Page 100 of The Wild Moon
“The more blood, the stronger the ritual you could enact,” Vir said, somewhat disgusted. “Terrano would bless people like that. A sacrifice would garner special attention.”
“Crap. What ritual do you think they’re after?”
“I don’t know,” Vir said. “But I don’t particularly want to find out.”
“Me neither,” I said, my heart racing as fast as the pounding in my head. “We need to get out of here. Like now.”
Vir said something, but my head chose that moment to go into overdrive. I thrashed against the bonds, a thin wail escaping my tightly clenched teeth. The Soulbond. It was coming. It wascoming!
“Can you break us free?” I struggled to say, my words broken and choppy. I was nearly out of time.
“No,” Vir said. “They were smart and prepared. Silver works on gods as well. I am as helpless as you.”
A third voice broke in. “Guess it’s a good thing for your grumpy, old godly ass, then, that she isn’t helpless, isn’t it?”
My head turned so fast my muscles locked up on me.
“Aaron?” I gasped.
Chapter Fifty-One
“Iam not grumpy,” Vir said.
“Right,” Aaron drawled. “What about–”
“Now is not the time for that,” Vir snapped, cutting Aaron off.
Aaron just grinned and winked at me. “Time to get you out of here before the big dick shows up.”
“Okay,” I said, confusion cutting through the pain. “But what are you doing here? And how do you know him?”
“I’m doing my job,” Aaron said as he flicked out a knife and went to work sawing the metal-thread bonds. “Remember? You hired me to guide you and keep you safe.”
“This isn’t exactly what I meant by that second part,” I said.
“I know,” he whispered, keeping his voice down, hinting I should do the same. “But I’m a man of my word.”
“That’s very noble of you,” I said, truly touched by his dedication. He had quite literally just saved my life. And Vir’s, too, most likely.
“I felt guilty because I overcharged you by twenty percent.”
I snorted. “That makes more sense. But how are you here? How the hell did you find us?”
“We went after you,” he said, “when you ran out of the campsite. Followed you from a distance. There was a good amount of wolves after you. We weren’t ready for that many.”
I hadsomany questions. How was he ready foranyshifters? And how did he know Vir? There were a lot of conclusions to be drawn there, but there didn’t seem time for that.
“Anyway,” Aaron said as he continued to saw away at my bonds, the silver resistant to being cut. “We stuck around the area. Dave monitored things with some of his techy gadgets, one of those drones or whatever. There was a commotion a few hours back, and we started moving in. Found this giant underground place and just sort of followed from a distance.”
“I see,” I said, gritting my teeth against another fresh, blinding stab of pain. “I don’t believe you.”
“Good thing it doesn’t matter. Are you okay?” he asked as I tried to shake off the pain.
I’m pretty sure I only made it worse.
“I’ll be fine,” I lied, struggling to see through the constant parade of tears down my face. “Where’s the rest of your team?”
At that moment, a tremendous angry bellow filtered through the temple. It could have been my agony-riddled brain, but I swear it sounded like there was a bit of pain mixed in with the anger.
