Page 43 of My Monster's Keeper

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Wilder stands up. “It smells like one of my kind.”

I peer up at him. “Your kind does things like that?”

“Oh, yes.” Wilder’s eyes flicker down to me.

“How do we stop it?”

“We need to find it first. Capture it, and then render it magicless.”

“How?” I repeat with a slight rise in my voice.

Wilder doesn’t answer. He paces away from me, investigating the floor under the corpses.

“Is it cold in here?”

“It’s colder up there,” Frost points. He peers up and then leaps straight up into the air and lands on a tall pillar of ice that has appeared.

As he walks, more ice appears, forming a walkway so that he can inspect the bodies at his leisure.

He picks one up and carefully cradles her as he comes back down. “This was the omega.”

“How can you tell?”

“She smells sweet and fragrant. A scent that makes alphas hungry.”

She is pretty in death, much as I imagine she would have been in life. I wish I’d been able to help her.

“We’re going to stop these people!”

Stix wraps his long arms around me and makes a grumbling sound of discontent.

“Puppy? What should we do?”

He looks at me, and, with all the eyeliner and piercings, his expression looks undeniably sad.

“We should eat.”

So simple.

Stix laughs. It’s a cruel laugh, but maybe I’m getting used to it because I find myself soothed by the sound.

“Fine, you can eat who did this,” Stix says like a decree.

Puppy gives me a wide smile that kicks something hard inside me. I find my air has evaporated, and my thoughts scatter to the seven winds.

Stix helps me up, leaving a trail of sensitive skin wherever he’s touched.

I turn in his arms and peer up at him. “How do you hunt a Fae?”

He scowls. “You need bait and to get them mad.”

“What kind of bait?”

Stix looks past me to the man on the floor and then refocuses on me.

I don’t like what he’s thinking, but I want this asshole caught and gone.

“Okay. I’ll be the bait.”

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