Page 39 of Deadly Alliances

“Oh, t-thank f-fuck!” Shea praised, crawling out of my embrace. “J-janette, l-let’s g-get this ov-ver with.”

Janette nodded and ushered Shea through the zippered opening of the tent. I followed behind them, knowing Kai would be completely fine on his own in here. I didn’t trust the girls going outside on their own with dusk so imminent. Even with light clinging to the sky, the shadow of the mountains was certainly enough to allow vampires to roam, and I had no way of knowing how far their surveillance reached. If they already knew we were here, we were sitting ducks.

I watched as Shea and Janette slowly walked a circle around our camp, reciting the ancient words to cast a protection spell that would keep us cloaked from passersby—immortal or otherwise. Anxiety itched and slithered beneath my skin as I waited, my senses keen to every sound in the surrounding forest. All I could do was keep pushing back the cold with my gryphon powers and be ready to shift at the first sign of danger.

I had hoped that once we set ourselves up, I would’ve made peace with this decision. I had hoped that once we’d gotten this far, I would’ve accepted it. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Now more than ever, I hated that Shea was going to trek over to the vampire headquarters in the morning. Every instinct I had urged me to hold her tight and never let go, to lock my talons around her and fly her far away from this place.

Rationally, I knew we had to do this, for Julian and Arya, and the fate of the entire world for that matter. But knowing that didn’t make going through with it any easier. I couldn’t lose her.

No, can’t think like that. Shea can do this. And everything will be fine.

I took little comfort in the fact that, if she came into any kind of danger or harm, I would sense it. But what would I do aboutit? Give in to my imprint and go barging in and get us all killed? I’d never felt so…powerless in my entire life than I did now, counting down the seconds until Shea left me, possibly forever.

After the longest fifteen minutes of my life, the girls completed the circle, and an ethereal dome rippled over the radius of our camp, only visible in the disturbance it made in our surroundings for a split second. The compression of my tight muscles gripping my chest finally eased, and I let my shoulders relax. At least now if vampires came snooping, they wouldn’t be able to see, smell or hear us. We were safe.

“Alright, Janette, let’s h-heat this p-place up,” Shea announced with an eager clap of her gloved hands as she and Janette returned from the edge of our camp radius.

“Are you sure that spell is safe?” I asked. “It’s not going to create a greenhouse effect in here, is it?”

She shot me a cutting frown. “Ac-cording to the b-book, it’s just g-going to m-make the temp-perature inside the p-p-protection c-circle comfortable. And I’m f-f-fucking freezing, so we’re d-doing it!”

I raised my hands in submission, flattening my lips in complacence. It was almost cute how irritable Shea got when she was cold, and in any other circumstances, I would’ve been amused.

The girls held hands and chanted more pretty words that I didn’t understand. Their hands began to glow a soft sherbet orange, and with a pulsing wave, the cold was suddenly banished and replaced with a cozy warmth all around us. It was like walking into a hearth-heated cabin from outside.

“Whoa,” I whispered.

“I kn-know, isn’t it g-great?” Shea cheered, hugging herself andspinning around with a huge grin on her face.

I couldn’t help but smile. She was so beautiful, so full of light—and sass. I was so incredibly lucky to be mated to her. Pulled in by her magnetism, I hugged her from behind and pulled her against my chest, and we swayed slightly as we savored each other.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you more,” I whispered back, kissing the top of her soft brown hair.

“Alright, enough of that, lovebirds,” Janette chided playfully. “Let’s go back inside and see what Kai’s been able to find.”

With a synchronized sigh, we followed her into the tent.

“Whatever you girls did, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Kai declared, pressing his hand over his chest. “It’s almost like a sauna in here now.” He shrugged his coat off his shoulders and set it to the side in a bundle.

Janette knelt behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Just a little magic. But I can do a lot more to warm you up.”

His face turned beat red and a wobbly smile formed on his lips.

“Okay, seriously, Aunt Janette, get a room,” Shea groused.

“Maybe when this is over,” Kai mumbled with a shrug.

Shea and I both gawked at him, mouths literally hanging open. Did he actually just say that?

His complexion reddened further under our scrutiny, and he shrugged again. Janette beamed and pecked his cheek before settling beside him and looking at his multiple-screen layout.

“Please don’t leave me here with them,” I whispered to Shea, and we both stifled a chuckle.

In all seriousness, I was happy for Kai finding romance even in these bleak circumstances, but I desperately hoped they wouldn’t be rocking the tent this whole time. That was very much not a situation I wanted to be the third wheel in.

Shea and I gathered around Kai and examined the various screens for ourselves.

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