Page 44 of Untethering Dark

A startling, revolutionary realization.

“I must have stood too quickly,” she murmured, her cheeks pinkening with another blush. There’d been a lot of those tonight. More than that, her steadiness and coherence had returned. She didn’t need him anymore, and yet she wasn’t pulling away.

“It’s okay,” he replied, still not letting go, and it was doing fascinating things to both their heartbeats. Usually, it took an entire night of hunting to get his up to such a quick pace.

Something was changing, shifting in him, melting like ice in springtime. One embrace and the whole fabric of his existence and what it meant to be truly alive turned on its head. How could he have gone his whole life not knowing what this felt like?

The moment she pulled away was coming soon, and he already missed her, dreading the indeterminable countdown to follow until the next embrace. If it ever came. In one fell swoop, this witch had opened a rift in him and utterly ruined his chances of ever closing it.

“Thank you for helping me with the garden.” Slowly, she withdrew, the space between them cold in her absence. He suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands, awkwardly clutching them at his sides. Because, in truth, he wanted to reach for her again, to stretch this night for as long as he could, but she was tired and needed to rest.

“You saved me so much time and trouble.” The softness in her voice and warmth in her eyes made him dare to hope he need not suffer loneliness and longing anymore. All he needed to do was reach.

He caressed the pale curve of her cheek with the rounded back of a claw. The proximity, the brief touch, evoked the warm scent he detected on her the afternoon before, when he’d vowed to fight by her side. “I’m glad I could help. Would you like me to come by again tomorrow?”

Her bright smile alone would’ve been all the answer he needed, but she replied, “There’s nothing I’d like more.”

And that’s when he understood the scent. It matched the one coming off him—happiness, joy, a thrilling spark of hope. There was no doubt in his mind now that the magnetic pull that drewhim here tonight would only grow stronger. He never had a care to measure time before. But now he’d count every single moment until the one that brought him back to her.

“I’m planning on making another batch of Plätzchen. Any requests?”

What new emotions might she offer for him to taste?

His claws curled around a lock of her silvery, white hair, lingering overlong. “Surprise me, little witch.”

The fluttering in Astrid’s stomach increased when she watched Gudariks dash off into the trees. Muscle rippled beneath the broad expanse of his back and dappled rear, built for speed and endurance as much as power. To run and run and never stop until the sun came up—or every defiant hiker was devoured.

But there was one feature that undercut this fierce strength.

At the base of his spine, he had a short, fuzzy tail like a deer’s that looked cloud-soft to the touch. Dark up top, and snowy white underneath.

It wascute.

She hadn’t missed how close he crouched, angling his body toward hers, stealing little touches. Or how he held her when she needed him to, and still yet, when she just simply wanted him to. And then there was the thrill she got every time he called her “little witch” and asked if she’d like him to come back.

Maybe Perchta had been right. There was something there.

But Astrid wasn’t going to rush this, whatever was sparking between them. It would go at the pace it needed to, and when the time came to do the final ritual...

Scheiße.

The final ritual was powered by sex magic.

While Demos wasn’t her partner in life, he was her partner for the spell. When she explained the former, Gudariks seemed to understand, maybe even hinted at personal experience with such an arrangement. But how would she explain the latter? That she couldn’t drop the sexual component of her relationship with Demos just quite yet?

Ancient gods didn’t typically care about monogamy. It was possible Gudariks wouldn’t either, but she couldn’t know for sure without asking. The last thing she wanted was to snuff out the spark between them by doing something that might hurt him.

Transparency, that was the right thing to do. She had to tell him about the ritual. It wasn’t a betrayal. She wasn’t going behind his back. This was just how the magic worked.

Butwhenshould she tell him?

Astrid was so used to being forthright about what she wanted. Her feelings uncomplicated. But with becoming a hag and wanting Gudariks progressing on two different timelines, there was all this messy diplomacy to navigate.

She sighed.

A problem for another day. When things with the ritual were more...imminent.

As Astrid turned to head inside, she had the distinct feeling of being watched and looked up. Perched on a branch above, a crow stared down with beady little eyes, eerily still and silent.

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