woods sits ominously amid the trees. The open gateway is made of twisted and gnarled wood, the tops of the door spiked with sharp pieces of wood reaching up for the sky. My skin crawls at going in there, but this is what we came here for.
The crunch of foliage sounds behind us, and I twist around to find Stone joining us. “Figured you could use another set of hands but wanted to first give you space to work out your lover’s spat there.” He cocks a look over to Nikos, then me. His words carry mirth, and I can’t tell if he’s mocking us or being a jealous ass. That’s when I notice the blue glow of his runes from beneath his white shirt, and despite his rudeness, I’m glad to have him by my side as well.
“Okay, let’s go inside,” I say.
We step over the threshold, and a shiver snakes up my spine. Golden lines of power frantically dance across my fingers, the sharp prickle of magic running up my arms.
“Let me enter first,” I tell them.
Inside the doorway, I am faced with another wall made of entwined branches so high that there is no way to easily breach it. On either side of me is a narrow path that is nestled between the two walls. Each stretches out for close to twenty feet, then curves out of sight.
When I glance over to the men who’ve followed me, Stone flicks his hand for Nikos and I to go to the right and he’ll take the left.
We move hastily until we careen around the bend.
I pause dead in my tracks, my heart slamming into my ribcage as we stare at an enormous opening that spills into a tremendous open land. There are dozens of small wooden huts, lofty trees with homes built in the sturdy branches, and people roaming about, males and females, along with kids. Families live within the safety of these walls, and suddenly panic jabs into my chest about Ragnar’s intentions here.
Magic claws down my back, and my breaths come too fast. There’s an invisible force tugging me forward by my chest to enter the grounds and join them, but I dig my heels into the ground, terrified to move.
“Fuck yes, we found them,” Nikos whispers beside me. “I need to get the others.”
“No, wait!” I say, but he’s already sprinting back the way we came, and there’s no sign of Stone. A coldness chills my bones.
Something feels wrong. Why wouldn’t the entrance to the witches’ coven be better guarded? This is too easy… it’s a trap. It has to be.
I swing back around to the small village but instead come face to face with someone who wasn’t there seconds ago.
A young woman with two black lines drawn across her cheeks and two more across her brow and the reddest curly hair bouncing over her shoulders. She greets me with a darkened smile, but I’m lost in her completely white eyes.
I flinch backward, stumbling away from her outstretched arm.
She steps closer, and her words invade me. “You finally made it.”
19
Ragnar
Narah doesn’t leave my thoughts. She invades every inch of me, and I’m fucking obsessed. I can still feel her soft body beneath me, hear the sexy sounds she makes, taste her on my tongue. She’s delicious, and I suspected from the beginning that if I let myself go too far with her, there’d be no turning back.
I knew it, but I couldn’t stop. And when I saw the hunger in her eyes, I fell hard. She gave me the gift of being her first, and for that, I will forever be hers. Now I just need to convince her of that.
The line between my mission and Narah blurs with each passing day, and that raises an alarm in my head that I’m losing control.
Helping her with her fated mate problem had been genuine on my part, though another reason had been to eliminate that prick from her head. The thought of him consuming her thoughts and capturing her wolf’s attention rips me apart. It drives me to insanity, and if we weren’t in these cursed woods, I’d already be on his doorstep, ripping his head off his fucking shoulders.
When she told me he tried to kill her, it seemed an invisible blade had been jammed into my heart, and it’s remained there ever since, twisting with my agony and anger growing. Without really meaning to, desire for her seizes me by the fucking balls. With her,