Chapter 14 - Drake
“Rachel and Emma managed to put up new wards,” Sam said. “They’re different than the last ones, so maybe they’ll be more effective against Azaret, but there’s no guarantee.”
“I still can’t believe he managed to just knock them down like that,” Oz muttered. “And why did he just stop there? If he had wanted to, he could have torn down those wards, sent in his goons, and we’d have been overrun before we could do anything about it. And it’s taken days to replace the wards, and we haven’t seen a sign of any demon or the wraith. What are they playing at?”
“The wraith gets stronger with more fear and despair, both of which are in abundance right now,” Sam replied. “I’m sure the anxiety of waiting for the next attack has been great for him. Azaret just seems to enjoy watching the terror.”
Scowling down at the table, Elias shook his head, his brows knitted together as he glowered. “It still doesn’t make sense that they’re working together,” he said. “There has to be something more to it.”
I drummed my fingers on the table as I stared down at the plans. I knew I should be focusing on them. However, my thoughts kept drifting unbidden to Liv. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and it had only gotten worse after we had sex. I didn’t understand what had happened while I had been in the shower. I had respected her wishes, even though I still didn’t understand the logic.
Except respecting them seemed to get harder every day. Whenever I saw her, all I wanted was to tie her to my bed again.
Had I done something to upset her? I couldn’t imagine what I had done in the handful of minutes between having sexand getting out of the shower that had changed Liv’s mind, but it was the only thing that made sense. I just wanted to know what it was. I wanted her to be happy, so if I had done something that did otherwise, I wanted to know.
“Drake?”
My name dragged me out of my thoughts, and I pulled my head up to look at the others as they all stared at me, waiting for something.
“Sorry, what?”
“We were asking your thoughts,” Elias said. “But if you’re too busy daydreaming—”
I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. I was just thinking.” It was true, though not exactly honest. I glanced back down at the map. “What if they need one another?”
“What do you mean?” Elias asked.
“Well, the wraith needs someone who can remove the wards if it wants to get anywhere near the oasis,” I said. “Maybe Azaret needs the wraith for something that we haven’t thought of yet. Maybe the wraith is the one that can help access the power of the spring or something like that.”
Elias’s lips thinned, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “That would make sense,” he muttered. “They both know they need the other, so they agree to work together until they don’t need the other any longer.”
“It’s a theory, but we don’t have any solid confirmation of it one way or the other yet,” Sam pointed out.
“I can get to work on it.” Oz pushed himself to his feet, presumably to go hunting for more books. Elias grabbed Oz’s shoulder.
“You can get to work on it after you’ve gotten at least five hours of sleep,” Elias growled. “I’d say a full eight, but I think you’d revolt on principle. Go crash on a couch for a bit, for God’s sake, if you refuse to go home.”
Oz grimaced, but the expression was diminished by an almost comical yawn that followed.
“Right,” he muttered. “Fine, fine.”
They all left. I was alone, with nothing to distract me from my thoughts, which inevitably drifted back to the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about: Liv.
I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me so much, either. I had never had a woman occupy my thoughts as much as she did. I kept thinking about what would make her happy, what sort of thing I could do that would direct that gorgeous smile in my direction.
Could it possibly be—and I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this at all—that we really were mates? That mates did exist, and Liv had been right all this time? It would explain why my thoughts kept drifting back to her, and why I couldn’t stop picturing her naked, wanting to pin her down against the bed as she writhed beneath me.
It wasn’t just that, though, otherwise I could just write it off as lust. It was that I couldn’t stop thinking about her as a person. She constantly surprised me. She fascinated me, and all I wanted was to know more about her, to spend time with her, to make up for how much of an idiot I had been when we were teenagers. That was harder to write off by far.
Anyone who believes in fated mates is a sappy, weak idiot. They’re piss-poor excuses for shifters, all of them.
My father’s words echoed in my head, scolding me for even considering the idea of fated mates. I remembered how much my parents had hated one another. They had to have liked one another at some point, otherwise they wouldn’t have become mates in the first place. But by the time I was old enough to notice, they had grown to resent one another, barely spending time in the same room.
Would Liv and I feel that way about one another? Were we already headed in that direction?
And whose fault would that be, if so?A voice needled me.
I growled, even as I knew the voice had a point. Liv was being distant because of our history, and the reason our history was so complicated traced back to that day when Liv first tried to tell me we were fated mates. If I had handled that situation differently, there was a chance that we wouldn’t be in this position to begin with.
