Page 22 of Moonlit Choosing Ritual

“Are you coming with me or are you staying here?” he snapped.

“I don’t trust you!” I squeaked.

He clenched his teeth. “Fine. Go to hell!” He turned and quickly walked away.

When he was on the stairs, I shouted, “Wait!” I ran to him and said, “I have to talk to Aria.” Because I wanted to be sure she’d sent him.

He let out an exasperated sigh and took his phone out. He dialed Aria’s number and gave it to me. “A—Aria?”

“Why are you calling me?” she hissed. “Harry will take you to safety!” She disconnected the call and I was left with nothing but to trust my own intuition. I pursed my lips and wondered what other option I had. “Okay,” I breathed. “Where are we going?”

Without answering my question, Harry took out a small bottle of apple cider vinegar. “Sprinkle it over your body.”

“Why?” I asked, confused. It was then that my eyes went to the bandage on his hand. Guilt weighed heavily on me. Because of me, he’d got that injury, and now he was helping me.

“Just do what I say and don’t ask fucking questions!”

I sprinkled the liquid over me as I followed him out of the servants’ quarters. He guided me through the back of the manor toward the tree line where the forest began. “I’m not going inside that forest!” I complained, scared he might kill me.

“For Goddess’ sake, just follow me,” he grated. “We’ll follow the line of trees to the end of this compound.”

“Okay…” I was feeling so fucking unsure, but did I have a choice?

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill you,” he grated when I hesitated. “I’m loyal to Aria. If she’d asked me to kill you, I would have already.”

It took us twenty minutes to reach the end of the compound, where his car was waiting. We quickly got in the car and he sped away toward the highway. Four hours later, he stopped in front of a gated community where he showed some papers. As soon as the guards cleared him, he rolled his car in and stopped in frontof a nice cottage. “This is where you’ll stay for the next month, okay?” he spoke for the first time since we started.

“Okay…”

He got out of the car and walked to the porch. I tightened the grip on my satchel as he knocked softly on the door. We must have waited for less than two minutes when the door opened and a tall, muscular man emerged.

Harry bowed to him and said, “Aria has sent her to you.” He handed him a letter.

The man gave me a once-over, and his lips lifted into a charming smile. Seriously, at this point, I was doubting myself for trusting Harry and Aria. This man looked all shades of wrong. But I was prepared to deal with him as I laid my hand over the hidden pocket of my backpack, where I had hidden the knife Josh gave me.

“It’s fine,” the man drawled. “Aria already told me about her.”

Harry bowed to him and left. He didn’t look in my direction even once before speeding away.

“Come in, Kimble,” the man said. “I’m Liam. Don’t worry, I won’t eat you.”

An old woman peeked from behind him. “Come in,” she chirped with a soft smile. “You can sleep in the room next to mine.”

Her words melted away all my apprehensions. Good people existed in the world.

I stepped into the house.

Chapter 12

Talon

With her smell on my clothes, on my bed, and now in my bathroom, my wolf was at ease. I slept well through the night.

That day, after I put Harry in his place for touching what was mine, she had run away like a doe, scared of the wolves. It was good because she didn’t know she was actually a lamb in the den of wolves. I was sure that this incident would have become the talk of the pack. Who cared? As long as Lupin was satisfied. He was the one who growled at Harry and demanded blood and his head on a spike. I gave him blood.

After she had run away, I wanted to chase her for some twisted reason, but I chose not to. How could I, the strongest Alpha in North America, go to a lowly human and calm her? Ridiculous. What I did was enough.

I hadn’t seen her after that day. I was working on my restraint, looking after my business and my pack, and focusing on Aria. However, the need to shift to release the tension building up in me was enormous.

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