She takes my offered hand, and together we stand back up and begin the walk back to NightShade.
Tonight, restraint wins.
But based on the way Rowan’s still looking at me, I can’t promise that will happen a second time. For either of us.
Chapter 27
ROWAN
Cade gets me back to my room, and as soon as the lock clicks shut behind me, I sag against the wood like someone’s just cut the strings holding me up. My palms press flat against the door. It’s cool under my skin, the kind of cold that makes the heat in my veins feel louder. I let my head fall back with a soft thud and taste the adrenaline at the back of my throat.
Ho. Ly. Shit.
My lips buzz, my chest is too tight, and somewhere behind my ribs, my wolf is purring so loud I can hear her rasping against my bones, begging to be let free. I don’t know if I should laugh, cry, or run until the thrumming in my limbs bleeds out.
The kiss at the creek keeps replaying in my mind on a loop. The heat of Cade’s mouth. The way his hands held me like he was afraid I’d disappear. The quiet sounds he made—half growl, half groan—ones I felt more than I heard. That wasn’t just a kiss. It was so much more. An earthquake.
Ours, Wolfsighs happily, stretching inside me like a cat basking in the sun.
“Dangerous,” I mutter back. Because that’s what this is. Cade Westin is dangerous to every defense I’ve built around my heart, and now? Those defenses are cracked wide open.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to ignore the way my pulse refuses to settle. Because if this is what happens when he kisses me, what the hell happens if I let myself fall the rest of the way?
And it wasn’t just the kiss that rocked me.
My chest still hums with the strange, wild energy I’d pulled from the creek. The memory hums under my ribs, a pleasant electric ache, like sunlight that stays inside you even after you go indoors.
Wolf keeps purring in the back of my head, satisfied and smug. She liked that. She likes him.
I close my eyes and try to hold on to the aftertaste of the earth—the way the ground felt like it accepted my overflow and then let me go. It’s the first time in the last few days that the word “control” didn’t feel like a threat. For a few breathless minutes, I truly believed I could do this. I can be both the storm and the person who closes the window afterward.
An out-of-place sound cuts my reverie—different than a floorboard settling, lighter than Liz breathing. Something like fabric sliding.
My eyes snap open. The skin over my arms prickles, not the wolf’s warning this time but something thinner, a human instinct.
There’s someone else here.
I tell myself it’s nothing. NightShade is full of strange things. Maybe Liz is reorganizing my closet because she can’t sleep. Maybe I’m still buzzing from the creek and hearing things.
Then, the closet door moves.
Not a groan or a creak caused by an old, magical house—a deliberate, small slide.
The air from my lungs leaves me all at once. The world narrows to the gap at that closet door and the blood in my ears. My wolf hums from within, eager and suddenly hungry for blood; she wants to throw herself at this threat like it’s for sport.
Do not move, she says, low and clipped.
I don’t know if she’s warning me or ordering me. All I know is I don’t want to find out what’s hiding behind that door.
I turn to exit my room and call for Cade, but before I can touch the handle, a light flashes around me and the next thing I know… I’m on my ass.
A cloaked figure stands over me. Hood shadowing a face I can’t make out, though every nerve in me insists it doesn’t matter. He—an assumption I make based on the flat chest—doesn’t make a sound, not when his boots kiss the floorboards, or when his hand flicks upward.
Something glints, arcing into the air.
I suck in a breath and kick out with my feet, calling on my wolf strength, but her presence is dim.Where the hell are you?
Light… Spell… Can’t shift. Sealed room.Her words are clipped, but I get enough to knowwhat she’s saying.
