Cade looked at me for a long moment before dipping his head in a nod. “As you wish.”
I snorted. “At the moment, my wish is to never see any of you again.”
“Can’t help you with that, I’m afraid.” He shrugged, not seeming all that apologetic. “Will you look at the letters on my desk before you go? We got in some new reports from the west.” Cade waved a hand towards the enormous stone desk that had been shoved in front of the open wall so he could look out at the forest while he worked.
Curiosity beckoned me, and I walked over to the desk, picking up some letters tidily stacked on the right side. Cade was obsessively neat, and his system of organizing incoming and outgoing letters made total sense to me. It was almost identical to my much smaller desk in the room beneath the stronghold.
Before moving here and getting to know them all better, I would have pegged Bastian as the compulsively neat one, just based on how well put-together he always looked.
I was fairly confident that, even after a night of wild sex, Bastian would roll out of bed with artfully mussed hair, looking perfect as always.
Not that what Bastian looked like the morning after his escapades was any of my business. Although, I did see him shirtless often, and he tended to wear loose-fitting pants that hung low enough to give me all sorts of wicked thoughts. Like how it would feel to trace my fingers across the carved V-shaped muscles over his hips before dipping them down and?—
“Didn’t know migration pattern reports would make you blush,” Cade said casually next to me. Entirely too close.
“Will you stop doing that!” I jumped and slapped my hand against his chest.
Cade laughed, his enormous hand falling over mine. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you, Rynn. The chair creaked when I stood, for fuck’s sake.”
I scowled at him. “I’m putting a bell on all of you.”
A lopsided grin fell across his lips, and I found myself staring at it. Cade’s genuine smiles were rare, and I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen one—and it definitely hadn’t been directed at me. He was so serious all the time. I understood why. He had to deal with the chaos generated by Bastian, Ryker, and Warrick.
It was a wonder he didn’t have grey hair.
My gaze flipped up to his inky black hair. Today, it was pulled up into a messy knot, but not a hint of grey showed in the dark strands. I glanced at his jawline. No grey in the dark stubble he sported either. My eyes followed the deep scars that carved a path across the right side of his face, cutting across his mouth before trailing off. I had no idea where he’d gotten them from, but Velesians could heal just about anything, so the injury must have been severe and possibly laced with magic.
“Going to tell me what had you blushing?” Cade’s voice deepened, and his thumb lightly brushed the back of my hand.
We both froze and looked at where my palm was still on his chest, covered by his own scarred hand, like neither of us were fully aware of what we were doing.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, and we dropped our hands and stepped away from each other.
What the fuck was that? I mentally whispered to myself. The only saving grace was that Cade looked just as bewildered as I felt.
I cleared my throat. “Something is pushing the deer to the coast.”
“Yes,” Cade agreed. “But where?”
I looked away from him and scoured the letters again, absorbing all the details scouts had reported back and organizing them into little mental folders. Setting the letters back into the same stack I found them in, I moved to stand in front of the wall behind the desk. On it, a giant map of Lunaria was painted.
The original map had been done by the Fae, but it had been added to by the Alphas. Lines in bright red paint marked the Velesian, Moroi, and Furie realms. Each of those were then further broken down into different territories. Houses for the Moroi and Order territories for the Velesians. The Furies were just . . . the Furies.
I stared at the Furie stronghold on the southwestern coast. I missed my fiery best friend, and I knew Samara did too, but there wasn’t anything I could do for her at the moment other than hope Samara was wrong and Cali hadn’t brought Nyx into the Velesian realm.
My gaze drifted up to the mountain range that covered the top of the map. Someone had added several known migration patterns. They hadn’t significantly changed in decades.
Until now.
“The scouts have been reporting changes to the migration patterns for months; I noted some last year actually. The changes were small at first, but they’ve settled into a new pattern.” I pointed to a spot midway between the center of the map and the west coast. “I think that’s where it started. They went farther west instead of east because of the gorge, I’m guessing. It’s like a little piece of the badlands in the middle of the forest.”
“You know about the gorge?” I felt Cade’s attention on me but stayed focused on the map.
“Yes,” I responded. “Any area of significance is noted at Drudonia.”
Cade grunted, and I relaxed a little at the familiarity of the sound. This was what we did. Calmly talked about facts. We didn’t stand intimately close with our hands touching.
“Do you think this migration shift is permanent?” he asked.
