Before we left the roof, I used my powerful Dire nose to do a final sniff around. Hoping that maybe, this one time, it had betrayed me.
The scent of Dragon is not only distinctive, but in this case, it was strong, too. Impossible to mistake it, with the metallic undertone of ozone to their shifter musk.
I didn’t know if I really couldn’t separate Talakai’s scent from the others, or if I was avoiding doin’ so. If it was avoidance, it was powerful—I couldn’t push past it.
Sebastian watched me as I continually cast about on the roof, sniffing like a fiend. Anna refused to even look at me. She was staring at the night sky as though it could give her the answers she craved.
Talakai. I don’t know why it upset me that the scaly bludger might be involved in this. I hardly knew the bloke, and in the days we’d been recruits together, he’d not been exactly endearing.
Plus, there was the fact that my beast didn’t like what it sensed between him and Anna... if that had been even halfway real. Because if he’d grabbed the kids—it meant he’d also known Aaron would try something with Anna.
Yet he’d interfered before. Shown up when I really needed him—once, just in time to keep Darius from pushing himself on Anna. That one event alone had averted a disaster—Darius’s alpha power would have forced me to watch while he did what he wanted with her.
That haunted me.
But Talakai had also been with us during the run from hell, and then he had shown up after Anna and me—
Well, after she’d almost cactused me, apparently.
Unless he hadn’t known Aaron’s plans. Maybe he’d only been at the academy to snatch the twins? The concept twisted me up way worse than it ought to, and I knew it was doin’ a number on Anna, too.
“There is nothing more we can do here,” Sebastian snapped. “We need to return to where the trail divided.”
I arched a brow at him. “You think the other group has the twins?”
The Bellati shook his hooded head. “No. I think the twins went with the Dragons. But the others might have information that can lead us to them.”
Anna shot him a look. Wary, but also a flash of something deeper that set my teeth on edge. The guy might be our instructor, but he was also a grade-A asshole. Yet I’d sensed something between him and her during that run.
I had no right to my anger. As I trailed after her, her scent filled my sensitive nostrils. And it pulsed straight through me, tightening my entire body and distracting me from my task.
I gritted my teeth and reminded my bloody beast that she didn’t belong to it.
Was pretty damned sure it ignored me.
Anna headed for the metal ladder. Sebastian waited as she descended. The dodgy thing was barely holding together, and it had almost dumped her once, but she skittered over the edge and down it with remarkable dexterity. I was right behind her, worried she’d hit another bad rung, but we both made it to the ground unscathed.
The ladder creaked as Sebastian swung free. “Hood up,” he barked at me.
Strewth.I’d better get my bleedin’ head in the game here. He shouldn’t have to remind me. I yanked up my hood, and shifted my face once more to my beast as we jogged along the alley, back to where the trail had divided.
The instant I did so, my world altered to one where scent dominated. My nose told me who had been in the alley, where they had walked, and even how long ago they’d been there. Many scents were unfamiliar—I’d never encountered the resident species before—but there was no mistaking the cayenne pepper.
It all but obliterated the wearer’s identity, setting fire to my nasal passages and making my eyes water. But it also was something I could track.
So that was what I did. It took us to where the scents divided, and then we moved along the alleys. Sebastian kept Anna in the middle, leaving himself to bring up the rear. I totally got it. In his eyes, she was the most vulnerable of the three of us, and untrained to boot.
Of course, he had no idea that she wasn’t as vulnerable as she seemed. My body ached as muchfromher touch asforit. I’d insisted that I’d be fine, that I’d recover from what she’d done to me, but I had yet to do so. It was taking far longer than I expected, and a small, niggling part of me wondered if she’d done permanent damage.
No.I refused to believe that something that had felt so totally bonza—socosmic, like it was meant to be—could be bloody wrong. Anna had paraded through my dreams before I’d met the real, living woman. If that wasn’t Fate screaming in my ear, I didn’t know what was.
She insisted my heart had almost stopped, that she’d nearly cactused me. I’d been so weak, but all I remembered was sliding home inside of her, of climbing a mountain like no other, and erupting, together, white-hot and scorching...
My body trembled. Now, in memory, every inch of it instantly rock hard. I was distracted enough that I let my nose get too close to the pepper scent, and I sneezed, my eyes tearing up. Wiping at them, I gave myself a moment to breathe clean air. But only for a second or two—those twins were out there. And we had to find them.
The scent led us out of the alley. I paused at the edges of a street. Hooves clopped on cobblestones as a wagon passed us, pulled by three furry quadrupeds that looked nothing like horses. The animals were also used as riding beasts. A few shuffled along carrying equally dejected-seeming riders.
Despite the critters and the cart, the storefronts were illuminated by electric lights on tall poles. An interesting mix of primitive and technological resources.
