Isadora kept up with him for what felt like hours, nearly touching him a couple of times. She was guilty of what most pups did when they first started hunting: using their sight.
Carlo ran back and forth quicker than she could catch up. It confused her and sent her running in the wrong direction until she finally stopped and realized her nose wasn’t picking up anything fresh. He was able to do this to her several times.
“Car-car!”
He didn’t answer her frustrated call. This was supposed to be fun, but he wanted to teach her too. If she always won the game, she’d never learn anything. So he kept going, backtracking at times to overlap the trail, and even racing by her and pulling on her bun.
Isadora screeched, blasting in his eardrums.
Carlo covered his ears. “Fuck.”
She was lagging though, getting slower and slower with each pass. He didn’t feel sorry for her. She was Alpha-born and needed to know how to get through the pain and the exhaustion. And her wolf didn’t seem to be letting her quit anyway. Despite it all, she kept going.
And got fucking smarter.
As he raced forward, her scent grew faint. What is she doing? It wasn’t that she’d stopped; she just wasn’t running as fast. He slowed, stretching out his stride so he wasn’t pumping his legs like he had been earlier, but he made sure he could circle around pretty quickly. He sensed Dominic and Arturo on the edge, hovering, but not coming to her aid.
Good. She’s not hurt.
As quietly as he could, he slipped behind a tree and peered around it. Isadora stood in the center of a small clearing, eyes closed, hands loose at her sides. Her chest heaved with each breath she took, little puffs of air visible in the chill of the night.
Still, she didn’t move.
What the hell?
“Catch!”
Carlo jerked forward as a force stronger than he expected pulled him from behind the tree toward Isadora. He dug in his heels and gripped the tree with his sharp claws, his arms bulging with the strain.
“Stop this, Isadora.”
“Catch.”
She’d caught him, all right, and not with any skill of a wolf. This was something more. Carlo tasted the magic on it, the scent of heated cinders and earth under fur. Every mage had a scent, some way to identify their magic to a shifter.
Isadora was using magic.
“Dominic, stop her.”
“Catch!”
“You think I want to get in the middle of that? Let her catch you.”
Not the answer he expected from her father, but he should have guessed. Enabling bastard.
Carlo jerked another foot forward, and he dug into the trunk of the tree, hoping he wouldn’t destroy it with the force of her pull. She still hadn’t moved from her spot in the clearing, never opened her eyes.
She was dragging a full-grown, seven-foot male to her side who had the strength of one of the largest wolves in Encantado. This was madness.
“She’s using magic, Dom.”
“Yup, which is why you can do your little flying dance all on your fucking own. I know better.”
Flying?
Carlo stopped focusing on Isadora’s still form long enough to look down at himself.
His floating self.
