Fated for Her Wolves - Tara West Page 0,46
a thick pine from the ground, its roots crackling in the brittle air. The sounds of dozens more trees being uprooted ricocheted through the forest. They doused the tree with gasoline and threw a lit match on the branches. The fire took hold, engulfing the entire top portion of the tree.
Picking up the tree, Hakon aimed it downhill like a missile. “Time to go get our women.”
Chapter Eleven
SITRI WENT UP THE STAIRS to one of the castle’s dilapidated turrets, cursing the Russian stonemason’s slow work. He should have completed this section by now. The stones beneath his feet wobbled, made even more slippery by the snowfall that had hardened to ice. When he reached the top, his guard handed him a pair of binoculars, and he peered through the sea of white into a set of wide, golden eyes blinking at him from behind a bush. He handed the binoculars back to the guard. He would not be unnerved by one wolf shifter.
The guard mumbled something in Russian about looking higher and pushed the binoculars back into his hands. He scanned the forest again, pausing when he saw a pair of silvery, glowing eyes.
A series of low, dark howls rent the stagnant air. Dozens more glowing eyes came into focus. He counted at least two dozen, followed by two dozen more, and his heart fell to the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t thought there were enough shifters in this small Romanian town to take on their impenetrable fortress.
Sitri heard a loud snap, like the breaking of ice before an avalanche, and he watched helplessly as the thick pines surrounding their compound fell like dominoes. That’s when he saw the massive ape-like men, some with white fur, others with brown and gray. They lifted trees as if they each weighed no more than bags of flour. He’d known that some of the wolf shifters could turn into these beasts, but he’d had no idea they were so strong. They glared at him like they each had a punishment stone with his name written on it.
These shifters wanted to do more than stone him.
Handing the binoculars back to the guard, he backed up when they aimed their weapons at the shifters who barreled down the hill toward the castle, their deafening roars filling the night sky.
When each tree went up in flames, completely surrounding them, Sitri felt it best he wait out the battle deep inside the castle. He told his guards to open fire and quickly hurried down the stairs, nearly falling on the slick ice.
Damn those shifters. He’d come so close to realizing his dream and taking over the body of the witch. He was supposed to access her spells. With such power he could have taken over the world. He would have to formulate a different strategy for getting even with the shadow wolves.
His demon flexed beneath his skin, ready to take flight should the need arise, even though he risked hell’s fiery pit opening and swallowing him whole should he leave his mortal body. Hell couldn’t ensnare him if he took a living body hostage.
He remembered why they’d chosen this particular castle. The Hoia Baciu was nearby. If he and his hostage could make it to the haunted forest, he’d find asylum behind the veil. The demonic forest, an enchanted portal that had once served as a stairway to the underworld, now closed off from hell and civilization, was a bubble on earth filled with the few demons lucky enough to escape hell. He’d be a god among them, and he would take with him the perfect companion, a pretty little virgin wolf.
EILEA HAD NEVER FELT so much power before. Something had clicked when she’d gone into labor, a magic she hadn’t known she possessed awakening. The powers she’d inherited from her son during pregnancy had magnified, and she felt as if she could channel a powerful hurricane or raging inferno through her fingertips.
Baby at her breast, she walked through dark hallways that smelled like mold and musty earth. She knocked aside guards who dared get in her way, their guns shattering against the gray, stone walls. Going from room to room, she sniffed out more guards and dealt with them. She sniffed for Tatiana, whose scent was still weak. The strange smell of demon, a mixture of heavy lavender tinged faintly with sulfur gas, was getting stronger.
After all the soldiers had been disposed of, she came across a frightened group of men crowded together beneath an