Page 46 of Season of the Wolf

“I think it was something like that,” he teased, growing more distracted by the second.

I smiled, pressing my lips to his throat, tasting his skin again.

“Then, if my math is right … our count is off by two.”

At those words, his pulse raced faster where my mouth covered it, and when I pulled him on top of me I knew he was no longer thinking about the drama. It could wait because it would still be there to greet us in the morning.

It always was.

Chapter Thirteen

Liam

“Stop pacing. It’s bad for your nerves,” Hilda sighed, clearing the remains of a cleansing spell from her work table. The recipe was one of the few I knew off the top of my head.

I guessed she felt the need to rid the house of whatever dark residue the ghoulish witch might have left behind. She’d gotten her out of here sometime before dawn. I knew because I was lying awake when the guards escorted her out. She certainly left quieter than she came in.

“Well, if you won’t stop pacing for the sake of yourownnerves, please stop pacing to sparemine.”

My feet halted, but I didn’t like that she had no explanation for what Evangeline shared about Nick, about the sound so impossible to withstand he had to run off.

When I finally caught up with his grandfather, my thoughts weren’t on extracting answers from him—things like why he’d done it, why he’d taken the one thing that mattered right out of my arms. My thoughts were singular.

I wanted him to suffer.

Had I realized there was a chance Evangeline would one day return, had I known another Liberator would show up as well, I might have done things differently. It could have been useful to understand what he experienced leading up to the day he crept through our bedroom window.

“It has to mean something.”

“Or, it could mean nothing at all,” Hilda countered.

“But the sound intensified when he got near her. This morning, when we discussed it again, she said he described it like a buzzing in his ear.”

She sat back in her seat, dusting the remains of sage ash from her lap. Her eyes landed on mine and I guessed she saw the desperation in them.

With a sigh, she jumped in to help me brainstorm. “Buzzing,” she said to herself. “Vibration. Spiritual frequency,” she rambled.

None of that made sense to me, but I listened anyway. She knew more about these things than I did.

“Perhaps it’s because her dragon has left her,” Hilda suggested, catching me off guard with the statement.

My brow tensed with confusion. “What do you mean?”

Her brown hand lifted into the air, a cluster of metal bracelets clanking together when she gave a dismissive wave.

“You must have known,” she went on. “Her dragon has withdrawn from her, leaving her to solely rely on her wolf. It’s been that way since … well, I’m sure you can guess.” Her eyes flitted toward the window as her fingers laced in her lap.

I lowered my head, imagining the loss Evangeline must feel. It wasn’t difficult to do because I, too, felt incomplete in the absence of my dragon. I dismissed the thought, focusing on Hilda’s last point.

“You think that’s it? He senses her dragon is gone?”

She tipped her head from side to side as she considered my theory. “Not exactly, but it’s possible that with her wolf so strong, she’s vibrating on a different frequency and this was his body’s response to it.”

I was lost. Hilda noticed as much and rolled her eyes with a laugh before explaining.

“Life is energy and this energy has a detectable frequency, although most are unable to pick up on it, it may be that Nick can. At least when it comes to Evangeline,” she explained. “I’m of the mind that altering the state of matter changes its frequency. So, in theory, if Evie’s no longer meshing with her dragon as she once was, it’s possible her frequency has changed.”

“But why would that matter to him? Why would that be something he’s able to detect?”

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