Page 78 of Fated Exile

Biting my lower lip, I try to steady myself but can't. "I'm worried I don't have the strength, and she hasn't come for us yet because she knows it. There's no reason for her to hurry when she can take her time. Whether it's tonight, or tomorrow, or months from now—she'll attack, and when she does, it'll be for the last time. She'll take everything, and I... I only have the ability to run."

I don't tell him about the traveller's charm, which I still have in my pocket. I know what he, and the other guys, would say if they found out about it: to use it if I must. They'd reassure me that they're willing to stay and fight while I run to safety, that it's worth it if I get out alive.

I don't know if I have the strength to insist otherwise, even though I want more than anything to be strong enough that nothing ever terrifies me.

"I haven't known you for very long, Delilah, but I know you're strong." Bastian pulls back to look at me, a shy expression on his face as he takes my head in his hands and gently cradles my cheeks with his strong palms. "Maybe I don't have all the answers. But we know who to ask. So try asking her again?"

"Vivia." I turn the suggestion over in my mind. "She seemed to imply when she came to me that she wouldn't be able to repeat it. But maybe I can summon her... oh, Bastian! That's brilliant, I don't know why I didn't think to try it sooner."

Digging my fingers into his shoulders, I stretch up to kiss him. He meets me in an open-mouthed, crushing kiss, his heavy body arching down towards mine and pressing against me. Heat curls in my belly, and I feel him respond to our touch, my thigh barely brushing against him before he springs to life.

His fingers clumsily pull at my shirt, and I reach down towards his waistband, calculating how long we have before we have anywhere to be. It's easy enough to unzip his pants and reach down to palm my hand against his growing arousal. Bastian groans, and the thought of him taking me again, feral and instinctual, is enough to make me want to tear our clothes off. As his thick thumbs brush up beneath my bra, though, there's a knock at the door.

Ian calls out, "How's it going in there?"

I pull away from Bastian, who whimpers and tugs at me, but Ian's voice is like cold water on the heat inside me. Calling out, "We got a little information, but he's gone now," I give Bastian a heated look that meanslater.He sighs, dropping his head down in a hangdog look, and I can feel the thick course of desire pulsing through him.

At least I know Ignacio's threats didn't dampen his newly awakened libido.

Bastian adjusts himself, and Ian enters the room a moment later, just as he's managed to rearrange his pants well enough to hide the erection I can feel him still sporting. The warrior gives us an odd look, and I'm certain that my flustered half-cocked arousal shows on my face, before I realize he's looking at the pile of ash.

"Couldn't hold yourself back, huh?"

"He killed himself," I explain, the horror of Demetri and Ignacio snapping their own necks in front of me sliding across my vision for a moment. "There's some kind of curse on him—on all the vampires working with the hybrid, from what I can gather. If they start to reveal too much or become a danger to her plan, she snaps their necks. From a distance."

Ian whistles, brows climbing. "That's a handy little trick, huh?" He shakes his head. "I came in to tell you that Niall called the landline. He's been texting you, but I guess your phone was on silent."

Pulling my cell out, I discover with a great deal of annoyance that I don't have a single bar in here. "The building must be blocking things."

As I step out into the hallway, I check each of my mates' presences in the back of my mind. None of them feel like they're in any pain or turmoil, which is an instant relief. Moments later, Niall's texts pour in, and my tension ratchets up to a level ten.

Cat isn't well. I don't know what happened, but she's sick all of a sudden, and the doctors can't explain why. They sent her home, but I think something else is wrong. Kerry is looking into it now. Hurry.

"We have to go home—now."

I don't have to tell Bastian anything else. Moments later we're flowing into our wolf forms and racing out the door, Ian calling out a goodbye to our furry backs as we run across the moonlit night towards home.

As I run my paws beat out a rhythm on the ground, and my heart beats a single worried refrain:not Cat, not Cat, not Cat.

I cannot lose her.

Thirty

Delilah

"You're not doing any good wearing a tread into the carpet," Kerry says, calm on the exterior despite the frantic energy of the open spells books and scribbled notes all around her, strewn near the bed where Cat's sprawled out, hot with fever. "If you don't have anything useful to add, go make some dinner and feed those rowdy men you've gathered like strays. Or find me some horehound and rattlesnake vertebrae."

"If we have those, they're in the filing cabinet," I tell her, staring at Cat's wan face. My foster mother smiles at me, trying not to worry me further, but it doesn't work. "I'll go look for them."

I slip out the door quietly and step down the hall, then practically race up the stairs two at a time. I pass the guys in the dining room and Niall in the kitchen as I race by, calling after me for updates. All I can shout is, "Getting herbs and bones, talk later!"

Stopping at the landing, I throw down, "And make your own damn dinner!"

Niall calls back, "Working on it!"

I can feel the rumble of hunger in Bastian's stomach, and the sharp pinch of worry behind Finn's relaxed expression. I know that if I stop to talk to them about Cat, though, I'm going to fall down and never get back up again. So I slip into the office instead, heading for the filing cabinet that had some of my father's weirder objects contained inside.

While I threw out most of the strange, witchy objects I found on the shelf above his bed—charms against curses and things with a sticky energy—I kept some other things that might've been related to his research on the curse. They frightened me at the time, given their association with witchcraft and all I'd been warned against.

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