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I just let my hands rest on her shoulders and gently coaxed her to sit back down. “I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I’m still trying to adjust to finding you. Right now, I don’t think I could live if something happened to you. I promise I won’t be this way for long, but right now, I really just need you to be safe, okay?”
“I…”
I pleaded to her with my eyes, and to my great surprise, she nodded.
“Okay, I’ll stay here just this time.”
“Perfect. If you think you’re in danger at all, you call for me through our bond, okay? You can feel how to do that, can’t you?”
She nodded.
“Okay, perfect. I’ll be right back, I swear.”
Another nod, and I leaned forward, placing a kiss to her forehead. Naturally, it sent another rush of happy chemicals through me, but I did manage to pull away.
I ran off, shifting back into my wolf form. Part of me was rioting at the thought of leaving Ayla alone, but it was smaller than the part that’d be tearing itself apart if she got hurt while he was jumping back into a potential battle.
I didn’t know how or why I hadn’t been able to recognize her as my mate, but considering how unsurprised she was by the revelation, I got the feeling she already knew. Though, her already knowing rose all sorts of uncomfortable questions.
Had she been actively lying to me? Had… had she done something to my mind that caused it to blot her out? The possibilities were disheartening, to say the least. Did she notwant me? Did she hate having me as a fated mate? Her kiss certainly didn’t seem like it.
I probably would've remained stuck in my own head, worried about each little facet of the mystery if I didn’t smell the coppery tang of blood. That was enough to draw me back into the moment.
I needed to focus on finding my teammates. The sooner I did, the sooner I could get back to Ayla, and we could continue on our journey to find her coven.
I once more ran as fast as I could, bounding to the forest until I ended up in the thicket of trees where I knew we’d originally been beset, but oddly enough, there were no enemy bodies there.
Now I knew that was impossible. I'd killed at least two on my own and grievously injured several others. I’d also seen Irina drain at least one in my peripheral vision while I was fighting.
Yet there were none. Not a single enemy corpse to be found.
Concern flowed through me anew as I sniffed around. Had our attackers really stopped and picked up all of their dead and wounded?Why? It seemed like a waste of energy and time to me, especially since, as far as I knew, we were all still alive, and it’d be much easier to attack them while they carried one of their fallen.
More questions. My mind was getting too full of them. Instead I pushed them to the back of my mind and searched on.
But as much as all of my teammate’s scents still lingered, they’d grown stale, like my soldiers had been absconded alongside the enemy corpses. The thought of my team being prisoners of the Shriek was certainly a haunting one, and I refused to believe it. They were quite capable warriors, so surely at least a couple of them must’ve been able to get away and were now hiding so well that I just couldn’t find them.
That seemed much more plausible than all of them getting wiped out, especially Irina. She hadn’t lived for centuries andbecome one of the most terrifying soldiers we had just to be snuffed out by a simple ambush.
Still, I wished I had better news to give Ayla.
I stayed out far longer than I should’ve, but after a couple of hours of searching the area high and low, I knew I couldn’t risk leaving my mate completely on her own. Already my skin was itching, and the worry made me nauseous, my inner wolf quite upset that we weren’t beside Ayla, providing for her every need.
Just in case my theory was correct, and my teammates were just laying low for their own protection, I scratched a symbol of our fort into a few trees. It was an old, ancient language, but we all were familiar with the dashed lines and one lingering curl representing Fort Canid. Hopefully any of our team who returned to this spot hoping to reunite would see the markings and know they could follow them to find Ayla and me.
Now it was time to return to my mate.
Perhaps not shockingly, the run back to her was fraught with both the fear of what I'd find once I got there, and the joy of being reunited again. I knew there was stillsomuch we needed to clarify, but I just didn’t care. I wanted to see her smiling face and breath in her ambrosia-like scent.
By the time I finally reached her, she’d moved from the rock and had set up quite a small bonfire, half sheltered under a lean-to with a thick, leafy roof. It helped disperse the smoke and made a half-cozy sleeping area. It didn’t exactly take an engineering degree to do, but my chest still swelled, proud that my mate was so capable. She’d made a little nest for us without even being asked, somewhere for us to lie together under the stars and not be completely exposed to the elements. She was going to make such an excellent moth—
Whoa, slow your roll there,I chided, but it was too late. My wolf had already latched onto the idea and was now presenting me with abstract imaginings of the beautiful healer with herbelly swollen, our pups growing within her. It was a heady image, one that made my body respond, but I tossed it away with all my might.
“Where…where are they?” I heard Ayla ask tentatively, her eyes searching the trees behind me.
It broke my heart to tell her, but I couldn’t lie to her. I respected her far too much as a person and also as my mate.
“I believe they’re in hiding,” I answered honestly, though I saw her face crumple in further. I didn’t know if she was suddenly emoting more, or I could just read her facial expressions better, but it certainly made me feel guilty. “I left signs on a couple of trees for them to find, so we should give them overnight to find us.”
