Page 66 of Enspelled

He doesn’t say a word.

“So, I’ll ask again. What am I doing here if nothing I say even matters?”

“That isn’t what I said,” he growls.

“I’m the one with these souls inside me, Keane, so surely out of anyone in the room, or even the world, it makes sense that I would know if they were trying to tell me something.”

He leans even closer, but this time I’m caring less about him kissing me than about me kicking him. “You just admitted no one said anything. It was just a dream.”

“How can you be so sure about that?”

Again, he’s silent.

I’d thought we were supposed to be a team. That together we’d figure out who killed his pack, remove the souls from me, and maybe even figure out a way to control my powers.

Clearly, I was hoping for something impossible.

“Let me go,” I say, lowering my gaze to his chest.

I feel his probing stare search my face. “You’re not going out there.”

“That isn’t what I said. Let me go.”

He holds me for a second longer, and then his hands fall away before he retreats a step. A small one.

I edge around his body and cross back to the bed, sitting as I was before, back against the wall and my arms wrapped around my legs, staring straight ahead.

When I woke up in a strange room, alone, knowing I was with the wolves, I was so afraid. But I told myself that I would be okay. I convinced myself that Keane was still alive and somehow, no matter what happened, we’d figure out a way to survive and then escape.

So when Liam brought me a pretty green dress to wear, I did what I was told, and I refused to let the awkwardness of why he would suddenly be interested in giving me a dress bother me. But when I saw the bruise on my neck in the bathroom mirror, I could guess how Keane would respond—and I’m guessing so did Liam, which is why he told me to keep my head lowered.

No matter how much I try to shake off this feeling of betrayal, I can’t. I don’t know when I started thinking of us as a team, but that’s gone. Now I just feel alone.

More alone than I did before.

“We’ll wait a little longer before escaping,” Keane says.

I don’t respond. I just close my eyes and pretend he isn’t there.

20

SERA

I’m reaching for the door handle of the Madden Grove newspaper office when Bodie beats me to it. He pulls the door open and I give him a faint smile. “Thanks.”

His smile is wider. “No problem. Now, what was with all the weird questions back there?”

As I step outside into a quiet morning on Main Street, with the only people about the shop owners busy preparing for customers, I muffle a yawn that sneaks out of me.

Grabbing the grimoire and a few changes of clothes from home the day before didn’t take long. I knew that staying would only cause more problems, but I hadn’t expected to spend an entire night stretched out on Bodie’s cabin couch, flipping through Layla’s grimoire.

While I didn’t believe that Mom would throw me out on the street, my choosing Briar over the coven is going to have repercussions for the foreseeable future—and not just in my house. So when Bodie suggested we go to his rented cabin, I swallowed my complaints about staying with a wolf and agreed.

Neither of us got much sleep. Even though Bodie didn’t know exactly what I was looking for in the grimoire, he stayed up with me, bringing me coffee when I dozed off and talking to me when I was in danger of falling asleep.

“I wanted to be sure,” I tell him as we head toward my car. Where he’s left his truck, I have no idea.

“Of?”

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