Page 65 of The Warlock's Kiss

“I cannot tolerate any threats tomypack,” Merrick growled as he stood up. “I gave you all a chance to leave. Now this must end.” He lifted his hands, and spheres of blue fire sparked into existence on his palms.

Adalynn closed the distance between herself and Merrick and placed a hand on his back. “Merrick, stop.”

She felt the energy radiating from him, felt its vibrations, sensed the dissonance in his mystical song, which raged faster and stronger now than ever before. The black, shadowy tentacles which writhed around him shuddered and calmed, dropping to caress her arm.

Once again, he looked at her over his shoulder. This time he didn’t turn away.

“Let them go,” she said.

“After all that’s happened, Adalynn? They are a threat.”

Her attention shifted to the werewolves. The female met Adalynn’s gaze, eyes desperate, sad, and pleading, glimmering with a hint of hope. This female and her brother were just like Adalynn and Danny.

Adalynn looked at Merrick and slid her fingers up his back to rest on his shoulder as she moved closer to him. His shadowy tendrils embraced her, and she welcomed their feel. “They’re people. They got caught up with someone bad, but they’re justpeople. They’re just trying to survive, same as everyone else.”

He released a heavy exhalation and pressed his lips into a tight line. Adalynn saw the struggle on his face, could almosthearit in the song of his magic. And she understood. His dilemma was a clear—what was best forhispeople? If he let these wolves go, would they return later and cause more trouble? Would they come back withmoreof their kind to seek revenge?

Right now, all she could see in the wolves’ faces was fear. Thatcouldturn to anger and resentment, but she didn’t believe it would in this case. She believed what the wolves had said.

“Let them go, Merrick,” she repeated, softer, before pressing her lips to his shoulder.

Some of the tension in his body eased, and the energy radiating from him diminished. He curled his fingers, and, after a few seconds, the magic around his hands wavered and changed. It went from flamelike to fluidlike, shifting and wobbling in the air like oil in water.

The ground rumbled, and then it, too, rippled like the surface of a lake. Eyes wide, Adalynn stared as the wolves rose out of the ground as though riding an unseen elevator. Once they were fully free, the ground solidified, but the wolves kept rising until they were at least five feet above the ground.

“You’ve seen what happens to those who trespass and threaten me,” Merrick said. “Leave my land. If you come back, you’ll wind up like your fellows—and I will use your ashes to fertilize my crops. Do you understand?”

The werewolves whined and nodded quickly.

“We swear,” said the male.

Merrick lowered his arms, and the wolves dropped along with them, crashing onto the ground mere feet away from him. “You have thirty seconds before I change my mind again.”

They scrambled to their feet. The male ran, but the female hesitated, her gaze flickering between Merrick and Adalynn.

“Thank you,” she said before following her brother, who had paused at the edge of the woods.

The werewolves were gone a moment later, vanished amid the darkness between the trees.

That quickly, the tension left Adalynn’s limbs, and she lowered the gun to the ground. She could feel every bump and bruise she’d suffered, every hurt; the pain had been swept aside by terror and adrenaline.

She shifted her attention to Merrick. The magic around him faded until all that remained of it was a lingering afterimage, which itself was gone in a few seconds.

He turned to face her. His wounds were already sealed—in fact, they looked like they’d been healing for two or three weeks—and his eyes still glowed blue. “We should get back inside. I’ll tend to this mess tomorrow.”

Adalynn stepped up to him, cupped his cheeks, guided his head down, and kissed him. She pressed her mouth hard against his, tasting the magic on his skin. It tingled on her lips, as arousing as it was soothing.

Merrick submitted to her kiss, but his body was tense, as though he were holding himself back. She didn’t want him to. She didn’t care about what he was, didn’t care about her own pain; all she wanted was to feel his arms around her, to feelhim—all of him—alive and well, against her, holding her.

She met his gaze when she pulled away. “Thank you.”

The hardness that dominated his features since he’d woken her smoothed away. His tongue slipped out and flicked over his lips. “For what?”

“Everything.”

“Gross,” Danny said from behind her. “Dude. Are you having sex with mysister?”

Adalynn’s cheeks warmed, and she pressed her lips together in a failed attempt to contain the laughter bubbling up within her. She dropped her hands to Merrick’s shoulders and let her head fall against his chest as she quietly chuckled.

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