Page 50 of Mastering their Maiden

I’d let them deal with it.

“Good,” Zander muttered when I caught up and fell into step beside him, barely acknowledging my presence. “Happy to see I’m not the only one who figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“Where Aria’s been this whole time.”

I pursed my lips, keeping my strides long to match Zander’s quick pace. It wasn’t until we veered slightly off the path into the woods that I realized where he was heading, and I cursed myself for how stupid we’d been.

“Frayne.”

Zander nodded. “If she’s not there, he’ll know where she went.”

He gave me a look, expecting me to voice agreement. I didn’t think he was wrong, but I worried where Aria might have gone if she’d only stopped to say goodbye to the man then left.

I understood Kaiden’s hesitancy in launching a full search for just one girl. One girl we hadn’t made an official claim on yet. One girl we were, in theory, not to be focusing on. Kaiden’s heart was torn between showing solidarity with our tribe and heeding his own desires. Desires he’d denied himself for so long. Desires all four of us had denied.

I didn’t want to deny them any longer, and not only because I was out of my mind with worry. Aria needed us. And the more time that passed without her at our side, I realized that was only half of it.

We needed her, too.

“She’s going to fight,” I warned Zander, and he grinned.

“I’d expect nothing less. But fight or not, she’s coming back with us.”

He quickened his pace, and I followed suit, wanting to believe him.

Frayne’s cabin was about a mile from the village, tucked into a thicket of trees off the main road merchants traveled. There was smoke coming from the chimney, along with the usual signs of life. Fresh skins drying on a rack, wood stacked in piles with more waiting to be chopped. But when we looked inside the house through the windows and pushed open the rickety door, the cabin was empty. No sign of Frayne or Aria, but there was a rack with freshly washed clothes. A top and fitted trousers she wore when she went into the woods. A single skirt and a white blouse. They weren’t soaking wet, but they weren’t dry either.

“She didn’t leave.” Zander sounded relieved and stepped past me to look around the corner of the cabin, his eyes narrowed as he headed toward the woods. “She’s around here.”

He took off into the thicket of trees, and I jogged to catch up with him, scanning the horizon for any sign of her.

“Do you think she’ll come back?”

“Eventually.”

He narrowed his eyes, his expression growing fierce as we moved further into the woods. About a mile south of the cabin, I noticed more signs of her when we slowed down. Strands of pale hair on a branch. Small footprints in the grass. They led toward the lake, but also traipsed back toward the cabin and toward the village. She’d been wandering around this close the whole time and we’d missed her. Or she’d hidden herself well enough that we might see these hints, but never find her.

“She’s good at going unnoticed,” Zander grumbled, turning side to side before he started to walk back toward the cabin. “But she can’t be far, and she wouldn’t leave without her clothes.”

“Maybe we should go to the lake,” I suggested. “She could have gone down there to—”

“Bathe.”

Both Zander and I froze, slowly turning toward the sound of a soft, feminine voice, both of us breathing a sigh of relieved exasperation a moment later.

Aria stood beside a thick oak, eyes narrowed, her posture stiff. She was dressed in a long tunic and dark pants that were a little too big for her, and her hair was wet, dampening the shoulders of her shirt. Her skin glowed in the light that filtered through the trees, shadows dancing over her as they swayed softly. She held a bow in her hands, the string pulled back, an arrow nocked and ready to fly at her command.

She was the most gloriously beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Zander chuckled low in his throat, and her face scrunched up as she braced and drew her shoulders back, aiming the arrow directly at his chest. “I told you what I’d do if you came near me.” Her voice was low. Deadly soft, deadly serious, yet somehow still so sweet.

“Then do it,” Zander challenged, holding his arms wide. I stifled the urge to jump in front of him because sweetness aside, I didn’t put it past her to shoot Zander if he got cocky. I put my hand on his chest and held the other up in her direction, trying for a diplomatic tone when I spoke.

“We thought you left us.”

“I did.”

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