Page 86 of Craved By a Wolf

He was heading to the fae town. He was going to find the witch, and gods, Hella hoped she was wrong about the reason he was looking for her. Her heart ached, cold at the thought she might not be, that everything that had happened over the last few days might have been a lie.

That it all might have been a lie.

She reached the perimeter stone wall and scrambled over it, and stilled on the other side, awareness drumming inside her. Running would get her nowhere. Kin was faster than she was. She would never catch up with him before he reached the fae town. Her only hope was beating him there and stopping him, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that.

Part of her wanted to know the truth and see what his plan had been.

The rest of her couldn’t bear the thought of discovering none of it had been real for him.

Hella pulled the potion from her pocket, her hand shaking and heart swaying back and forth as she stared at it. It couldn’t be a lie. Everything they had shared last night had to have been real. She had never opened up to anyone like that, and deep in her heart she felt Kin was the same. He had never opened up to someone like he had with her. This thing happening between them had to be real.

It had to mean something.

She flicked the lid off the vial and swallowed the contents, and focused on a spot in the fae town where she had always lingered during her visits to take everything in.

Someone gasped as she appeared next to the best café in the town, one at the start of the witches’ district. She glanced at the black-clad women and scattering of men who occupied the circular tables that spilled out onto the cobbled road, singling out the one who had been shocked by her arrival.

“Have you seen a wolf shifter come through here? About this tall. Dark hair. Silver eyes. Possibly wearing a long-sleeved top and black jeans and looking a bit frantic?” She willed the witch to say that she had, but the mousy-haired woman shook her head.

Damn.

Hella looked both ways along the wide curving street, unsure where to start. Kin could be in any one of the white buildings that hugged the road, their jewel-coloured canopies reaching towards the middle of it and complementing the shiny green, violet and blue tiles that formed the undulating roofs that had always reminded her of dragons. She looked at the upper floors of several of the buildings, wondering if he was up there.

Maybe she had gotten lucky and he hadn’t arrived yet.

She cast a glance over her right shoulder, up at the ochre wall of the cavern where the tunnel to the surface exited and met the stairs that wound down into the town.

“I saw someone matching that description.”

She whipped back around to face the owner of that voice, a witch with short violet hair and a white pinafore over her black dress. The woman removed several cups of coffee from her tray and placed them on the table occupied by three men, not noticing the way one of them gazed at her.

Kin had looked at her like that once, with a mixture of desire and adoration in his eyes.

“Which way did he go?” Hella looked both ways along the street again, unable to focus on the witch in case she missed catching a glimpse of Kin in the crowd. The witches’ district was busy as always, the road packed with people out for a stroll or looking for a potion.

“That way.” She pointed to a narrow alley between two buildings on the other side of the road. “He was hauling arse.”

“Thank you.” Hella turned in that direction and chanted an incantation in her mind as magic swirled down to her fingertips. Now that she knew where he had gone, it was easier for her to track him with a spell. She wouldn’t need to cast one that could split and search in several directions, saving her strength.

She had the feeling she was going to need it.

She turned her right hand upwards and brought it before her as she neared the end of the incantation and a small golden orb formed above her palm.

The second she had finished the spell, the orb flashed and shot away from her.

Hella hurried after it, her boots pounding the cobbles as she sprinted down the alley. The orb shot right and she skidded as she turned to follow it, and ran faster as it began to accelerate, moving away from her. Not good. She tracked it down another alley and then another, watching it get further and further away from her no matter how fast she ran, and just as she was sure she was going to lose it, it stopped.

Hovered in the air in front of a door.

Kin was in there?

She looked up at the height of the grey three-storey building, an unusual choice for a witch. Normally fae and other immortals lived in these houses in the centre of the town, and the shifters, witches and demons stuck to their districts.

Hella gathered her strength and approached the door. The golden orb fizzled and disappeared as she reached it and she blew out her breath as she stared at the black wooden door. To knock or not to knock?

She went with not knocking, even when her stomach squirmed at the thought of her sneaking inside and seeing something she didn’t want to witness. She held her nerve, telling herself that what she had with Kin was real and that he wouldn’t betray her with another.

She was his fated one after all.

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