. She carefully stepped over a fallen log, the moss and grass cushioning her bare feet.

Light twinkled through the trees, threaded with flecks of gold that glittered as she gazed up at the verdant leafy canopy.

This place was beautiful.

Breathtaking.

She had never felt so immersed in nature, so surrounded by the goddess’s power and her life-giving force.

Hella reached out to brush her fingers across the silvery trunk of one of the saplings, feeling the soft texture of the bark beneath their tips, and kept drifting forwards.

The loch beckoned.

Moss and grass gave way to a pebbled shore. The trees gave way to open air.

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