Reeve’s face was completely unreadable. She couldn’t tell if his shock held praise or terror. Maybe it was both. The sound of Eryx’s fast approaching horse flooded her ears.
“What did you just say?” he asked tensely.
Reeve held Maeve’s stare for a moment more, then the light of a Portal reflected on his face. “Go,” he said to Eryx, who didn’t need to be told. The man was already hurtling towards a Portal Reeve made for him.
“I’m going too,” said Maeve, but Eryx was already through the Portal, and Reeve’s hold on her tightened fractionally.
She glared up at him.
“You found her, Maeve. Let Eryx get her to the waters in Aterna, and she will be waiting for you when we return.”
Maeve opened her mouth to speak, but Reeve spoke first, his voice so bare and unmasked, the thread between them tightened.
“I need you here.”
“No,” she said, her voice stern. “I want to go to her.”
Reeve's eyes were devastatingly soft. His head lowered until his forehead touched down at the crown of her head. With closed eyes, he begged her. “Please, Maeve. I need you here.”
The absence of a command for her to stay or expected obedience was more infuriating than if he’d forced her. Because the soft torment in his voice was so filled with need, she quieted.
Reeve inhaled shakily and lifted his head. Their eyes only met for a moment before Drystan’s voice broke their silence.
“We are surrounded.”
Maeve turned, facing forward in the saddle once more as wolves, all sizes and coats, stepped from behind trees and bushes, from shadows of low-hanging foliage.
But her eyes were captured by one, the largest of them all, who stalked down a small clearing towards them. He stopped just a few yards from her as Reeve became uncharacteristically tense behind her. She didn’t look back at him as he took yet another steadying breath. Her gaze was fixed on the solid black wolf with blazing blue eyes before her.
The Alpha. With a chain and a ring around his neck, just as Mal had said. Her eyes locked on the jewel. Her hands tingled, and her shoulders slackened. Her lips parted at the deep sapphire stone set in the band that was not unfamiliar to her.
It was not possible!
She swung her leg around the saddle, ripping Reeve’s fingers from her front, and dropped to the snowy ground with a soft crunch. He did not attempt to stop her.
“I have seen you in my dreams,” she began with a shaking voice, stepping towards the creature. “It cannot be.”
He was massive. The widest among them, and with a towering height that nearly put him eye to eye with Maeve. He stepped towards her, finishing the gap between them, his paws silent atop the snow. He lowered his head until his forehead and Maeve’s were one. A spark of Magic, barely more than a swift whisper, fluttered through her.
It wasknown. It was likehers.
Like Arianna’s.
Like her father’s.
“It can’t be,” she repeated.
A small whine slipped from the wolf’s throat. His mental shields slipped open, a silent and bursting invitation for her to see.
And it was all there.
Their childhood.
Antony smiled down at her in the foyer of Sinclair Estates before leaving for his first year at Vaukore.
“Don’t frown like that,” he said with a chuckle. “I have agreed to meet you in London for tea once a month.”
The memory shifted.
