I park the bike, Kieran shifts back, and we mutely wander through the town—really a village, if we’re being honest, or what they might call a truck stop by modern standards. No trucks stop here though, and nothing seems to have stuck around for whatever else happened.
I feel the pull calling to my blood. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re close to something important. It’s like a word on the tip of my tongue that I can’t quite remember.
Stealing glances at Kieran, I see the same sense of strangeness on his face as he observes the empty storefronts, abandoned driveways, and darkened windows. His face is oddly peaceful without a scowl of irritation or a frown of disdain twisting it. With that and the mist softening his hair, he almost looks like the young man I used to know.
The one who stood up for me, defended me from bullies, and looked at me like I mattered.
My chest throbs with an ache, and I tear my gaze away. The rejected bond just has to constantly remind me of what I’ve lost and can never have. What dumb luck that I’d be stuck forever mated to the moodiest, most foul-tempered, disdainful shifter in existence.
I turn my gaze to the empty streets of Pack Ruby land instead. It’s eerie how quiet everything here is, but more than that, there’s a sense of wrongness to it that I feel deep down in my bones. It isn’t until I inhale and get nothing—no scent of shifters, man or woman—that I realize why.
All the shifter’s scents are gone. Every single one of them. All that remains is the dead, empty smells of residential life.
I’m about to ask Kieran if he can smell fae magic at all when I remember that I’m mad at him right now. So I keep my lips zipped and take a different path than him when we reach the town center. A great big white gazebo sits empty in the middle ofa small, manicured park, the benches in the middle of the gazebo small and empty without people around. Moodily, I kick a few dandelions in the grass, watching their seeds flit away.
My gaze catches on the gazebo again as Kieran approaches it. There’s something about it that’s not quite right, something besides the fact that it’s empty. It nags at me, and I blink as I pace around the square, staring at it from all sides, trying to figure out what it is that’s bothering me.
Then Carrie’s voice rings out in my memory.When the fae are done with their bargains and have broken entire communities into pieces, they often leave their traps behind to lure the remaining stragglers into their realm, where they’ll be turned into slaves and playthings. Watch for fae traps, which, like optical illusions, are not always what they seem.
“Kieran!” I run for him, my legs pumping faster than I ever have, but he just frowns at me in annoyance. “Don’t go up those stairs, it’s a trap!”
I collide with him before my words can penetrate his apparently thick skull, taking him to the ground and rolling in the grass. He goesoomphbeneath me as all the air leaves his lungs at once, the irritation clear in his face. Panting, I inhale his pine and man scent, hating how intoxicating it is to me, and point directly at the gazebo steps.
“It’s a staircase to nowhere—look!” Pushing up onto my knees, I disentangle my legs from his, brushing off his hands as he tries to help. “If you look at it straight on, it looks normal, but from the side it doesn’t go anywhere.”
“There’s a big gap between the top stair and the gazebo itself,” he observes, frowning as he realizes it. “But Aurora, I would’ve been fine. It’s not like I…”
“Would’ve broken a leg falling, like a shifter with weak healing would? Like I would?” Scowling down at him, I don’t offer him any help in getting up once I’m back on my feet.“That’s not why I warned you, idiot. It’s a fae trap. The stairs would’ve taken youto the faerie realm,which is probably where any living members of Pack Ruby have gone.”
To prove it to him, I pick a pinecone off the ground and have him stand beside the gazebo as I toss it toward the staircase. Itshouldland somewhere between the benches and roll on the ground. Instead it disappears in midair, never to be seen again.
“That’s what would’ve happened to you if I hadn’t tackled you in time.” Hands on my hips, I stare him down. “You’re welcome.”
He just scowls in return.
But as we scout the rest of the abandoned village, checking all the empty houses for stragglers, I spot more fae traps and lead us away from them. At one point I look over and see Kieran’s impressed face and can’t help but feel a surge of pride, especially when it happens more than once.
The feeling is quickly followed by bitterness. If only he had seen my worth before.
Night falls without us finding anyone, which somehow makes it creepier. But the mist hasn’t lifted yet, and we’re hours away from any safe stopping place. Kieran proposes we make camp, and I reluctantly agree. Neither one of us really wants to sleep in one of the empty houses, so instead we set up our sleeping bags in the small baseball diamond, which has a nine foot tall chain link fence that locks from the inside, and a view in every direction.
“I can smell the fae,” Kieran says as we climb into our sleeping bags, the battery-powered lantern sitting between us turning his sharp jawline into an even sharper shadow on his cheek. “Their presence is everywhere, but I haven’t seen a single one of them.”
I shiver, even though the air is unseasonably warm. It’s also thick with tension, not just from the lingering presence of the fae, but also because of this thing between us that remainsunresolved. The constant tension of the bond that brings us together, and the rejection that pushes us apart.
Even with the fence around us and the sound of Kieran keeping watch beside me, I struggle to fall asleep. I toss and turn, acutely aware of his presence. When I finally manage to rest, images of ruins flicker across the back of my eyelids. Buildings destroyed by disaster or time, walls crumbling, entire houses abandoned to nature. My heart aches at the sight, and I feel that pull in my chest.
I sense Kieran again as I toss in my sleeping bag, eager for my own watch. My body yearns to be close to him, to have his arms around me to protect me from the dreams, but my mind rebels against the idea.
Just as I’m about to drift off again, I jolt awake. I’m not sure why at first, until the hair on the back of my neck prickles. Sitting up, I hold my breath and sense a presence nearby, watching us.
Turning to Kieran, I see his eyes in the darkness, his pupils reflecting the moonlight overhead.
For a moment, the air between us crackles with… something unsaid. Something shared. As if the broken bond hurts us both, him as much as me.
“I’ll go check that out, then turn in,” he says gruffly, breaking me out of my delusional belief that he’s in pain because of the broken bond, just like me. “You can have the next watch. Wake me before dawn so you can get some actual sleep.”
I prickle at his words. He finds nothing of note outside the fence, even though he walks the perimeter with the emergency lantern twice, shining its beam into the darkness. The feeling that we’re being watched dissipates, and I wonder if it was just some residual fae magic playing tricks on our shifter senses.
