Page 32 of Wolf, Willow, Witch
Tehlor slid out of the truck and walked inside, relaying the encounter at the Haven house to Lincoln as effectively as she could. She set Gunnhild down, draped her coat and purse over the back of the couch, and dropped her shoes. Lincoln didn’t speak. He listened, tipping his head as she paced in the living room, striding from the couch to the kitchen, then pausing to reach into the fridge and crack open a beer. She guzzled the cold, crisp beverage while he took off his labradorite necklace. He shook out his wolfish head and scratched behind one fuzzy ear, yawning wide to show rows of sharp, pointed teeth.
“So, you think Phillip and Rose are trying to get people pregnant,” Lincoln deadpanned.
“The wives, yeah. I think they’re building, like, an incest army.”
Lincoln mouthedincest armyand shook his head. “Which would make it a sex cult.”
Tehlor batted at the air, shooing the idea. “Yeah, sure, that.”
“And they’ve already given the Breath of Judas to this girl?” Lincoln asked.
“Sophia, yeah.”
“And she’s Amy’s sister?”
“That’s what Amy told me.”
“Well, her husband cheated on her,” he said, nodding at Tehlor’s raised brows. “He’s real torn up about it, but he’s positive the revival bath’ll set things straight.”
“He told you that? After meeting you for, what, five minutes?”
“You’d be surprised what people will tell you when you pretend to be on their side,” he said.
True. Tehlor wrinkled her nose. “Okay, but what does Daniel cheating on his wife have to do with…” She narrowed her eyes.Oh. “You think he fucked her sister.”
“I think he fucked her sister,” Lincoln repeated, setting his palms on the breakfast bar. He licked his canine, pink tongue darting over slick, white bone. “I’m not questioning whatever you experienced, okay? But what if we can get this girl on our side? If they’re using her as a vessel for the Breath of Judas then we can stealher, can’t we?”
“You’re talking about kidnapping a person. Like, a living, breathing person—”
“Who is being kept against her will in a church safehouse by a militia-sex-cult,” he said, adding weight to each word. “Doubt she’ll mind hanging out with us for a while.”
She listed her head, considering. “You’re not wrong, but where do we even go from there? Do we try to get the magic out of her? Exorcise her? Convince her to work for us? C’mon, that’s messy.”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Yeah?To what, exactly? Getting the magic out of her, exorcising her, or—”
“It’s a mess,” he snapped. He rolled his eyes and huffed out an exasperated breath. “But since when have you cared about messy?”
Tehlor sipped her beer and shrugged.
Lincoln walked into the kitchen.
“You’re not scared of shit,” he said, inching closer, backing her against the counter. Playfulness edged into his voice. “You’re vicious, and powerful, and way too fuckin’ confident for your own good.” He slid his hand around her neck, angling her face upward. Her heart skipped, but he kept his grip loose, thumb following her jaw. “Don’t let some glorified worship band get in your head, all right? We go to the revival, we find the girl, and we get out. The end.”
Attentiveness seared her. She found his wrist with her free hand, closing her palm around his pulse. Weeks ago, he’d held her in a similar fashion against the bathroom wall, snarling about murder and deception. Right then, like that, she noticed the warmth in his eyes, how he loomed over her like a bodyguard, and smiled despite the uncertainty bundled in her chest. The radical, reckless part of her that’d bargained with a goddess to bring him back to life sat in direct opposition to the barbed, defensive part of her that couldn’t fathom what might happen if she lost him. Love was a word she refused to use. It was too soon, too fresh, and love was too unpredictable to trust.
But Tehlor was obsessed with him. Hyper-fixated on what he did to her, how he influenced her. She clung to the rich, heady desire boiling in her stomach. Chased the devotion they'd mutually ignored and exploited. She wanted to be hissource. His point of contention. The thing that made him weak and selfish.
Because Lincoln Stone had unburied something wicked and wrong inside her. Something she couldn’t deny. And she desperately wanted to do the same to him.
“It’s never that simple,” she murmured.
“It is when you’re us.”
She finished her beer and set the can on the counter. “And if it goes wrong?”
Laughter purred in his throat. “For their sake, I hope it doesn’t.”
