She nodded. “I’ll be careful. We’d better get moving, or we’ll miss end meal.”
“You go ahead of us, Angel,” Matt suggested. “You look rather—tousled. If we show up together, some are bound to get ideas.”
“Shower right away,” I suggested.
Anna planted her hands on her hips. “Are you saying I smell bad?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m saying every Dire in the place will know what you’ve been doing, and who you were doing it with.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. Spun and stalked up the path, her newly rearranged ponytail swinging.
Around us, the forest moved. The birds, the rodents, the herbivores—they all followed her.
I sighed.
“You felt it too, didn’t you?” Matt whispered.
“Yes. I felt it.” Even now, my legs twitched to follow her, and letting her walk away was painful. Like she really did have hooks in my soul.
I already had one female in that position. I didn’t need another.
“She’s powerful.”
“Yes. I hope the Watchers know how to help her.”
Matt’s mouth twisted. “Me too.” He pushed himself off the tree trunk and staggered. “I’m right stonkered, I tell ya. But I honestly don’t remember nearly dyin’.”
“From what I have seen, she isn’t the type to panic easily. So if she thinks you almost died—I don’t think she imagined it.” I watched him attempt to walk. He swayed into the bushes, and I grabbed him by the elbow.
“Mitts off, mate.” But he didn’t shake off my hand as we headed up the path.
“We should take you to the Watcher,” I mused. “She could give you a boost.”
“No. I don’t want to alert her to anything until Anna is ready.”
I ground my teeth, but he was right. If I could feel how depleted he was, the Watcher would sense much more. And ask questions.
I yanked my mind back to the pressing concern. “You’ll never make Night Games tonight,” I pointed out. “Not like this. And shifters don’t get sick.”
“I’ll be fine,” Matt growled. “I’ll eat and sleep before then. I’ll recover fast.”
I wasn’t so sure. As we made our way along the path, my mind raced. There was a name for creatures like Anna. But they were only myths.
“I didn’t think succubus were real,” Matt said.
It dovetailed so closely to my own thoughts that my stride hitched. “They aren’t.”
“Might want to rethink that assumption,” Matt stated as he shuffled along.
It wasn’t just horny, desperate Dires that Anna attracted. It was me. And if what I sensed was right, even the powerful Bellati was not impervious.
The succubus of myth sucked life essences during sex. But according to legend, they were also supposed to be demons, and many were portrayed with wings. So Anna didn’t fit the traditional stereotype.
Not completely, anyway. But I was aching, rigid, living proof that some myths were real.
And what I’d felt when she touched me—Shards. I hadn’t fled one female to risk myself for another.
I desperately needed to rethink this entire venture. Because, in that moment, I would have doneanything. Anything she asked.
