Page 23 of Shifters Unifying
“Felt like it,” she said. “Besides, wearing more clothes means I have more pockets which means more weapons.” She turned toward me to show the hilt of three knives tucked into her riding suit.
I poured fuel into both tanks and placed the fuel can on the ground near the front steps. Either Phil would find it and return it to its place, and I’d take care of it when we got back from the dark magic encampment. Then I took my seat on the larger of the two four-wheelers.
“You okay?” she asked, settling on her four-wheeler.
A part of me wanted to bite Olivia’s head off. She shouldn’t have separated fated mates, especially her alpha’s, and she should have hell to pay for it.
“I’m not ready to talk about it.” Maybe I wasn’t as pissed as all that, but I wasn’t ready for her to know my grudge would be short-lived.
“Oh, stop pouting about it,” she said. “She’s the prophesied unifier of all the clans, so you have to expect her to be needed elsewhere sometimes. Besides, I could use a break from keeping tabs on you two. You’re pretty obnoxious as a couple right now, so stop whining and act like an alpha. Not a lovesick puppy.”
“We’re supposed to be obnoxious,” I said, starting my four-wheeler and revving the engine. “Besides, you did not ask for my input before you made a decision,” I began. “That is inappropriate.”
“I already knew your answer, so I didn’t ask. What’s that saying you like? ‘Better to ask forgiveness than permission.’” She started her four-wheeler.
“I think you’re the only one who likes that saying,” I growled.
“Well, we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and while it might work on Emma, we can’t use your dick to catch this one.”
“You should not have sentmymate with Jasper.”
“Jasper won’t do anything; he’s already proven that. If he’d wanted to try anything with her, he would have done it while he was training her back in Red Tail, and at the moment, he’s the only one around we can trust.”
Of course, she was right, but it was harder to get over it than I cared to admit. The conscious part of my brain understood that the bonding hormones had mostly short-circuited everything going on in my head, but the horny subconscious wanted to be pissed whether it was reasonable or not.
“He is a good mate for you, you know,” I commented. “He’s smitten with you.”
Her head whipped toward me. “What?”
“Jasper. He is a good mate for you.”
Without answering, she glared, dropped her helmet over her head, and launched her four-wheeler forward so aggressively she nearly tossed herself off the rear of it.
My canary-eating grin stretched ear to ear as I followed, and it didn’t fade for the duration of the ride to Acheron’s secret camp.
But the smile slid from my face as we approached the exposed encampment, now lit by the rising sun. It resembled a shantytown, made up of tents and hastily constructed buildings, made of flimsy wooden panels, built directly on the ground. The putrid rot of dark magic permeated the air.
When Olivia removed her helmet, her nose wrinkled. “Do you smell that?”
“Can’t miss it.”
“So, how did we miss this? All of the territories are on high-alert, and this is close enough that we should have picked it up during our patrols.”
“He had to be close to Emma, and he knows how to hide.”
She let out a low whistle. “Acheron must have retreated here once he’d been thrown out of his bunker. If we missed this, where has he gone now? Closer to her? If we can’t see him, how are we going to locate him with the normal patrols?”
We climbed from our four-wheelers, and dead leaves crunched beneath my tennis shoes. More and louder than usual.I crouched to retrieve a handful of the dirt and lifted it to my nose. After a deep breath, I recoiled at the stench of death, rapidly identifying the reason. Bits of shredded bone littered the usual autumn tree shed.
Fuck.
Olivia jogged closer. “What is it?”
“Probably shifters.”
“What?” She dropped to her knees, sank her hands into the earth, and brought her own handful up to examine. As she studied it, her shoulders sank lower and lower. “Oh, my god,” she rasped, her voice strangled. “How many?”
“Enough to mulch the forest.”
