Page 99 of A Wolf in the Garden

“I’m maintaining the snuggly teddy bear comment from last full moon,” I reply, giggling as he huffs, his hot breath ruffling my hair. I lift my head to look at him, pulling myself further up his body so that I can kiss his muzzle. I reach up, touching one of his ears, fingers exploring the tufted points. On instinct I scratch behind it, and the rhythmicshushsound of fur dragging against the grass tells me his tail is wagging again, his eyes now half-closed, my blissed-out wolf.

The moon hangs low over the water now, and the glow of it against the still ocean is so bright I almost miss the ripples in the surface when I glance up. But my brain snags on something out of the corner of my eye, and I jerk, freezing as I spot it, just beyond the edge of the cliffs.

Not it.Them.

“Fae,” I whisper, fear lacing my voice, and Van explodes with movement, picking me up, cradling me to him, snarling in the direction where I was staring just a moment before. The instant he spots them his snarl intensifies, lips pulled right back to reveal all those sharp teeth, his growling barks and the sudden snap of his jaws terrifying in the violence that he promises.

I’ve never seen fae in their true forms before, but I know what these two are immediately. They’re out on the water, appearing to stand above it, but I can see the green glow around their feet, as if they’ve created a platform from their magic. I can’t see details from here, only that they look ethereal in their flowing garb, their pale hair silver in the moonlight, and their eyes shining that eerie fae-green, with antlers — like mine — rising from their heads.

There’s a shimmer of blue in the air between them and us, stretching over the water from cliff to cliff, the faintest hint of silver script appearing for a moment. “Oh thank god,” I breathe, though Van’s violent snarling doesn’t stop. “They’re outside the ward. Van, it’s o —”

Child,a voice speaks, cold and cruel and commanding, and my words cut out in a whimper. Van continues to snarl and snap, but the voice is louder, the voice isin my head, and I can’t escape it.Child, you belong to us now.

No!!I want to cry out, becauseit’s happening again, but it’s as if my body is no longer my own. I can think, I can think thatthis isn’t right, but I can’t move my hands, my legs, my mouth. I can’t control this magic I’ve just discovered.

The magic is controlling me.

You’re coming with us.

No!!!!

But I can feel it, the moment they make me do it. They make me takemymagic, andhis, make me steal Van’s power, thatalphacontrol that he can wield over others.“Evander,”I speak, though inside my head I’m screaming, fighting, clawing for freedom. The sound is filled with that order, his ability to give alpha commands suddenly a weapon against him.“Stay.”

His snarling stops, a choked, horrified noise coming from his throat. My body moves like a marionette, jerky in his arms.“Put me down and let me go,”my voice speaks, ordering him.

He drops me, his wolfish face one of complete horror, and as my body rises from the ground, gait ungainly as I step away, he screams. “NO!ELLIE!”

Van! No! NO!But I’m helpless, unable to do anything, trapped inside my own mind as my steps even out, as whoever is commanding my body gains full control. I’m stepping down from the grassy bank, onto the cool sand, still completely naked.

Come with us.

A wolf’s howl splits through the air as my feet touch the water, and I can hear the desperation in Van’s cry. The howling continues, breaking my heart while my legs wade through the shallows, the water ice cold. I am waist-deep when the sand beneath me suddenly drops off and I gasp, sinking until water laps at my chin, my toes barely touching the ocean floor. It’s freezing, but I can’t do anything. I have no control. This is a living nightmare.

I’m going to die.

Swim.

Nineteen

VAN

Ihowl, desperate, distraught, and unable to fucking move. “HELP ME!” I scream, watching Ellie, possessed by the fae, wade deeper into the water. I throw my head back and howl again and again, my heartbeat thundering in my ears, until I cannot tell when my howling begins and the others end.

I stop calling with a choked sob as I hear the scrape of paws thundering down the track, but I am still frozen in place, unable to do anything except fall to my knees in despair. The wolf that runs up to me is my father, whining as he circles me, stopping to follow the scent of my mate. My own shifter wolf claws to be set free, though he is trapped until moonset, and even this werewolf is so full of pain and aggression that the man in me struggles to speak the words I need to say. “Out there,” I hiss.

He is a man in an instant, his hand on my shoulder. “Get up.” It is an alpha bark. It does nothing.

“Move!” he barks again. He’s trying to break the fae spell over me, to free me. I snarl. Can he not see that it isn’t working?

“Mate,” I growl, though it turns into a sob when I see her head dip under the water.She’s going to drown. She’s going to drown just like Jenny did.

There’s more paws scraping through dirt, more wolves, snarled explanations over the top of my head, and then I am watching my father’s wolf run into the water, leaping through the shallows. In that form he can swim far faster than a human. I am not religious but I pray now;Goddess, keep her safe. Let him save her in time.

I can still see her. She’s just past halfway now, halfway to the end of the cliffs, to the place where the wards end. Her arms glow in the moonlight as she swims slowly towards them, and I’m reminded that although she grew up playing in the shallows constantly, she’s not actually a strong swimmer at all, barely ever venturing deeper than her neck. All my nightmares are coming true at once as I watch her out there, her tiny form so small in all that water.

I have no idea how they’ve gotten to her like this, but it’s clear that they can’t physically pass through the ward, and instead they wait for her to come to them.

I try to move once more, to fight the power these fae have over me,snarlingagainst it, my teeth bared as I give everything I have topushaway the order. I broke free from my father. I can break free from this —

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