Page 76 of Brutal Alpha Beast
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But the message was clear—the vines are paths, leading somewhere we need to go, so that we can defeat the curse. I wish I could have followed them, but the vision only took me so far.”
Ellis is deep in thought, the sunset streaming in through the windows, wrapping us in a golden, warm glow.
Despite what I saw, nothing feels clearer. Ellis clenches his jaw and nods a little as he digests what I’ve said.
“Do you think it could be leading us to another tree that we need to destroy?”
“I thought that too,” I say. “But I can’t be sure. Why vines? Why not roots? It still doesn’t make sense, although there is a certain feeling I have now.”
“What’s that?”
“I know we’ve tried looking for vines already, but I feel like I have this connection to them now. I don’t know how to explain it, but I bet if we go looking, I’ll be able to decipher the right ones. By feeling.”
Ellis nods slowly, thoughtfully. “That makes sense. Maybe there’s a magical link now, maybe the vision opened something up in you.”
I wrap my hands tighter around the mug, letting its warmth ground me. “That’s what it felt like. Like something clicked into place. Like I’ll know the right path when I see it. I think. I don’t know. It’s worth a shot.”
Ellis smirks.
“What?”
“It’s just funny that no matter how much we try and chase down the answers to this thing, it always reminds us that it’ll reveal itself in its own time. To you.”
I shrug. “Yeah, pretty frustrating, but we should take our small wins where we can.”
I glance up at him. His expression is steady, and he meets my gaze without hesitation. “Yes,” he says. “We should.”
***
At first, I was hesitant to go hunting with Ellis in the forest at night—it’s not like I don’t love nature at night time,I usually do, but my vision has spooked me, and I’m feeling cautious, to say the least.
Not that I told any of this to Ellis. I still want him to think I’m strong.
“Are you sure you got this?” He asks me as we walk further and further away from the pack into the woods.
“Yeah,” I shrug. “Why not?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Maybe because I was nursing you back to health only a couple of hours ago?”
I scoff. “You were notnursingme.”
He sort of was.
I’m still not over how good it felt to be looked after by him, the him that fully knows who I am.
“Maybe nursing is too strong a word,” he says, the moonlight illuminating the smooth texture of his skin. “But still, you were in a lot of pain.”
“I know,” I say, taking a breath. “But I’m fine now. And we don’t have time to waste.”
The truth is, I don’t feel fine. I feel strange... like there’s a powerful energy that’s burrowed itself inside of me. It’s hard to explain, as it often is with witchy stuff, you never know what’s magical and what’s a typical human sensation—like exhaustion.
I opt for it being exhaustion. We really do not have time to waste.
We move through the night, slowly, and I spark a ball of white light in my hand to illuminate the way.
Every time we come across a vine, or something that looks vine-adjacent, my heart skips a beat. I freeze, waiting to feel some pull. But nothing comes.
“Do you mind if I shift?” Ellis asks me. “It’ll help.”
