Page 228 of A Warrior's Fate

As Kai rose, Isla took his hand and shrugged. “Well, one woman’s going to have to teach him.”

Isla sighed and tucked further into Kai’s warmth as the group splayed across the benches of the ferry to Abalys. The action wasn’t necessary, the brine-tinged winds around the river not as chilled as the hilly city they’d departed, but she’d never turn down the opportunity.

She tried her hardest not to focus on the way Ameera and Sebastian were sitting before her, alongside Adrien, her brother’s arm thrown behind the general, laying casually on the bench’s back. But not touching her. Isla knew Ameera was aware of it, and she didn’t seem to protest or recoil.

The seating of the vessel only catered to three persons at a time, maybe four, but given the size of the men, all muscle-bound and long-limbed, they couldn’t get it to work comfortably. So, the eight had split off. Jonah, Rhydian, and Davina in the frontmost row, Adrien, Sebastian, and Ameera in the row behind, and Isla and Kai taking the back. It made it difficult for them to engage in the conversation being had—with Sebastian enrapturing the group in a tale of their youth, leaving out Io’s name, while allowing Adrien to add in some commentary—but Isla was fine with it. Seeing them, hearing them, especially getting along well with the rest of the group, was enough for her.

Plus, it helped that their distance and the darkness had also made it easy for her to run her hand absentmindedly along Kai’s thigh without watchful eyes. Made it so that Ameera couldn’t see her occasional glances at her mate’s face, which at times made it obvious what wicked things she was pondering mind-to-mind to him for when they got home.

On a particular contemplation—one that involved her making him wait at the foot of their bed while she took care of herself, with a rule that he could only watch—Kai adjusted in his seat, letting out an airy chuckle and throwing his head back in a way that had even more lewd thoughts whirring through her head. She bit down hard on her lip, catching the faint scarring of where her teeth had left a mark on him. Entirely hers, he was.

She could feel the desire coiling in her lower belly. It had been a while since they’d had sex that wasn’t rushed or half-asleep. If she wanted to make it until the end of the night, to taunt him until they made it back to their bedroom, then she needed to stop.

As if sensing the rise between them now, Ameera turned slightly, narrowing her eyes to which Isla returned an innocent smile.

And then she distracted herself, moving her hand lower to rest on Kai’s knee and looking out into the trees that lined the distant forest.

She tensed.

Nothing like the fear of seeing a pair of red eyes emerge from the darkness to kill one’s libido.

Kai had either felt her tighten up or sensed the shift in her demeanor because he asked, casual but alert, “Do you see something?”

“No.” Isla faced forward again.

She knew that tonight was supposed to be free of talk of the challenge and all their other problems, but she couldn’t shake them away entirely.

They hadn’t been able to track down any other tunnel openings within the pack, Callan’s map seeming to highlight a theory rather than actual locations when it came to its drawn lines.

If only he was around when she wanted to speak to him. But she hadn’t seen him since that day in the forest when Kai threatened him to leave Deimos. It didn’t appear to be a concern to anyone else. Never brought up by Eli or any of the other guards or warriors. Their silence made her warier than him still being here. She would imagine him leaving his post would’ve been an issue.

She thought back to that night in his room. The blood on the doorframe, on the piece of the diadem, the killer lurking in the shadows.

Where had they been this whole week?

It had felt like every minute, Isla was looking over her shoulder for them to appear, and now they were simply—silent.

Had she pushed them too far that night in the wasteland after reaching to unveil them? Were they regretting helping? Were they assisting the witch again? Had the witch got to them? Angry over what they’d done—or hadn’t done. Not killing Kai that night.

Isla heaved a deep breath, trying to wrap her mind around how she could possibly be afraid for a monster.

Isla and Kai, with their hoods thrown over their heads, had moved with her arm looped through his as the group strode down Abalys’s wooden streets to Talha. Tonight, they’d decided, they wouldn’t hide. Not any more than Kai would as the alpha out in public courting a woman for the night.

Mavec was the homestead of the key pack gossips, the ones that would deconstruct everything about her once it officially broke that the alpha had found his fated and a new luna was on her way. The ones that would either vilify her or…not be so horrible.

But in Abalys, the rule was what happened here, remained here. Kai had done many things—things he wouldn’t disclose to Isla, brushing it off as him being young and stupid—that had never left these docks.

Specifically, hadn’t left Talha.

It wasn’t the first time Isla had been to the tavern the group favored, but it was the first time she’d gone inside to see it full and in its glory. The heat thwacked her in the face first, the expansive open floor packed with patrons, some flittering between the bar, their seats, or the dance floor near a raised platform where musicians were performing, or the corner where a few billiards tables had been set up. The smells were something to adjust to. Overwhelmingly of bitter ale and pungent spirits, body odor and the faintest hint of smoke, as if the hearth had been burning earlier. At least something smelled decent cooking in a kitchen somewhere.

The noise Sebastian had made sounded as if he’d died and gone off into eternity.

And from his spot behind her, a surprised Adrien muttered, Goddess, almost simultaneously with a patron in front of them.

Kai had dropped his hood, Isla realized, and she was happy she’d unfurled herself from him before they’d walked in. She wasn’t sure if she would’ve been able to handle the attention.

The awareness of his presence was like a drop of water in an ocean, rippling across and defying all sense in the way it calmed the untamable.

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