Page 150 of Mortal Shift
“Cali...”
“I mean it, Cole. Let me help. Please.”
I saw the exact moment the fight went out of Cole’s eyes, and resignation took its place. He dipped his chin in the smallest nods, and I pressed my lips to his cheek in a brief kiss before stepping past him and locking eyes with Thaden once more.
“Do we have a deal?” I repeated.
“We do. Don’t worry,” he added, looking over at Cole. “I’ll take only the bare minimum I need, I swear it.”
He moved behind me, and I swept my hair to one side, exposing the bare flesh of my neck for him. He struck fast and soft, and I barely felt his sharp fangs slide into my flesh. From my periphery, I saw Jax curl his upper lip in disgust, and wrenched my eyes away to find Cole instead. He offered me a taut smile, and barely had the expression falling from his lips when Thaden pulled back.
“What’s going on?” I asked, confusion coloring my voice.
“Just enough to get me through tonight,” Thaden murmured. “Whatever you might think of me, sweetness, I’m a man of my word.”
A shiver ran the length of my spine, and I swallowed hard. I could barely feel the effects of Thaden’s vampiric kiss, which brightened my chance of surviving tonight considerably. Which made sense, I guess, seeing as Thaden was still addicted to my blood, and still would be in the morning. He needed me alive as much as I needed to survive. No sense in trying to read more into it than that.
“We should get moving,” Cole said. “We need to find somewhere to lie up, somewhere we can establish a base camp and defend until the trial is over.”
“Did you see anything?” I asked Thaden, my eyes flicking across his face. “On your way over here?”
He shook his head. “No. Zane came by our common room a little while ago and told us if we didn't want to fail the year then we had three minutes to get outside, and then we had to survive for twenty-four hours. I didn’t much like my chances of the twenty-four hour part, until I crossed your scent just outside the academy. We came straight here.”
“Dammit,” I cursed under my breath. We just had to hope the scouts had run across something. The scouts who should have been back by now, now that I thought of it. I turned back to Cole, and saw my question written on his face.
“We’ll give them five more minutes,” he said uneasily. “And then we go looking for them.”
We didn’t make it to five minutes. We didn’t make it to two. We’d barely hunkered down to wait when I heard a crashing through the foliage. All five of us were on our feet in an instant, and seconds later a lithe gray wolf bust through the trees and into the clearing. Blood stained her hide, and her eyes were wide and wild.
“What happened?” Cole demanded. “You need to shift back, Alina, and tell us. Now.”
The wolf seemed to shudder from head to toe, and then her outline blurred. Moments later, I was staring at the fully human form of Alina. I reached down to our small cache of clothes and tossed her a shirt, and she pulled it on gratefully.
“What happened?” Cole asked again, and Alina sucked in a shuddering breath, and then the words tumbled out of her.
“It was a wraith,” she said, and I heard Jax suck in a breath, but I didn’t have time to ask what a wraith was before she was pressing on. “It came out of nowhere it could. It caught our scents and was on us before we even knew it was there. We tried not to engage, I swear, like you said, but it was too quick. Nathan threw himself in its path so that I could escape.” She swallowed hard, eyes sliding shut briefly. “He’s dead.”
“You’ve got bigger problems than that,” Thaden said, staring out into the trees. “It followed her.”
Chapter Fifty
Cole moved before I had time to so much as blink, grabbing my arm and hauling me behind him, then shoving me further away.
“Go,” he commanded. “Now.”
He fixed his eyes on the shadow moving in the trees, and fell into a fighting stance.
“No!” I gaped at him, horrified. “I’m not leaving you here to fight that thing.”
“No-one’s fighting it,” Thaden said.
“Do you have a better plan?” Cole demanded.
“Yes. Run.” He jerked his chin at the trio of shifters. “Shift, and get her out of here. We’ll distract it, and then follow. We’ll meet you in the spot.”
Cole opened his mouth to argue, and Thessalia glared at him.
“You’re wasting time. Stop arguing and shift before that thing tears us all apart.”
