Page 21 of Gone Hunting

I nod, mulling through what she said. “I don’t mean to insult you, but I’m surprised by your tigress. I would think where your best interests are involved, she’d be there to help you out.”

Celia quiets, keeping her attention ahead on where the well-worn path leads up to the barn. I start to think I went too far. But then she speaks in that cautious way she does when she’s afraid to open up.

“Unlike your wolf, my tigress is almost a separate entity. She resides within me, but I’m not certain she shares my soul. You’re better connected to your beast, from what I’ve seen. I’m not. There are moments when it’s all I can do to keep her from wandering and under control.”

“I don’t know about that.” I step ahead, lifting a low-lying branch to avoid it smacking me in the head. “When I’m angry or when I’m in danger like we were back on the mountain, my beast is quick to respond.”

“Mine is, too,” she admits. “But sometimes she responds in anger too quickly, making us do things that maybe we shouldn’t.”

“Like what?” I ask.

Her tigress eyes replace her own and she releases a shuddering breath. “Like hunt,” she whispers.

The wind stills and the chirping birds settling into their nests appear to hunker down. “You don’t mean game, do you?”

Her silence and the cool stare of her beast are answer enough.

“Does she make you do things you don’t want to do?”

Celia opens her mouth, but then shuts it abruptly, continuing forward without me. It’s not until the incline levels off that she realizes I’m not following.

This is a young, vulnerable girl who has suffered a great deal. I hate it, but I hate how it hurts her more.

“Celia?” I ask. “Does your tigress make you do things you don’t want to do?”

Small tears form across her irises, dissolving the eyes of her tigress and returning those of the Celia I first met. She blinks, releasing them to cut lines down her dirty cheeks. “Yes,” she admits. “It’s how I think I got here.”

I stop in front of her, fiddling with the strap of my pack. I’m not nervous. I’m scared. Scared for Celia and what’s waiting for her at home. “What happened?”

“There were these men, who broke into our home when we were little. They killed my parents.”

“Wow,” I murmur, although the words that follow are harsher.

“I found those men. All of them. It took me several months, but I did it.” She trembles. “I chased the last one down an alley. I had him, when something appeared several feet away.”

“What was it?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It was a dark figure. I could sense she meant me harm, and I felt her magic build when she saw me. But then something appeared behindher.” She wipes her face, embarrassed by her openness. “The next thing I know, I woke up here with no clothes and no memory of how I arrived.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, when I don’t respond. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s rare that I talk with anyone outside my family.”

“Don’t you have any friends?” Out of all the things I could have asked, I think this was possibly the worst.

“I have my sisters and Ana Lisa,” she says, her tone even, despite how her expression flickers with sorrow no one this young should feel. “They’re enough.”

She swallows as hard as Liam did after she removed that clump of evil and his throat sealed shut. Just because she didn’t ingest the poison he did, doesn’t mean she hasn’t felt her share of pain.

“I’ve said too much,” she stammers. “I should go.”

She doesn’t quite turn around when I drop my pack and wrap my arms around her. My embrace isn’t hard. It’s a shelter from everything that hurts her, and a shield against anything that might try. I don’t know Celia. We only met a few long hours ago. But everything I’ve seen makes up for it.

Celia faced an immense snarling wolf head on, telling him she didn’t want to hurt him. She’s a young woman who hid in embarrassment, but who took on a creature thatwereslive in fear of, knowing she couldn’t heal if wounded.

This female saved my friends, my brothers, ignoring everything it could cost her.

No. I don’t know Celia. But what I do know is enough.

That warmth amplifies between us, diffusing her fear and shame as if they never manifested. I bow my head, curling into her as her arms secure around my waist, the closeness we share reducing our intense breathing into something harmonious and calm.

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