I took a step back, despite my wolf howling at me to take her right then and there. It took every ounce of my strength not to give in to his urges, the ones that made me want to tear that dress off her and carry her up to my room, whether she wanted to or not.
“We’re mated. That doesn’t mean that we have to do anything,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Whatever we’re feeling right now is because of the bond. We don’t have to give in to it.”
No matter how badly I want to, I thought to myself.
“Right,” Rachel said, relieved. I might have been imagining it, but I could have sworn I saw some hesitation in her eyes despite her words. And I wondered if I hadn’t imagined that want pulsing through the mating bond. “Because us doing anything is a bad idea.”
I nodded. “We did what we had to do. That doesn’t mean we have to do anything else. Not if we don’t want to.”
“Great.” Rachel nodded, taking her own step back, as if the more distance between us would curb that need I could sense radiating off her. “I’m glad we agree.” She swallowed, glancing up to the stairs. A blush crept up her face.
“Is there a second bedroom?” she asked. When I nodded, she said, “Okay. I’m going to get changed, then.”
I watched her run up the stairs, chastising myself for just letting her go like that. I had wanted her all these years, even if I had told her otherwise. I wanted her right now. I wanted to have my way with her in every single room of the house. I imagined what she looked like naked, and my wolf growled in longing at the thought.
I gritted my teeth. I hadn’t known what to expect from the mating bond, but I hadn’t anticipated it would be this acute. It was as though every thought I ever had about Rachel was magnified. Every time I thought about her, I had to deal with that need for her that I had been stuffing down for years now. I cared about Rachel. For years, I had noticed her whenever she came into view, sensing her even when I couldn’t see her. But this new urge was on an entirely different level, one I couldn’t have anticipated.
Growling, trying desperately to ignore my wolf, I went upstairs to take a long, cold shower.
***
I hovered over the map of the area around Silver Falls spread across Elias’s desk. A half-dozen x’s crossed out small swaths dotted around the border, all spots we had checked, only to find nothing.
“I think we should be looking in the north,” Elias said, gesturing to a patch we hadn’t yet explored. “Oz was doing some research, and it looks like we’re most likely to find the wraith’s lairs beneath rock formations. The largest cluster of those is in that area.”
“It’s as good as any other spot at the moment,” I said. “Right now, it feels like we’re searching for a piece of hay in a pile of needles.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?” Elias asked mildly.
“This one is more painful,” I growled, earning a brief chortle from him.
A knock sounded on the door before Oz and Drake waltzed in without waiting for the invitation. Oz was stocky and well-built, with russet hair and a lazy grin. Drake was taller, not quite lanky—he was too muscular for that—but managed to dwarf me by a couple of inches.
“I think we finally have something concrete,” Oz said.
Elias straightened. “You found the lair already?”
Snorting, Drake shook his head. “Hardly,” he growled. “But we do have some interesting information.”
“You remember all of the weird inconsistencies we’d been noticing?” Oz asked. “Well, I did a bit of research in my spare time, hoping to learn a bit more about wraith lairs so we mightbe able to find it. It’s how I found out about the rock formations. I haven’t been able to find anything else on lairs. Instead, what I found was this.”
He laid several printer-copied pages on Elias’s desk. Pictures of grotesque demons with ash-gray skin and pointed, elf-like features leered out at us.
“What are these?” Elias asked.
“Lesser demons,” Oz said. “Specifically, these are imps.”
I pulled the pages toward me and scanned the text, my eyes darting across the page. Other pages showed other creatures: ones with horns and square faces, ones that looked like gargoyles, all with that same color skin. All looking as though they would tear any one of us to shreds with a gleeful expression on their ugly faces.
Elias was scanning them as well, frowning. “They create the types of signs we’ve been seeing in the woods,” he said.
“Exactly,” Drake growled as Oz bobbed his head.
“He’s recruited some lesser demons,” Oz explained. “I don’t know how he managed to get them on his side, but it all fits.”
I stared at the image of the imp, and my blood began turning cold. If the wraith had managed to get these creatures on his side…it didn’t bode well for us.
“What can they do?” I asked.
