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Sailor swears a couple more times but nods reluctantly. “Fine. Mind link and tell me if any of them are at the cabin.” He glances behind him to the path I need to take. “And don’t take a straight path to our cabin. Zigzag around the others just in case.”
“Okay.” I’m not sure it will make a difference, but it will only add two minutes to my path at most.
Sailor grabs the back of my head and lowers his head to kiss me firmly on the mouth. My stomach jumps, and I only barely restrain myself from reaching up and wrapping my arms around his neck to drag him closer. Now is one hundred percentnotthe time. “I’ll be right behind you. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I don’t plan to.
We split up, Sailor heading for the direction the twins should have been patrolling while I run in an arc around the nearest cabin the way Sailor asked me to.
I have to hide the heart stones. Especially Arielle’s. Now that Jakob knows I have them—and is obviously interested in their existence—I’m worried about him getting his hands on them. If my heart stones end up in the wrong hands, I might never get them back again. And that would be unforgivable.
I won’t lose the precious stones our dad gave us. I would never be able to look my sister in the eye again. She trusted me with her heart stone, and I’ll protect it with my life.
I make it around the first three cabins along the path toward Willem’s without any problems. As I round the fourth, I stumble on a few abandoned pieces of burnt firewood and barely manage to right myself in time. I drop my heart stone and it rolls a couple of feet away.
I mutter under my breath to myself that I need to be more careful as I kneel down to retrieve it.
I jump back to my feet, prepared to run again, and hit a solid mass. The hint of a familiar scent hits me and my wolf recoils.Jakob.
TWENTY-THREE
QUINN
I lash out at Jakob, swinging everywhere I can hit him with one hand while I keep my heart stones clutched in the other. I swing in a blind panic, barely seeing what’s in front of me. Which is why it takes me a minute to realize he’s not fighting back or trying to grab me.
I jerk back a step and raise my eyes to look the man in the face.
Not Jakob.My wolf perks with interest.
“Who are you?” I rasp out. The air still carries Jakob’s scent, though now that my heart has slowed marginally, I can also make out distinct differences. Like the fact that Jakob carries a hint of sweat with him everywhere he goes, but this man smells a bit like firewood and leather.
The man’s mouth forms a hard line on his face. As he stares at me intensely, I take him in.
He has the same ashy blond hair and icy blue eyes as Jakob, and while he’s as tall as the man I’ve come to view as the world’s biggest jerk, he’s broader in the shoulders with more densely packed muscles. His hair is longer too, which I notice when he reaches up to push an errant strand out of his face.
The resemblance is there. It’s more than there. There’s no way this man isn’t related to Jakob. I take several steps back and swing my head from one side to the other, trying to quickly evaluate the best escape route.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” the guy says, his voice pained. His voice is different, deeper and gruffer than Jakob’s in a way that sends a shiver down my spine. He feels dangerous in a quiet sort of way—I’m not naive enough to believe he won’t hurt me. Not when his eyes narrow, and he looks me up and down quickly.
I scoff and huff out a laugh. He doesn’t have that mean look in his eyes that Jakob does, but I’ve never been described as stupid. My arms tighten around the heart stones. “I don’t believe you.”
I do, my wolf interjects.Look at your heart stones.I drop my chin to see that the stones are lit up in my arms. Warmth and energy practically vibrate off of them.Are you kidding me?I ask my wolf, disbelief lacing my tone as my stomach drops.
This is beyond ridiculous. I squeeze the heart stones in my arms, pressing them against my skin until they dig painfully into my ribs. There’s a desperate sort of hope in me that maybe they’ll dim and cool, but they continue to shine as my wolf whines within me.
Look at him.
I glance up in time to see the guy following my gaze, and I tense. He looks back at my face immediately, taking no interest in the stones despite the fact that they’re so lit up that their light radiates off of him, making him glow a little pink in the shadow of the cabin.
“This is not…” He clears his throat and tries again. I hover somewhere between the urge to run and the urge to cry my desperation out. The muscles in his jaw tic before he says, “I didn’t know.”
“Know what?” I narrow my eyes. If he tells me he didn’t know what Jakob was doing, I’ll call him on it. Jakob isn’t being discreet about his intentions. I don’t care what the stones are trying to tell me about this man. They’re wrong.
They have to be wrong.
“I didn’t know you would be my mate,” he mumbles, reaching up to cup the back of his neck with his hand. His eyes drop to the ground before jerking up to meet mine again, an intense look in the icy blue depths.
I retreat another couple of steps away from him and shake my head profusely. “I don’t need any more mates.” My voice is getting too loud, I try to tone it back to avoid drawing attention. The only thing that could make this feel somehow worse than it already does would be one of my men showing up and witnessing my breakdown in real time. Another mate? Absolutely ridiculous. And yet my heart stutters a little in my chest. “You need to leave.”
