Bait N' Witch (Brimstone Inc. #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,49

him. Now he was tempted to ask his juvenile daughters for more. This really had to stop.

“I doubt that—”

“Only when you’re not looking,” Chloe said.

“Don’t tell her that,” he said with a stern look. “She’d be horribly embarrassed. True or not.”

Only, a growing part of him wanted it to be true. Wanted her to look at him the way a woman looked at a man she wanted. But more than that, a man she trusted.

And, after that night, he knew they weren’t there yet.

…

Rowan gazed over the vista laid out before her like a perfect painting. She’d pulled off at one of the many scenic overlooks along Trail Ridge Road, which traversed the Continental Divide. Technically, the road wasn’t open to drivers yet—closed for the season—but as a witch who could teleport, Rowan wasn’t too concerned.

Now, standing above the tree line, the windswept alpine tundra almost rolled away from her, though she knew full well that a bit farther on a life-ending drop awaited. Above her the slopes spiked away again to jagged peaks. She gazed to the west, to the heart of the Rockies, the crags and peaks rising across the horizon in an unending display of how puny humans were against such natural grandeur.

The animals she’d stopped and talked to along the way had directed her here. She shivered now, as the high winds penetrated her thin jacket. She’d been waiting here for forty minutes without a single animal appearing. Still, creatures worked on a different timetable than humans. So she continued to wait. She needed to know…

A falcon’s cry pierced the air. However, a quick search of the sky revealed no bird near her. Again, the screech rent the morning silence, carried to her on the currents of the wind. Then, in a rush, the bird soared up from below, over the edge of the mountain and straight toward her. A whispered spell protected her delicate skin from her sharp talons, and Rowan held out her arm for the gyrfalcon to perch upon.

Wings flared wide to slow her approach, she gave several sharp flaps as she landed, then folded them neatly back. Beautiful with her white speckled belly and darker speckled wings, she cocked her head and regarded her with piercing yellow eyes.

“Rowan McAuliffe.”

Her voice punched through Rowan’s mind, surprisingly smooth.

“Yes. Can you tell me what danger follows me?” Please don’t let it be Grey. Please. Please. Please.

The Syndicate wouldn’t be much better.

The falcon bowed her head. “Wolf shifters.”

Relief hit her first, like her lungs could suddenly expand. Not Grey. The danger wasn’t him or the Syndicate. Half a beat later, the falcon’s words sunk in, and dread burst inside her chest before sinking to the pit of her stomach.

She’d expected to hear the Covens had discovered her location under their very noses and were coming for her. But wolf shifters could mean only one thing. Kaios’s helpers hadn’t all been killed, and now they were coming for her.

“Who?”

“Kaios’s lover.”

Kaios had a lover? Hexes, hells, and parsnip. That woman. The one who’d taken pleasure in taunting her when Kaios hadn’t been around.

That made a few things clearer, especially how he’d gathered a following of shifters. His lover must be one.

A she-wolf now bent on vengeance hunted her? Fan-freakin-tastic.

“How long before she finds me?”

“A few days. Maybe three at most. She hasn’t caught your scent yet. But she’s close.”

“Is she alone?”

“No.”

“How many?”

“Unclear. Around ten.”

Boiling cauldrons and pickled pig’s feet. Too many to handle alone.

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Call upon those you need when the time is right.” With a leap that barely moved her arm, so light was the bird of prey, the gyrfalcon took to the skies, diving back over the cliff from which she’d come.

Now what did she mean by that last comment?

Long after the bird departed, she stared, unseeing, after it. What should she do?

Her first instinct screamed run. With wolf shifters on the warpath, her presence put Grey and the girls in danger. Given the power even a shifter could wield over her, the wolves could force her to hurt them.

She shouldn’t stay. However, stay or not, her scent led the wolves directly to Grey’s house, which meant they remained in peril even if she escaped.

Leaving them, leaving Grey—her heart ached at the prospect, like a thousand pinpricks all at once, leaving her bleeding inside. How had he become important to her in such a short time? No sense lay in the emotions with which she associated him.

She’d call Delilah, call upon