Page 25 of Forsaken By Night

“But you have a treaty with Kars,” Katina said. “You can force him to give her up.”

Hunter snorted. “Do you really think he’ll give her up so she can admit to being a spy? He’ll kill her and blame her death on humans. We won’t see her alive again.”

Aiden fingered a dagger sheathed at his hip. “Hunter, are you sure Su’Neena is guilty of anything?” He shot Lobo a glare so hateful that Tehya had to hold back a snarl. “We don’t know Lobo. This could be a trick. Skinwalkers are deceptive by nature.”

Next to her, Lobo went taut, his hand clenching hers in a powerful grip, and she caught the acrid scent of danger rising from him. But she got the impression his anger wasn’t about the insult to him—it was about the insult to her. She was a skinwalker too.

“Say that again.” Lobo’s voice throbbed with menace. “Seriously.”

Hunter stepped between them, forcing Aiden back a step. “Back off, Aiden. I might have made a mistake all those years ago, and if I did, and Lobo’s right, a lot of the shit we’ve taken from ShadowSpawn for decades is my fault. I will fix it—and to do that, we need to find Su’Neena.”

“She’s a mystic-keeper,” Katina pointed out, easing the tension, if only slightly. “She can evade us, and pretty easily, I might add.”

“So... what, we’re just supposed to sit around and do nothing?” Takis cursed. “No way. I’m heading out.”

“Wait.” Tehya’s face heated as all eyes fell on her. “What’s a mystic-keeper?”

Lobo squeezed her hand. “A shaman of sorts. Mystic-keepers can bend nature’s energy to their will to hide objects or to create invisible traps, wards, false trails... shit like that.”

Trails? Tehya was an expert at following those. “Can she mask her scent?”

Baddon shook his head. “But her ability allows her to throw false tracks and to cover up the real ones.”

“Then I can track her.” When no one reacted, she huffed, “What? Why aren’t we moving?”

“You heard what Nicole said.” Lobo angled closer to her, a subtle movement that blocked the door, as if he thought she would bolt. “You can’t shift into a wolf. You might not be able to turn back.”

She wasn’t sure she knew how to shift into a wolf again anyway—but the moment the thought formed, she felt an icy pull, a tingle that she instinctively understood was the key to shifting. Not that she was going to do it.

“My sense of smell is powerful.” She looked over at Hunter. “I might be able to track her without shifting.”

Hunter and Lobo exchanged glances. “It’s worth a try,” Hunter said, but when Lobo hesitated, she growled in frustration.

“I don’t need your permission, Lobo,” she said. “If finding this person can clear your name, I’m doing it. End of story.”

“Females, huh?” Hunter sighed, and in a surprising move, he clapped Lobo on the back. “Welcome to my world.”

Baddon threw back his head and let out what she could only describe as a battle cry, and the wolf in her wanted desperately to howl.

The others joined in, and as the battle cries reached their peaks, Hunter threw open the door. “Irinami ka’ta uwelet.May your spear find its mark.”

Lobo was pretty sure that every able-bodied member of MoonBound was combing through the forest for the traitor. The woods were crawling with vampires, and he almost felt sorry for any vampire poacher who might be out hunting for an easy target.

It turned out that Tehya was both right and wrong about her sense of smell. She’d been able to track Su’Neena for the first couple of miles, but she lost the scent on the bank of a stream. After that, Hunter and his warriors spread out, while Lobo and Tehya circled the area where she’d lost the scent. She’d refused to leave, determined to pick up the trail again.

Her curses as she moved around amused him, but he knew how frustrated she was. If she were a wolf, she’d be whining and running zigzag patterns with her nose to the ground.

“We’ve got to do more.” She kicked a rotting log, and splinters of soft wood flew everywhere. “This bitch is responsible for getting you banished from MoonBound and nearly killed. And—”

“Hey,” he said from where he was kneeling next to a footprint that appeared to be older than what they were looking for. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” She rounded on him, her expression fierce, her eyes glowing hot, like amber put to flame. “I know what it’s like to have to hide who you are because some jackass will kill you for it. My mother was always looking over her shoulder, and every time someone knocked on our door, she was sure it was the government looking for me. You lived that way for decades, an outcast punished because of what you are, and she needs to pay for that.”

Sure, it had sucked to be ostracized because of what hemightdo with his ability, and he definitely wanted Su’Neena to answer for any crimes against MoonBound, but nothing would change the past. What mattered now was the future. A future he’d fight for the way Tehya was, right now, fighting for him.

She needed to learn how to be a vampire, but he wouldn’t give her up. Their relationship might be forbidden by vampire law, but only if they were caught.

Once she’d spent some time with the clan and had learned more about vampire life than he could teach her, he could take her somewhere safe. Where no one knew them.

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