Page 73 of Fated to Her

“Ready?” Cyrus asks.

I nod, and he grab my hips, lifting me. I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, resting my chin on his shoulder. His grip tightens as he starts running behind the house toward the tree line. They both stop, and Eli removes his pants, placing them on a rock before shifting. Cyrus runs with him for a little bit, then he takes me to the waterfall, where we wait for Eli. He runs for around an hour until the wind picks up.

Heading home, Eli runs ahead of us, and Cyrus slows as my hips start to ache, and I become nauseous. We’re roughly halfway back when we notice Eli has stopped up ahead. He sniffs the air.

“What is it?” Cyrus asks. Eli suddenly shifts to standing and taking on his Lycan form.

“Do you smell that?” Eli asks him.

Cyrus sniffs the air then looking in the direction the wind is coming from. My heart skips a beat as Eli creeps in that direction, Cyrus following close behind. He pulls me higher and closer to him, his grip tightening. I don’t know how long we’ve been walking until we come to a small clearing hidden among the trees; it’s obviously been cleared by man. Men from the village stand in the clearing, all wearing gloves and thick rubber overalls. Eli growls loudly, and a few look in our direction as Eli steps into the clearing.

“Careful, Eli,” Cyrus says to him.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him, confused.

“Wolfsbane and a heap of other plants that shouldn’t be here,” Cyrus says.

I peer around, seeing the crops of purple flowering plants, along with others that resemble cotton. Now that I’m close, the smell is quite pungent and overwhelming. I hear Eli hiss in pain, and my gaze snaps to him.

“Eli, get out of there now,” Cyrus tells him, his worry heavy through the bond.

Eli shifts back into his human form, and burns cover his skin. Was he forced to shift back?

“Eli, come take Addie. I’ll check it out,” Cyrus snaps at him.

Eli growls but stalks over to me. I try to stand, but Eli hoists me higher.

“You’re hurt. Let me stand,” I tell him.

“No, these plants aren’t just poisonous to me, Addie, but to humans as well,” he says.

Cyrus creeps around, inspecting the different plants, and even he hisses a few times. Seeing a man with gloves trimming one of the plants, Eli calls him over.

The man appears younger than me, with dark curly hair pulled into a ponytail and tied up with a piece of ribbon.

“Yes, Eli?” the man says.

“What is all this?” Eli asks him.

“Our crops,” he answers simply, clearly not seeing anything wrong with it.

“These plants are illegal to grow,” Eli says, and the man shakes his head just as Cyrus calls him over.

Eli moves around the crop and over to Cyrus, who’s holding a plant in his hand that has little orange balls on it, yet the smell of it is familiar to me. Eli whistles, waving his hand over to the man. He jogs over with a pair of trimming scissors in his hand.

“What are the crops for?” Eli demands to know, his voice terribly cold.

The man bares his neck to him.

“Answer me,” Eli snaps.

“We grow them for the hunters’ organization. We have a deal with them. They provide things we need in return for the herbs.”

“Provide what?” Eli asks.

“The solar panels, the plumbing… The hunters’ organization had all that dropped in. They also stay off our lands as long as we keep supplying them.”

“You know what this does, right?” Eli says, snatching the plant from Cyrus and shaking it in his hand in front of the man’s face.