Page 23 of Tamed By Air (The Nature Hunters Academy 4)

She stopped on the sidewalk and turned in a slow circle. It was a large subdivision with row after row of houses. Each one looked almost identical, right down to their louvered shutters and box hedges. Rory couldn’t help but imagine each was inhabited by a mindless robot-housewife. “So, where is he?”

“Not far.” Tucker motioned for her to follow him. “I couldn’t take us right out in front of the house in case there were any acolytes keeping an eye out. After the dark elementals got their butts handed to them, they went into hiding. We’re not sure what they’re up to, but we are certain they are planning something.”

Rory imagined they were licking their wounds, but Tucker was right in that their enemy would eventually attack again. She felt more than heard a voice whisper in her head.You belong with the dark ones.She shuddered and hoped Tucker didn’t notice. Was there any light left inside of her?Or am I too far gone?

Aston had explained to her everything he knew about the soul bond and what made them a soul-bonded pair. And once Kimba had confirmed that Danni wasn’t her mother, they’d concluded that Rory’s parents had been killed which must have caused Rory to lose a massive part of her soul. Perhaps that’s why she’d so easily accepted that Danni was her mom, simply because the woman had told her so.

What it all meant was that Rory’s affinity for magic had given her the ability to be trained quite easily as a witch. But she didn’t know what her elemental power would have been or was. If only she’d been found by an elementalist and brought into the fold of one of the academies…

“Can I ask you a question?” Tucker asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Rory clenched her teeth, irritated at being disturbed while she was trying to work out what the hell her existence meant. What was her purpose? “If you must,” she said, unconcerned whether Tucker caught the bitchiness in her tone.

“How did you become a witch?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him rub his chin. “If you’re soul bonded, then you have to be an elementalist. So, how did you become a witch?”

She wanted to tell him it was none of his damn business. But then, if he actually wound up being Aston’s friend, she might feel like a jerk later for being rude. Maybe. Okay, she probably wouldn’t care that she’d been rude. It was taking every ounce of her self-control not to reach over and smack the water elementalist. The longer they were together, the more she realized she simply didn’t like the boy. “How did you become a water elementalist?” she asked instead of answering his question.

“The same way any of us becomes an elementalist,” he said. “My parents were murdered by dark elementals. I was marked and brought into the family, so to speak.” His words said one thing, but the bite in his tone said something different. If Rory had to guess, she’d say that Tucker was bitter about something, and it had to do with being an elementalist. Or maybe it was just because his parents were murdered. That could certainly make a person bitter. Maybe she was being too suspicious.

“Do you like being a water elementalist?”

“I suppose it has its perks,” he said, his voice changing from bitter to pleased. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to have the power to wield an element?”

The word “power” reverberated off the inside of Rory’s mind. She wanted power. She craved power. Power would have given her the ability to resist Danni’s lies. She would have been able to keep Aston with her if she’d been more powerful. Power would give her the ability totakewhat she wanted.

“Whoa,” Tucker said quickly. “You’re crackling over there, little witch.”

Her head snapped around, and she felt electricity ripple up her skin. “Don’t call me that.” Little witch was Kimba’s nickname for her, and no one else was allowed to use it.

Tucker took a step back, almost falling off the sidewalk. “I’m sorry. But you haven’t told me your name.”

There’d been warning bells in her mind since Tucker had shown up, but this one seemed to be louder. “Why would I need to tell you my name if Aston sent you after me?” Her brow rose. “Surely he would have told it to you.”

“I don’t know if you know this, considering you’ve been around witches and not elementalists, but soul-bonded males tend to be a tad possessive. When I asked him for your name, he told me he didn’t like the idea of me speaking your name.”

Rory narrowed her eyes at him. “That sounds ridiculous.” Despite her skepticism, something in his eyes told her he was telling the truth, although in other ways he seemed shadier than a rain forest. She had no clue if soul-bonded males were possessive, though if they were, she couldn’t imagine Aston being that way. He never came across as the possessive type. “That doesn’t sound like my Aston.”

“Maybe that’s because you’ve only been together in the dragon realm. He didn’t have any reason to show any possessiveness. It’s not like a dragon was going to woo you away from him.” Tucker chuckled, seeming to think the idea was ridiculous. It was, but she remained skeptical.

“I suppose,” Rory said slowly, though she still didn’t offer up her name. As far as she was concerned, Tucker had no reason to know her name. They started walking again. As they walked, she noticed something. There was a power emanating off of Tucker, and it seemed to be reaching toward her. If it had been a physical, visible thing, she imagined it would look like dark tendrils attempting to wrap themselves around her. She tried not to flinch away from him when he turned his head toward her, but her feet moved of their own volition. She backed away and nearly tripped over a fire hydrant.

“Whoa.” Tucker reached out to catch her, but Rory lifted her hand and muttered a spell, sending a bolt of electricity through his hand just before it made contact.

She hit the fire hydrant at an angle, which sent her toppling to the right, and she landed on her hip. “Dammit,” Rory gritted out. She sat in the grass next to it and rubbed her side. She glared at the hydrant, but then realized she was glaring at the wrong offender. It was Tucker who deserved her fury.

“Why the hell are you shooting spells at me?” Tucker shook his hand out and then glanced at his palm. “I was trying to keep you from falling on your ass.”

“I don’t like to be touched.” She didn’t add “by weirdos with magic tendrils attempting to molest me” to her statement because she didn’t know what the hell was going on. And she still needed to see if Tucker could actually help her, even inadvertently.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding less irritated. “Next time, I’ll just let you fall.”

“Thank you.” Rory climbed to her feet and dusted off her pants. She looked around the cookie-cutter neighborhood and realized she couldn’t tell how far they’d walked because all the freaking houses and yards look identical. “Are we in some alternate reality? This place is giving me the creeps.”

“You’ve been living in the dragon realm, and a subdivision gives you the creeps?” he asked dryly.

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