Page 15 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
Because every moment I spend looking at his face is another moment that I want to reach out and touch him, get closer to him. Let his scent pull me in, his arms swallow me, his warmth comfort me like it once did.
But that was a lie. He left me. And right now, he’s trying to get me to confess to a crime, probably so he can take me back to Xeran and show his supreme that he’s doing a good job.
Now that I’ve slept more, a bit more of my magic has returned to me, pooling in my belly. I reach for it, drawing it up and going through the same motions I did earlier to unlock the mechanism. This time, though, I have the forethought and magic available to muffle the sound as the handcuffs fall, making sure it doesn’t wake Soren.
When I get on my feet this time, my legs feel like jelly, weak from how long I’ve been in bed. Surprisingly, my face feels relatively clean, and I notice a new cup of water on the nightstand. Still using my magic to muffle the noise, I creep over to it, picking it up and bringing it outside with me.
The moment I’m standing outside, I drop the muffling spell, already feeling depleted from the magic I just used. Whatever Tara did is having a lasting effect on me, making my entire body feel a little more sluggish than normal.
Outside, it’s beautiful. The foothills stretch out in front of the cabin, visible through the patches in the trees, places far below where the fire has eaten away. Everything up here appears to be untouched, and when I reach up, running my fingers over one of the trees near the cabin, I realize it’s coated in an almost sticky residue.
I remember my father saying something about a substance the firefighters developed to protect the trees from the heat and the blaze. That must be what this is.
Which means Soren comes up here frequently to treat these trees, to protect this cabin.
Without my consent, my mind flashes back to high school, a teenage Soren sitting with me outside the greenhouse, his knees folded up under his chin.
“My grandpa has a cabin up in the woods,” he said back then, those glinting brown eyes focused on me as he did. “But I can’t tell you where it is.”
I laughed. “Why not?”
“It’s a family secret,” he whispered. “You can only know if you join the family.”
The sound of that made shivers break out over my skin. And now, I can’t ignore the fact that even though I’m not a part of the family, I know where the cabin is.
He brought me here.
Even back then, I felt drawn to him, pulled to him in a way I thought I was starting to understand. But I clearly didn’t. I clearly thought the thing between us was a lot more than what Soren thought.
I push the thoughts away—focusing on the past right now isn’t going to help me. I need to focus on getting the hell away from this cabin, away from Soren, and home so I can talk to my parents about what to do next. So I can take a single breath that’s not thick with the scent of Soren Riggs.
Slowly, I drink the water from the cup and set it on a stump outside the door, scanning the area around me and trying to determine which path might be the best one back towardtown. Then I shift into my wolf form, relishing the feel of my paws against the dirt, the pine needles softening the ground for me as I weave between the trees, making a bit of headway back toward town.
Ten minutes later, I feel like I’ve been making decent progress when I hear something echoing through the trees, something haunting and drifting. It sends a shiver down my back, and all at once I remember that daemon fire—and the daemons that dance along with it—are not the only things to fear in these woods.
Aurela.
My name drifts through the trees along the lips of something long-dead, something desperate for life. Something empty and sucking, kind of how it feels when Tara is near me.
But this thing isn’t Tara.
When it rolls out from between the trees, it’s an amorphous black shape, little tendrils of energy reaching out from it like a giant, deep black bacteria, its cilia reaching toward me.
I shift back into my human form, feeling the magic bubbling up under my skin. “Not tonight,” I whisper, raising my hands and blasting energy right at it.
But just like Tara, it doesn’t get hurt at the blast, just absorbs it. When it lets out a low, mirthful sound, I realize I’ve taken the wrong approach.
But there’s no time for me to shift gears because it’s coming toward me, and I have to roll out of the way. But in my human form, I’m not nearly as agile, and the thing gets one of its reaching tendrils around my ankles, throwing me to the groundand starting to drag me toward it, like an octopus pulling a fish slowly toward a huge, gaping maw.
“Fuck, fuck,” I pant, reaching for anything that might help me, might keep this thing from eating me alive. Tree roots and rocks bite into my skin, and I wince, biting my tongue to keep from screaming out at the pain.
Then, all at once, its hold on me is gone, and I’m stumbling away, turning with my hands raised to watch a giant copper wolf tumbling into it, the little black embers of energy sticking to the wolf’s coat.
Soren.
“Get back!” I scream, but he either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care because he continues to fight the thing, tumbling around and hissing each time it slices one of its tendrils into his flesh.
Running as fast as I can, and acting with a confidence that I probably shouldn’t have, I bury my hands in the center of the thing, taking advantage of its surprise and pulling ashardas I can, sucking at its own energy, power, and magic.
