That was where my obsession with her had started, but at some point, it’d changed. I mean, I still loved that about her. How she never backed down. But I also liked spending time with her in the library when she had her nose buried in those dusty old books. We didn’t talk. We didn’t fight . . . or fuck.
I just enjoyed her company, her earthy scent, and the way she sneezed and sometimes scared herself because she was so deep into whatever she was reading. I chuckled. She was so weird.
And she was going to be so pissed when she saw my face. I grinned wider. It was easier to get her to see things my way when she was angry. Cold and logical Rynn was more difficult for me to navigate.
She could run from me all she wanted. Sooner or later she’d just have to accept that I’d find her and drag her back home. She belonged to the Alpha pack, even if she wasn’t technically a part of it, and nothing she did would change that. Which meant we had all the time in the world to figure out our bullshit.
Assuming Bastian didn’t fuck things up.
I scowled and stopped in front of a door halfway down the hallway. Based on the scent trails, this was the room Bastian and Rynn had shared. He’d left this morning, going down the hallway in the same direction I’d come from. Rynn had left after him but had gone the opposite way. I hesitated. Rynn wasn’t here. There was no reason to go into the room.
Fuck it. I had to know.
I let myself in, heading straight to the bed. The covers were rumpled. They’d clearly both slept in it. I took a deep breath, and the tension instantly eased from my shoulders. No telltale scents of sex. All they’d done was sleep.
Not on opposite sides of the bed though. I frowned and leaned over the bed more. Their scents were heavily intertwined. A low growl spilt from my throat. Rynn and I might have fucked several times, but she’d never let me hold her. Not the way Bastian clearly had last night.
The dread that had filled my gut at the idea of them fucking came back. This somehow felt worse. It would piss me off, but I could see Rynn hate fucking Bastian. This hadn’t been a spontaneous hate fuck though. They’d lain together for hours. She’d let him hold her.
I shoved off the bed and headed for the door, but not before slashing Bastian’s favorite jacket on my way out. This stupid fucking bet needed to be called off. Sooner or later, Rynn would find out and be pissed. Not just at Bastian, but at all of us for not telling her. I couldn’t tell her though because that felt like betraying Bastian and Cade.
Rynn was right. My loyalty was divided, and I had no idea what to do about it.
In the meantime, I could at least get Bastian to drop the bet bullshit so Rynn didn’t find out and kill us all in our sleep and so I didn’t have to murder him for touching her.
Turning left, I stalked down the hallway once more, following Rynn’s scent into a stairwell, this one narrower than the main one I’d come up. When I reached the ground floor, I slowed, my brows bunching together. I’d assumed Rynn had taken this stairwell to avoid having to talk to anyone, since, based on the mostly stale scents, this one wasn’t used all that often, but she’d kept going instead of exiting here.
Maybe she had a study or something down there? Rynn did like having her own space. I could see her selecting an out-of-the-way room where people would leave her alone . . . but it didn’t seem like her to choose one underground.
The feeling of claustrophobia grew as I continued my descent, level after level, until finally reaching the bottom. There was no way Rynn would have chosen to have her study down here. I knew for a fact that she regularly read in front of the balcony in her room. And in the library, which was one of the few rooms in our home that still had all its walls intact, she always chose to sit near the windows.
So what was she doing down here?
Fae lanterns gave off a soft golden glow as I quietly strode down a narrow passage. On either side of me were solid wood doors with inlaid iron bars crisscrossing them.
This was a Fae dungeon.
Not all that surprising. While not every castle had a dungeon level, quite a few did.
For the second time, I found myself in front of a door. Rynn had gone to the end of this dead-end hallway, but she’d stopped in this room first. No one else’s scent was here. Just hers.
I raised my hand to push the door open but froze with my fingers against the wood as I cocked my head to the side. Two distinct pairs of footsteps echoed down the stairwell, too far up for me to catch their scents.
“Why would Rynn come down here?” I heard Bastian ask. To anyone else, his voice likely sounded polite, but I heard the tension in it. Whether it was there because of Rynn or my presence was a toss-up.
Probably both.
Not waiting for Bastian and his companion’s arrival, I pushed the door, and it silently swung open. A standard prison cell greeted me. I stared at the single cot with a ratty blanket pressed against one wall. Rynn’s scent still clung to it.
Why would she have come here? To this cell?
There were no other clues to be found, and the only scent was hers from today. Had she known someone who had been kept down here?
“Why was Rynn in here?” Bastian asked a second before he appeared at my side.
Not Why are you here? or Cade’s going to be pissed at you.
Apparently, we both had one-track minds where Rynn was concerned.
