Page 6 of Savage Fate

We’d eventually break. The attraction between us could never be ignored.

I wiped the condensation from the mirror with my palm and leaned over the counter, staring at my reflection. Dark circles shadowed my haunted eyes. I’d barely gotten any sleep, and my appetite was nonexistent.

But who could eat after discovering that female shifter’s mutilated corpse with her heart cut out? My stomach heaved as I pictured the graying flesh and massive hole in her chest.

Could this have been a coincidence like Gerry speculated? Could this shifter be a victim of a personal enemy with no connection to The Collective Hunt?

Sure.

Was it likely?

Doubtful.

The sinking feeling in my gut told me this wasn’t a separate incident.

As I grabbed the brush off the counter, the steamy bathroom vanished, and a murky forest materialized around me…

My breaths camein ragged pants as I pumped my arms and legs, sprinting over fallen logs, my feet sinking into the soft needle-covered ground with every hurried step.

Something was chasing me, its presence closing the gap between us. If I slowed at all, I’d be captured and torn apart.

Pale-blond curls danced in front of my face, a stark contrast to the dark woods. Blue veins in my hands traveled and branched out beneath my alabaster complexion. A scar glinted in the moonlight peeking through tree limbs as I fled from the monsters…

A knockat the door yanked me back to the present, and I gripped the edge of the counter to stop from falling on my ass.

“Tate?” Hawk’s voice tried to penetrate the panic fogging my brain. “Are you okay?”

What the ever-loving hell was that?

The same intense fear I’d felt during the nightmare in Camus’s car filled me. But neither time was I the person being chased.

Something about it reminded me of my visions in Anton’s nursery.Mynursery. Terror had engulfed my senses as if they weremymemories.

Had the Infernal Sol cracked my noggin, causing me to hallucinate? Was I still going nuts even though the amulet was gone?

“I’m fine.” I shook the unease off and wiped the beads of water off my face. “Just give me a second.”

The raven had stayed with the Anders in my old room for the last week. I thought Mohan Wilds would do him some good, but it wasn’t my place to ask. Fane, of course, knew what I wanted, so he simply brought Hawk home with us the night we freed him from Ruin’s lab.

A lump clogged my throat when I thought of how much that meant to me. Even though Fane didn’t particularly like Hawk, he helped him for me.

The demon shifter would like him even less if he remembered that scene between the raven and me in the library.

After brushing my hair and attempting to steady my hands, I exited the bathroom as Hawk perched on the edge of Fane’s bed, the gray comforter wrinkling under him. His dark blond hair was disheveled and eyes shadowed, but anger didn’t twist his features anymore.

He was slowly coming out of that cloud of fury he’d been in for months.

“How are you feeling?” I asked and rummaged through the drawers Fane emptied in his dresser for my clothes. He wouldn’tbe thrilled to find me hanging out in a towel with the guy I’d been in love with for years. “Did your session with Cirilla go well?”

Cirilla, the eccentric shifter with fae blood, had been teaching Hawk meditation techniques to deal with his anger. It seemed to be doing wonders for him. That and the Anders. This family was a healing elixir all on its own.

“She might be a little batty, but there’s some truth to her madness.” He flashed a wry grin and leaned back on his palms. “I think she and Julia are secretly best friends.”

I snorted on a laugh as I grabbed a pair of jeans. “They’ll deny it until the day they die.” Those two fought more than Fane and me. “Keep your eyes forward while I change unless you want Fane to claw them out.”

Hawk turned away as a shiver raked down his back. “He really would pluck my eyeballs out and eat them if he caught me watching you. Hell, he’d probably castrate me for being in here while you dressed.”

“You could have left when you saw me in a towel.” After slipping on a pair of underwear, I tossed that towel aside. “But you stayed.”

---