Page 208 of The Delta's Rogue
“You outed yourselves. Your little blonde hybrid friend somehow broke through my wards with a locator spell. But it triggered my secondary alarm system. As soon as I realized it, I used astral projection to follow the path of her magic back to this pack.”
Fuck. Astral projection.
She found us the same way Reid and Taryn discovered Dominic’s mom was controlling him. We should have thought of that. If we had, I’d have made sure Rune did her spell at Peter’s instead of at Crescent Lake with Maya.
I can’t let the what-ifs slow me down. I need to focus on the present, on distracting Amara by letting her flaunt her win.
“Then you waited a week to attack us?”
“Weplannedfor a week. I had to make sure everyone was prepared so our attack would go off without a hitch. Not that it mattered…”
As she talks to me with her magically amplified voice and I continue running, the voices of my friends and family in my mind overlap hers.
“She’s over here!”Reid exclaims.
“No, she’s over here!”Maddie replies.
“She can’t be in two places at once!”Wes snarls.
“Shit! She vanished and reappeared ten feet to the right!”Nolan says.
“The one we’re after did the same thing,”Maddie says.
“They’re holograms,”my dad tells them with dawning realization.“She’s tricking us and sending us on a wild goose chase.”
“Fuck!”Reid groans.“We have to find the real Amara.”
My grimace grows with every message sent through the wide-open link between everyone fighting right now. I throw up a block, shutting them out. As much as I want to know what they’re doing, what their plans are, it’s too distracting when I’m trying to be the distraction.
“It wasn’t something I did or said that gave us away as fakes?” I ask out loud, shouting once more.
“No.” Even with her focus split between controlling Sarina and tricking my friends with her hologram illusions of herself, her voice stays calm, cool, and synthetically sweet. “We knew you were from Crescent Lake. But even after the hybrid found us, I didn’t know for sure that you were involved—not until we showed up here and you were among the first to join in on the fighting, with my sweet Anaís at your side.”
“She is MINE!” A growl from my lycan infuses rage into my tone. It shakes the branches around us, laced with a pulse of my aura.
“Yours?” Amara mulls over the word. “Yes, I suppose she is yours. You paid quite handsomely for her, after all. But tell me,Sebastian…” She sneers my name—my real name—and I can picture her sharp eyes glinting with cruelty. “Tell me: how did it feel to buy her? How did it feel to see her naked body displayed for an entire audience of Doms practically foaming at the mouth with excitement and desire for her? How did it feel to know you weren’t the only one trying to win her, that there was a chance someone might have deeper pockets and more money to throw at her to make sure they were the one to bring her home instead of you?”
Her taunts land on the bullseye that is my heart. They strike true, like the darts they’re intended to be.
“How did it feel to go through all of that just to make sure no one else claimed your mate?” she adds.
“Shit!” I almost lose my footing.
How did she know?
As I glance behind me and my eyes flick down to Sarina’s neck, Amara laughs. “That’s right. I have to say, that mark on her neck is a rather lovely decoration. Not as gorgeous as a silver collar with a gag attached to it, of course, but still pretty.”
“Ignore her, Seb.”Wesley’s voice breaks through my mental block on the mindlink.“She’s looking for a way to make you stumble. Don’t let her get to you. Don’t fall into her trap.”
“I’m trying,”I reply with an exasperated groan.“I just want this over with. My mate has suffered enough.”
“Can you get through to Sarina? Can she fight it off?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet she can. She’s strong.”
“How’s it coming with Amara?”I snap, changing the subject.
