Page 5 of A Warrior's Fate

He glanced up at her again, thunder meeting ice. “Nothing. The whole doe-eyed thing threw me off. My fault, really.” He gazed back up at the cloudless sky. “I mesmerized you.”

Isla jerked back. “Mesmerized?”

It was a strong word—the right word—but too powerful for her liking. It felt worse hearing that she lacked control and composure than just feeling it herself. She hated that she’d been so transparent. And she despised that he didn’t seem flattered or surprised. Like he knew exactly where her mind had fallen the second she looked at him.

She narrowed her eyes. “You did not mesmerize me.”

“The pounding of your heart says otherwise,” he said.

Isla placed a hand over her chest where the organ was surely thrumming wildly beneath her skin.

Mesmerized.

She bit down on her tongue and folded her arms. “Can I help you with something?”

“I was out here first, you know.” He gestured behind them.

Isla followed his movement, turning to take in the actual expanse of the terrace. She’d been so hypnotized by the moon in front of her, she hadn’t noticed how much it extended towards the sides with curved staircases matching those in the hall down to green and blue sprouted gardens. She noted the spots a predator could’ve surely lurked in the shadows.

She glowered into the darkness.

Zero for two tonight in terms of awareness, then.

In the Hunt, distracted could mean as good as dead.

Isla turned back and sized him up. Underneath his black, well-tailored, long coat stitched in intricate patterns of silver, he seemed solidly built, but considering she’d spent the past two years training tirelessly to throw herself into a forest laden with feral beasts, equipped with nothing but her wolf, she probably could’ve taken him if she wanted to. A hard battle without a doubt, but she’d hold her own.

“Why are you out here?” she asked him.

Her annoyance and attempts at being intimidating seemed to amuse him more than anything. “For the same reason you are, I’m guessing.”

“And that is?”

“Looking for something worthwhile amidst the tedium of the night—and I found you.”

The words escaped his mouth in a way that made Isla’s breath catch, for some reason wooing her into an illusion a bit more innocent than before. Until…

“You win some, you lose some, I suppose.”

Back with the patronizing.

“And there’s that heart again.”

Arrogant prick.

Isla snarled, her lumerosi and eyes glowing as she clenched her fists. The stranger was facing her not even a foot away.

Isla looked up to meet his eyes, still the same hue. She was a decent height, typical for a she-wolf, but he was a considerable amount above her. Breathing became difficult as that feeling returned. The rush, the attraction, the hunger—all more intense than before. She struggled to tear her eyes from his but eventually traced the lines of his face, his neck, along his broad chest and shoulders, down his arms to his hands. She bit down so hard on her cheek that she tasted blood.

All she wanted was for him to touch her.

But just as she moved the slightest fraction to put her on the path to her desire, the creaky glass door from inside flew open. The spell dimmed but not dissolved, the two wolves turned in its direction.

And then the intoxication faded to nothing, at least, for Isla because powering towards them was Winslow.

“There you are,” the gangly official called, his waving hand high in the air. He was donning Io’s classic maroons and golds, his signature notepad—because there was always work that needed to be done to sustain the prestige of Io and their continent of Morai—tucked under his arm.

“Yes?” Isla took a step back from the stranger, not one to enjoy involving her family, both by blood and those she considered herself closest to in the pack, in any of her personal affairs.

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