Page 15 of Blood Sacrifice

“I wish!” she replied. “I would have loved to write a story like that, but I’m afraid Fate and her sister Destiny beat me to it.”

“I take it you’ve been observing everything in the mirror Tabitha enchanted?” I asked.

We had a mirror that we could use in the same way as a crystal ball, but technology had evolved and so did the objects we used for magical purposes. Maia had a tendency to sit and watch romantic stories from real life instead of movies, dabbing her eyes and crying at the beauty of love.

“I would never use that mirror as an entertainment system,” she gasped in outrage. “That is a valuable tool to allow us to see what is happening across the globe.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied. “Has he declared his love yet?”

“No, but I can feel the tension building up for the big declaration,” she stopped talking, realising what she was saying. “I haven’t had much to do with you being on holiday.”

I laughed, finding that she had distracted me with her nonsense. “Fair enough. You can keep me updated with the big declaration.”

Maia fell silent and I could almost feel the cogs in her head turning. “What is happening with you?” she asked. “You lefthere with the energy of a strong, independent woman with no romantic attachments, and now you have the energy of someone in a relationship.”

“Honestly? I don’t know. This place is playing with my head, and I’m seeing ghosts from the past.”

“Be careful,” Maia said. “Sometimes the ghosts are real and they don’t haunt you but hunt you.”

Her words sent tendrils of fear pulsing through me. She was right, the past was a living entity with the power to destroy you.

Chapter Six

Salvator

My fist slammed into the pillow and I groaned as I rolled onto my back.

I should never have touched her in the marketplace. All I had wanted to do was get close enough for my wolf to catch her scent since he was driving me crazy. It took all the strength I possessed to walk away from her again because I needed to assess what was happening, and to do that I needed to remain in the shadows.

“Fuck!” Her scent lingered on me, the taste of her on my tongue. Dire wolves were unique among the lycans, with abilities that we tended to keep hidden. Our vision quests were as real as a physical experience, and although Luna had not been in this room with me, our souls had reached out to each other to form a connection. Another few seconds and we would have been mated, my canines in her flesh and my aching, hard dick buried deep inside her warmth.

That same dick tented my boxer shorts in a painful reminder of what had just happened. Luna’s response had my wolf howling in my head. All that mattered to him was getting to our mate and claiming her. There was a reason we didn’t have one mind, and it ensured that we were more controlled that the average dog on the street.

I fisted my dick, slowly pumping from the base, my thumb massaging over the head. I remembered the sensation of Luna under me, her legs wrapped around my waist, and her mouth clinging to mine. My canines ached as they had almost pierced the skin at her throat in a mating mark. My hand moved faster and faster, my dick trying to reach her in her hotel room. A flame of intense need sparked down my spine and tightened my balls before I shot my load groaning her name.

I should have had four hundred years with her, travelled the globe with her, and watched our great-grandchildren have their own family. How had I fucked this up so badly? How had Aisha felt the death of her sister when she was very much alive and unmated?

My office was located beside my room, and I returned to my task of tracking Luna across the world. She reverted to a different name in New York, where she had arrived on a flight from London. She had become an expert in covering her trail, zig-zagging in her travels to make her difficult to trace.

Some of the other priestesses had changed their physical appearance, but Luna had kept her long, black hair and natural features. She wore her beauty that began inside her heart and radiated out.

Her tour was leaving in the morning, and Jethro and Paulo would be tailing them, but I needed to be close to Luna now that I had discovered she was alive. The only reason Balor had dared to set a foot in my territory was that woman, and I had no intention of letting him anywhere near her.

I prowled through the streets outside to help settle my wolf, stopping beside the hotel she was staying in. My lycan eyesight and hearing allowed me to pick out her room, the window open as she spoke to someone on the phone. My claws dug into the wall as I climbed up, craving her nearness.

“Honestly? I don’t know. This place is playing with my head, and I’m seeing ghosts from the past,” she said, hanging up a few moments later after saying goodbye to someone called Maia.

Her sigh echoed inside me, and I clung to the wall even as she stood staring out the window, close enough for me to reach out and touch. The quartz at my neck heated as it responded to its original owner. The fingers of my right hand stretched toward the window instinctively and I saw the shadow of Luna moving forward.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” she muttered, and I scented an increase in her unique aroma, which meant she had moved her long hair. “Get a grip, Luna! Salvator died a long time ago or he would have found you. A dream doesn’t mean that he’s alive.”

That was exactly what that dream meant. We wouldn’t have been able to find one another in the dream state if we weren’t mates and both alive.

I listened to her moving around her room, my wolf calmed by the fact that she was affected by this situation as much as we were. It didn’t sit well with me that both of us had thought the other was dead. When I eventually climbed back down the wall, I returned to our building and took my frustrations out on the punching bag hanging from the ceiling.

An hour later, I had worked through my anger, my game face in place to the outside world. Tarrack had set up a conference call with other key members of my team, and last night before I went in search of Luna, I had made amendments that I doubted anyone would notice.

I logged in and was met by the sea of faces of key members of our team. Tarrack was already starting to bring them up to date with what we knew so far about the incursion into our territory.

---