stop being so weak. You could learn a thing or two from me, and it might just keep us all safe.”
Niamh didn’t want to be cold like him, but she also didn’t want to be vulnerable in front of him. Sucking back her tears, her grief, she turned and made her way wearily up the beach.
Kiyo followed. “You okay? You’re moving slow … for you.”
“Traveling exhausts me. I’ll be fine in a bit.”
Silence fell between them.
She broke it. “What now?”
He studied the cliff tops ahead of them. There was a pathway cut into rock that would lead them off the beach onto grassy fields. “My guess is that we’re on one of the Swedish islands.”
As they walked up the beach, Niamh studied the werewolf. There was something about him she was missing. It wasn’t as though she had a ton of experience when it came to werewolves. She’d run away from a few, either because they were members of The Garm or they sensed she was different and got overly curious about her.
But Kiyo seemed much stronger than most. Definitely faster. Werewolves were fast, but they were generally slower than other supes. Of course, some alphas were exceptions to the rule. Just over a year ago, when she started having visions of one of the other fae-borne, a woman called Thea, she’d seen Thea’s true mate. Niamh never met him in real life but she knew from her visions that he was one of the strongest and fastest werewolves ever. His name was Conall. He was the alpha of the last werewolf pack in Scotland, and he had a gift for tracking. Once he had someone’s scent, he could track them anywhere in the world. He’d been hired to track down Thea by the man who had tortured and experimented upon her.
Niamh flinched inwardly every time she thought of Thea. Not one of the fae-borne had escaped tragedy, but Thea had been brutally tortured at the hands of a madman.
Her mission back then had been to protect Thea from him, but her visions had revealed that Conall was actually Thea’s true mate and that their joining would save Thea, and them all, in the long run. She’d tried to convince Thea to trust Conall without giving away why. She’d done the same for Rose and Fionn. It worked for both couples. Thea, however, was stabbed in the heart with an iron knife, and Conall bit her to change her into a wolf to save her life. Because they were mated, it worked, and now Thea was safe from this madness, this war for the gate to Faerie.
For a while, Niamh had been concerned for Thea because she seemed intent on finding her. Thea’s determination was born out of a sense loyalty Niamh reciprocated. But she’d stopped having visions of Thea coming for her, so she reckoned someone had finally convinced the newly turned wolf to stay put in Scotland. To stay safe there.
Thank goodness.
Memories of her new vision, the one with the standing stones, came at her, causing her heart to pound.
Niamh couldn’t believe what she’d seen was true.
“People will have witnessed the plane come down. The authorities will be all over this beach soon.”
Niamh looked at Kiyo. He’d said this to her over his shoulder as he led the way up the rock face. He didn’t offer her help but she assumed that was because she didn’t need it. She had the balance of a tightrope walker. Better, even.
“We’ll need transport,” she replied.
“I would call Bran to see if he has any contacts here, but everything we had was on that plane, including my cell.”
Including all her cash. “We’ll need to steal a car.”
She could tell by the tension in his shoulders he didn’t like that idea. The wolf was a contradiction. He was quite willing to kill if necessary and had probably been hired to do just that many times. But he thought stealing beneath him.
When you lived your life on the run, sometimes you had to sacrifice what little honor you had. Grimacing at the reminder of all the immoral crap she’d pulled over the years, Niamh followed the werewolf up onto solid ground and gaped.
Stretching before them was a frost-covered plain and beyond that, trees. Lots and lots of trees.
“Where the hell are we?”
Kiyo scowled and scanned their surroundings. His eyes narrowed on something in the distance to their right. He pointed. “That’s a road.” His finger followed the flash of bright concrete in amongst the