Page 16 of His to Hunt

“Moon. Love. Desire. Hunger,” I read, my finger moving to the ingredients. This has to be it.

Now that I’ve found what I’m looking for, I’m less careful. After I return the box to its place, I slam the book closed, shove it under my arm, and walk to the sliding glass door. I glance back at the damp basement, still pissed off that my mate lives in such horrible conditions. But I’m not here to solve all her problems, no matter what my instincts demand. I’m here to break this fucking spell so I can be free of my little would-be witch.

I exit the basement through the sliding glass door and make sure the lock is in place. Then I hurry to my campsite, sit down, and pull out my phone. I take a few pictures of the book, open it to the spell, and snap several more. I send them all to Saul, hoping he can give me some sort of answer.

My phone lights up with a call from him a few seconds later.

“What the fuck did you stumble into, Victor?” Saul asks, concern in his voice.

“Exactly what I told you,” I answer. “That’s the spell, right? I don’t think any of the others are fully deciphered.”

“I’m surprised they deciphered as much as they did, but they still missed a lot,” he says. “Still, I know what we’re dealing with now. It’s not witch magic.”

“No? What is it then?” I ask.

Saul goes quiet. That worries me more than anything he could have said out loud. Saul always has something to say. A warning. A lecture. A dirty joke if the situation is bad enough. This time there’s only silence.

“Saul?” I prompt, checking my phone to make sure we weren’t disconnected. “Still there?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just… This is something a lot older than witches and warlocks,” he says. “This is druid magic.”

My blood goes cold. Every wolf knows enough old stories to fear druidic magic.

“I thought the last of the druids died in Mesopotamia,” I say. “They were betrayed by Gilgamesh.”

“That’s what the stories say. Gilgamesh welcomed them at first because he wanted the secrets of shifting. When they refused, he tortured the secrets out of them,” he explains. “Then he used that power to slay Ishtar, their goddess, so no one else could learn what they knew.”

“We’re proof that didn’t work out as well as he hoped,” I respond. “That still doesn’t explain the book.”

“No, it doesn’t. Someone copied these spells from a druidic tome and hid them behind the cipher. Probably so that nobody would accidentally cast anything if the book fell into the wrong hands,” he says. “Which it obviously has.”

“Clearly.” I can’t keep the derision out of my voice. “What about the spell? She said it was a love spell.”

“I can’t fully decipher it, but druids didn’t cast spells to make people fall in love with them,” he goes on. “There’s more to it than that.”

“It doesn’t matter. How do we break the spell… curse… whatever? That’s all I really care about,” I feel my impatience coloring my tone.

The tightness in my chest and stomach says otherwise, though. That’s the last thing my instincts care about. Even now, my wolf is clawing inside me, hungry for her. Anxious to be near her. I want to do so much more than follow her around and watch through a glass sliding door. Being inside her home just made it worse.

Every minute away from her feels like something is hooked beneath my ribs, trying to pull me back. I can still fight it. But it will continue to get worse while the mating bond is forming. Much worse.

“It still should be relatively easy to break. Now that I’ve seen the spell, I don’t think she cast it right, so it’s probably just a weak curse mimicking the spell. Only a druid should have the power to cast it correctly,” Saul says. “I’ll gather what I need and come to Covington. I know you won’t be able to leave her until we free you from this curse.”

“No, it’s hard enough just being across town from her, so you should probably hurry,” I reply, trying not to sound desperate as I glance at Taryn’s house.

“You should stay close to her,” he suggests. “Don’t lose her scent or her trail. We’ll need her to break the curse.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I say. “As strong as her scent is, I think I could find her anywhere.”

After I end the call, I return to the diner.

Taryn is in the middle of the lunch rush, moving between tables with a pot of coffee in one hand and an exhausted look on her face. She’s pale and still obviously affected by the curse. Still working because the man who keeps her beneath his house apparently doesn’t care if she can barely stand.

Joe is in the kitchen, but he’s watching her every time she passes. Same eager look in his eyes. Same tooth-deprived grin. My instincts flare into a protective rage, but I stifle them.

If Saul is right, and we need Taryn to break the curse, then I can’t keep watching from the shadows forever. I don’t know how long it’ll take Saul to find what he needs, but it’ll take him a couple days to get here.

I haven’t eaten today, but that’s not the only thing that makes me slip out of the shadows and walk toward the diner. It’s time for me to meet my mate in person. Time for the foolish little girl to see who she’s lured to Covington.