Page 24 of Wolfsbane

Did I need to pick Drew up and hand him over? What about this was confusing? What was I missing?

“You . . . you can’t just carry that much dead weight indefinitely. That’s crazy.”

I waved him away. “It will not be indefinitely. Only back to the pack.”

“That’s like thirty miles!”

I had no idea why he had such an inflated sense of how far we were from pack lands, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t dismiss the only remaining possibility. It was all we had, so it was what would happen.

What else could there be?

He bit his lip, looking away again. “You could . . . you could awaken me.”

It was my turn to stare at him. Awaken. I knew this term. Aleks had used it. The witches had said it before. The Crescent wolves had said it too. “You want to have sex. Here. Now.”

“No!” He looked hurt by the very idea, his green eyes luminous and wet, and he pulled his lip into his mouth to chew on it. “I—I don’t. Not even a little bit. Not like this. But you’re right. We don’t have a lot of choices. If I need to do magic, well, then I need to have access to my magic. That means I need to be awakened. It’s a better answer than you carrying me thirty miles through the woods, isn’t it?”

And honestly, I had no idea if it was a better answer. But it was the first solution he hadn’t dismissed outright. So maybe it was the only solution we had access to.

Sex was the only solution. If we hadn’t been running and hiding for our lives, it would have been laughable.

CHAPTER 12

Daire

This was mortifying.

I was a witch without access to my own magic, and my options were to let Viktor carry me through the woods, my bare ass swinging through the breeze, back to his pack.

Or he could awaken my magic, and I could ward us and give us a chance to get our bearings. Maybe even find some solution to being stark naked in the wilderness.

I should’ve watched more Naked and Afraid, but how was I supposed to predict that’d become my life?

For Viktor, getting back to his pack as quickly as possible was probably the best option, but they’d welcome him home, protect him. Me? The second they learned that my coven had tried to sacrifice him, they’d tear me apart.

We’d never heard from Kate or Tristan after they’d gone looking for Altair. Maybe Tristan had read the text I’d sent about Ivan, but that could’ve been anybody. It could’ve been a werewolf, and I was just texting dead people to warn them about the murderous vampire headed their way.

Fuck, it would’ve been nice to have my phone, but it’d been in my pocket when the wolf had taken over, and I’d left my clothes along with everything else back at the coven house.

Anyway, I wasn’t just being selfish, wanting to get my footing and have some power of my own that I could control. It was insane, for Viktor to try and carry us both. I didn’t know if he was still stronger and faster than humans, but he hadn’t done anything totally crazy while we were escaping. At least, nothing that a shredded guy used to running through the woods couldn’t do.

It was too far for Viktor to carry us, and if he tripped up or slowed down, the coven would catch up real quick.

We were better off here.

Probably.

That was what my gut was telling me, anyway.

You should listen to it more.

Whatever.

I peeled myself off the floor, both hands folded in front of parts of me that—that I was going to have to come around to letting Viktor see, if we were going to do this. But this whole time, he’d been staring at me like I was crazy, so I wasn’t sure we were.

“I won’t ask you to if you don’t want to, but I’m—I’m willing. I think it’s our best option, but I’m not⁠—”

“Like the rest of your coven?”