Jessa’s scent.
But that was impossible. She should be in her cottage, warm and dry, sheltered from the storm. Why would he catch her scent on the wind when she was half a mountain away?
Unless she wasn’t in her cottage at all.
His feet were moving before his mind caught up, sending him racing through the trees. The rain obscured his vision and forced him to rely on his other senses—the scent that grew stronger with each step and the faint sounds that emerged from beneath the roar of the storm.
A cough. Voices. Movement.
He was still above the tree line when he found them.
They’d taken shelter beneath a fallen tree—an ancient giant that had toppled years ago, its massive trunk creating a natural overhang above a hollow in the earth. It wasn’t much of a shelter, just barely enough to keep the worst of the rain off, but they’d crawled into it anyway.
Two of them. One small, curled into a tight ball with her arms wrapped around her knees. The other…Jessa.
She was hunched over her companion, trying to shield the smaller figure with her own body. Her cloak was soaked through, her hair hanging in dripping ropes around her face, herskin so pale it seemed to glow in the dim light. She was shaking, fine tremors that ran through her frame in continuous waves, but her hands were steady where they gripped the smaller figure’s shoulders.
“It’s okay,” she was saying, her voice barely audible over the rain. “It’s okay, Dani. The storm will pass. We just need to wait it out.”
Dani.The sister. The one with the coughing illness.
He took in the scene with a single sweeping glance—the small satchel that bulged with what might be provisions and the complete inadequacy of their shelter against a storm of this magnitude. They were fleeing, he realized. Running from something. Or someone.
His beast snarled with sudden, fierce protectiveness as he stepped out of the trees.
Jessa’s head snapped up at the sound of his approach, her hand moving instinctively to push her sister behind her. Her eyes were wide and scared and for a moment she didn’t seem to know him, but then recognition dawned, and something in her face crumpled.
“Tarek.”
His name on her lips, breathless with relief, made his chest ache.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, more harshly than he’d intended. “This is no weather for humans to be traveling.”
She laughed, a desperate, humorless sound. “I know. Believe me, I know. But we couldn’t—” She broke off, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t go back.”
Behind her, the smaller figure stirred and looked up. She was younger than he had imagined, thin and pale with the same dark hair as her sister. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, flickering with fear before she seemed to notice the way Jessa had relaxed.
“Is that him?” the girl asked, her voice rough with exhaustion. “The one who helped you?”
“Yes.” Jessa’s hand reached back to squeeze her sister’s arm. “Yes, that’s him.”
He crouched at the edge of their inadequate shelter, bringing himself closer to their level. This close, he could see how badly they were both shivering and see the blue tinge to Dani’s lips. Exhaustion and desperation clung to them like a second skin.
“You’re fleeing,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Jessa met his eyes. “Yes.”
“From the older male. Your uncle.”
“Yes.”
He absorbed this, his mind racing. There were a hundred questions he should ask—what had happened, what had pushed her to flee into a storm with a sick child, what she hoped to achieve by running towards Vultor territory instead of away from it. But those questions could wait. Right now, what mattered was that she was here, cold and wet and in danger, and his beast was screaming at him to do something.
“I know I already owe you,” she said, her voice steady despite the shaking of her body. “I know I have no right to ask for more. But Tarek, I need your help.”
Something twisted in his chest at the careful dignity in her words and the way she acknowledged the debt between them even as she asked for more. He didn’t hesitate.
“Come,” he said, rising and extending his hand. “My den is not far. You can shelter there until the storm passes.”
