“Please. Please. I will do anything.”
“Bring Kayson back.”
Kensley stared at her, her eyes bottomless with horror.
Diana’s knife sliced.
[ 6 ]
Augustine tripped on another fucking rock and killed a curse before it escaped his mouth. He’d been stumbling through the brush, half blind with the darkness closing in. It was ungodly hot, more fucking hot than it had any right to be in April, and there was no trail. Just jagged chunks of limestone, thorny bushes, and clumps of trees that looked starved of water. This place was a barren shithole, and he forced his way through it, not knowing if he was going the right way or if he’d been walking in circles.
He'd heard gunshots fifteen minutes ago. They’d rolled through the hills, a twin burst of sound that came from everywhere, echoing through the scrub, then another pair of shots a few moments later. He’d tried to aim for the direction he thought the shots had originated. It took him up another hill, and then, a short time later he heard a howl. Some deeply buried part of him recognized it wasn’t a coyote. No, that was something bigger. A threat that resonated through his spine, and he hated the way it made him feel. And then he went toward it.
He ran most days, a standard warm-up before a regimen of weights and sparring. He knew he was in superb shape, and yet this damn hill felt like it would end him.
Diana had shot through it like she had wings. He had expected her to sic the wolves and follow. But he did not expect her to charge up the wooded hillside at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. How the fuck did she do that?
He had been expecting something like this to happen since the moment she jumped from her chair straight onto Sutton’s desk and put a knife to his throat. But he didn’t expectthat. She bounded up that fucking hill like she was a metamorphosis Prime, except she did not transform. She just ran.
Nothing in his research said that animal mages gained any kind of enhanced capabilities. Was it just the Harrisons, or was everything he knew about animal mages catastrophically wrong? He needed to solve this damn mystery, the sooner the better.
Augustine pushed his way through the brush, wincing at the thorns catching on his clothes. A massive tree rose before him, a clump of trunks curving from it like some giant, gnarled version of a monstera plant done in oak. It jutted from the spine of the hill, ruling over a stretch of clear ground. He registered a body by its roots and two huge wolves sitting beside it. They looked at him. He noted the blood staining their mouths. It should have alarmed him, but there was a bigger threat, and she commanded all of his attention.
She lay sprawled on the curving trunk, twenty-five feet above the ground, a lithe, graceful creature with glowing golden eyes. Her hair had come loose, and it spilled over her shoulders, framing her face. She watched him step out from the brush with predatory focus, and when he met her gaze, it sent a shudder through him.
Augustine froze.
She was beautiful and terrifying. More than human. He’d read myths, part of a well-rounded education, where people ventured into the wilderness and found something there, something so mystical, powerful, and incomprehensible, theymade names for it. Dryads, Huldras, gods. He didn’t know what she was, but she was one of those.
The wolves ignored him and went back to their prey.
He knew he had to say something, do something, but instead he stood, petrified, and stared. If he moved, he would become prey. His body was certain of it. His instincts screamed at him, warning that she could leap off that branch and be on him in an instant. He wouldn’t be able to stop it, and he wasn’t sure he would try.
She stretched, like a great cat, and slipped down the trunk, landing softly on her feet. It was the hottest thing he had ever seen. She walked toward him, and it was liquid sex. He swallowed, aware he’d gone hard.
She stopped three feet from him. He was still afraid to move, not scared for his life but terrified that this would end.
“Adrian Woodward,” she said. Her voice was a low purr.
The words didn’t register. They just bounced off his deluded brain.
“Augustine.”
He liked the way she said his name. He wanted her to say it again. To moan it.
“Augustine! Focus.”
If she touched him, he would haul her up against the tree and fight the wolves if they tried to stop him.
“Prime Montgomery!”
The words finally penetrated the haze in his brain like a cold rush of water. He made his mouth move. “Yes?”
“Adrian Woodward has my cub. He’s going to dissect her tonight. His compound is somewhere in Canyon Lake.”
He pulled his cellphone out, tapped it, and spoke into it on autopilot. “Get me everything on Adrian Woodward.”
He ended the call and stared at her.
