Page 66 of The Alpha Wolf Defying Fate

“What makes you think he can’t leave this realm?” she asked then.

I grimaced as she called the darkness a him, knowing that she was thinking about the voice that had haunted her all this time.

“Because, if the evil being was strong enough to leave, we wouldn’t be searching for them here.”

Sasha thought it over before nodding. “I guess you’re right. That’s good then. Means we might still stand a good chance then.”

I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, always a silver lining.”

My finger brushed hers for a moment. Sparks flew up my veins at the slightest touch, my heart soaring even further when she hadn’t pulled away from the brush of our skin together.

I could feel the same shivers that I felt coming from her through the bond. Even when she pulled back her hand, I could still feel the electricity between us, that same magnetic pull of the bond pulling us back together.

I wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her. To assure her that I didn’t mean to insult her before. That I only wanted to make sure she was okay, and that she got all the help she could possibly need to fight against whatever it was that targeted her mind. Be it a strange creature we have yet to know about or the true dark being we sought.

Part of me wondered if I shouldn’t tell her about the dark fate mentioned in the book that had already taught me so much about this world. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t bear the idea that she would believe the voice that called to her belonged to that evil. Especially not without proof first.

Instead, we watched as the sun fully disappeared beyond the horizon, my attention to our surroundings never faltering as we sat there. And as the stars began to come out and illuminate the darkened sky, I gave her a soft nudge with my hand.

“Come on,” I said. “The others will be wondering where we went off to.”

She looked up at me as if she had something more she wanted to say, then simply nodded and straightened up beside me.

We returned to the house in silence, though it didn’t feel quite as heavy as the silence between us before. As we walked, I began to get a sense of being watched. As if something were following us within the shadows.

I reached out with my power to search and came back with nothing. Not even a mouse scurrying through the buildings around us.

‘Be mindful of the shadows,’my wolf growled in my head.‘There is something unsettling about them. It’s like they are moving in closer.’

‘I feel it too,’I agreed.

I paused in the doorway of the house we had taken up residence in, my gaze scanning the shadowy buildings all around as Sasha entered the lit house. Only when she was safe inside did I turn away from the shadows. But even still, that sense of being watched remained.

Chapter Thirty

Sasha

Whenwegotbackto the house, it was lit up with candles everywhere. Baer sat in the large chair in the front room with a grin on his face as we entered, and he lifted his arms out wide.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s better than sitting in the dark,” Ayden said with a laugh. “How did you get them all lit so fast?”

“Rory has a better aim with her fire magic since school,” I answered for Baer as I looked around the room for my cousin. “Speaking of, where is she?”

Baer nodded to the stairs. “Up there. She told me to send you up as soon as you got back.”

I nodded and turned to go up the stairs, leaving the two men to their own discussions.

It had been an uneasy walk back in the dark. While it had annoyed me that Ayden managed to catch up with me before, the walk back through town made me glad he had.

The shadows were moving around every house we passed. Each empty building seemed to darken more as we moved by them before the next took on the darkness in its place. But I couldn’t tell Ayden that. I couldn’t risk him thinking I was just going crazy or telling Rory and having her become even more concerned for me.

Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe this realm just brought it out of me. It wasn’t until we came here that I started experiencing all these voices and moving shadows that only I could see.

‘I can see them as well,’my wolf assured me.‘You aren’t alone.’

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I reached the top landing.

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