Page 5 of Pack Witch
Of course not. A mate bond was established with a touch, not a dream. That first contact always connected the moon-fated pair.
Quickly, I reached out one hand and touched his arm, startling him. He jerked it away like my fingers had burned him, though tremors of pleasure shot through me from the brief contact.
More than tremors. It felt like the world was shifting on its axis, my soul and my magic sending out tendrils toward his warmth, his hidden wolf.
Mate. Mate!My wolf howled, though she knew she had to stay quiet.
I whispered, “I’m Zinnia.” The tattooed scars had felt peculiar under my fingertips, muting the sensation of the mate bond forming.Wasit forming? It was hard to tell, though I could feel my magic reaching for him, recognizing him. The scars were spells. My wolf didn’t like them at all.
“Tell no one you saw me, girl,” he rasped at last, his voice harsh and his gaze on the place where his sister had vanished. “Don’t say anything unless you want to die.”
I froze, certain I’d misheard him. But his eyes were as hard as the cruel line of his mouth, and when my lips moved to form a word—though what I would say, I had no idea—he loosed a low, vicious growl.
My wolf whimpered just as quietly, keening.Mate?
He didn’t respond, if he even heard her at all. Without another word, he turned and ran on silent feet into the woods, far too quickly for me to follow, though I tried.
I ran and ran, following him as fast as I could, until my feet bled into the earth. My wolf grew weaker, my soul wailing as my mate left me. He hadn’t known me. He hadn’t felt the pull of the mate bond that was wrapped like barbed chains around my own heart, still pulling me to him as he fled.
But a far more sinister thought sprang up as I traced his path. Perhaps hehadknown me, had seen into my soul, and found me lacking. Unworthy. Perhaps I was too weak, too ugly, too ordinary for him.
It didn’t matter why. I’d been rejected by my soul’s mate.
I was alone.
Chapter 3
Julian
Nothing had changed at Mountain in twenty-five years. The trees were as green and tall as the first time I’d stumbled across the pack’s borders, the snowcaps just as brilliant white, and the sky as wide and blue. The valley, nestled between two craggy sides with a river of green winding through the gap, was covered with the first of the spring wildflowers wherever the tall pines left space.
The Mountain packlands were the most beautiful of all of North America, except for the place I was going.Home.
Even thinking the word made my heart race, and my skin tingle. More than tingle. Itburned. I rubbed at the raw skin on my arm, the fire that seemed to bubble just underneath the surface rushing back and forth, like it was looking for a way to escape. I had to get back home soon, before it was too late.
To heal, if there was still a member of the pack alive who could help me.
Or to die.
A surge of weakness had me stumbling, the heavy pack on my back threatening to take me to the ground. I had a feeling my death was coming sooner rather than later. None of the powerful, magical shifters I’d gone to had been able to helpme, and when their efforts had noticeably weakened me, they’d refused to try any longer. I’d mostly given up trying to heal and settled for maintaining enough strength to make it home. I was still fool enough to hope for a miracle, though I knew my hours were numbered.
All I needed was enough time to find out if the stranger I’d met and left on my last night at home was real. The dreams of her had been so vivid recently. What had happened to her? Was she still alive? I wasn’t sure who she was to me, but I felt compelled to find her, speak with her.
Ida Becker had scoffed the day before, when I told her I couldn’t wait another day to get on the road. “Stop scratching like you’ve got the mange and suck it up for a few more days, boy. There’s someone I need you to meet, who may be able to patch you up at least. She’s a recluse, not Mountain pack. But she’s been given sanctuary here. She does… favors… for the pack, in exchange for being left alone.”
“A shifter?” I’d asked, but her lips had gone tight.
All she’d said was, “She was a long time ago.”
She’d set off on foot that day, and we’d hiked through the night. I trusted her enough to follow, to listen when she asked me to stay behind and set up camp by the river that morning, while she went to meet up with the mysterious stranger.
Well, she hadn’t so much asked as demanded, which I found amusing. I was an Alpha now, but I would take orders from Ida out of respect and gratitude. She’d been the one who’d found me crawling past the Mountain border twenty-five years ago. She’d saved me then and seemed just as intent on doing it again, and sending me safely home.
Though this hike might kill me first. The pain in my chest and the acid under my skin were growing more intense by the step.
Leroy, the pup who followed right behind me, panted heavily. “Are we… there yet, Sergeant?” He carried Ida’s extrapack along with his own, as punishment for asking that same question far too often.
Bo—so close to Leroy, they were practically brothers—groaned. “He told you not to ask that, stupid ass. You don’t watch it, he’ll make you haulallthe packs.”
