Page 52 of A Warrior's Fate

“No. You can’t go back through here alone. It’s not safe.” Kai stepped closer again, though the warmth of his body couldn’t quite melt the ice buried within her. “I need you to trust me, Isla.”

There were those words again, conveyed with a sincerity that almost felt manipulative.

Isla straightened, not knowing what to do with the overwhelming emotion that seemed to be pooling up from her ankles. It grated every part of her to trust him, simply for the fact that the only reason she would was this bond she never wanted to acknowledge again.

Damnit.

Wordlessly, Isla turned and scouted the branches, then pressed her fingers firmly along the cold, slippery bark of the one she’d determined easiest to reach. The limb groaned as she hoisted herself up, but proved sturdy, barely trembling from her weight as she spun on it and sat. As much as she hated the idea—and judging by Kai’s expression, he’d been second-guessing too as another gust of wind shot by and the threat of lightning loomed—she couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling this was also the best option. It took scaling up one more limb for her to be nearly masked in the brush, protected from the view of whatever was lurking out in the shadows.

Kai approached the trunk’s base, resting his hand on the branch just below her. One inch and he’d just brush her skin. “Stay quiet and stay hidden,” he said, features hard as stone. “Don’t move. Hopefully, I won’t be long.”

Isla bit down on her cheek. She hated this. With every piece of her, she hated this. How could she just stay up here, useless, while he was out there dealing with whatever this was?

“If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m going after you,” she told him quickly, digging her nails into the bark beneath her. “I’m serious.”

Kai’s face remained unchanged. “I know you are.”

And with that, he disappeared.

CHAPTER 14

Puffing out air that clouded in a mist, Isla threw her head back and looked up through the jutting branches. Her eyes slid closed as she embraced the dripping rain that peppered her skin.

Three minutes.

She’d only counted out three minutes so far, and she was sick of it. This. Sitting and doing nothing, locked in a cage of branches like a simple house bird.

She should’ve been out there, helping Kai with whatever the hell this was. A threat supposedly so great that she was useless without her wolf. That made it unsafe for her to roam the forest alone again.

As her narrowed gaze lowered to track beyond the trees he’d descended behind—a hope in her chest that maybe he’d appear—another long, steady stream of wind cut through. A choir of howls from the foliage followed in its wake, comforting if the tree hadn’t bucked in response, her perch becoming rickety. She braced one hand on the rough bark of the trunk and the other on the branch above her head. The storm was getting worse. The wind stronger and the rain pelting harder. If the mysterious dwellers of the shadows didn’t get her, the weather surely could.

When the surge finally calmed, she righted herself again and wiped her palms on her coat. It didn’t do much for drying. Her clothes were still so drenched and heavy that she wondered if she’d be better off discarding what was failing to do its duty in keeping her warm. Upon bringing her hands up to inspect them, she noted flecks of the husk dotting her skin and a purplish tinge that colored the tip of her fingers—but that wasn’t all she saw.

Isla flipped one of them over. Once. Twice.

Golden intangible light looped around each of her fingers, the delicate strands wrapping her wrist, traveling down the veins of her forearm to her heart, to her soul, down to the wolf wounded deep within her. She traced the same path back up to her fingertips, where it mingled with tendrils of shadow before the mirage faded completely.

Her eyes had been wide with awe before they narrowed. What a damn joke it all was—a horrible, mesmerizing joke.

How could something so lethal, something that destroyed—that she’d seen destroy, shredding the people she was closest to apart piece by piece—be so wonderful and mystifying?

You and I are two ends of the same broken road. Two pieces of a cloth stitched and torn by Fate’s own hand.

Her other half, hand-picked by a deity herself.

It sounded so beautiful. So much larger than anything she could wrap her mind around.

We don’t have to wait for threads to form with time together to have any type of connection.

For her entire life, her soul had been waiting to be reunited with his. Those threads, her, made for him. And him for her.

She looked out into the forest again before back to her hand, trying to will back the visual but nothing came.

It was all foolish…she was foolish. And she was also tired and scared and angry and—

In a tree.

She was in a tree.

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