“Neither do I.”
“Do you think they’re trying to keep us from investigating?” She looks up at me, her amber iris warm in the firelight, the blue eye shadowed by a curtain of wet hair. “None of this feels accidental.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. But as long as we don’t make any bargains with the fae, we’ll be fine.” I try to sound more confident than I feel. “They’re physically weaker than us. That’s why they have to resort to trickery and mind games.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” She straightens up, then looks back at her bike, a heartbreaking sadness crossing her face. “You may have to go on without me.”
No.“No.” Aurora’s eyes jerk to my face. “I won’t let that happen. The next pack we’re going to is large, and not far froma human city. We’ll find a mechanic to get you back in working order.”
“But my bike… the engine was flooded.”
I shrug. “My father gave me the black card for this trip. And the elders want you there one way or another. Whatever it costs, we’ll figure it out.”
She stares at me for a long, haunting moment. “Thank you, Kieran. I mean that.”
I have nothing to say to that, because the crushing agony in my chest from the rejected bond is so overwhelming I barely feel like I can breathe.
So I choke down some dry provisions, lay my sleeping bag out on a flat patch of dry grass, and try not to think about what could have been.
Chapter 9
Aurora
I can’t sleep.
Even with the heat of the fire mere feet away, my skin feels cold. The touch of the water spirits, vicious and strange, lingers everywhere. And I can’t shake the image of the disappearing lake from my mind.
If the fae are able to bring that much magic here from their realms, then they’ve invaded our lands more thoroughly than we suspected.
Under the cover of my sleeping bag, I pull out my phone and check the signal. There’s a faint hint of a single bar that disappears as soon as I blink. No messages are going through, and my text to Gran is marked UNDELIVERED in big red letters.
She must know what’s going on. Even if she doesn’t, she’d know what to do about it. All I have are my fumblings from her teachings and a waterlogged bike.
Resigning myself to a sleepless night, I wriggle out of my sleeping bag and glance over at the fire. Kieranwassitting on a log by its flames, but he’s moving out in the darkness now, scouting something. Even if I couldn’t see his silhouette, I can feel his presence like a raw, open wound in my chest.
I move to the fire and sit down on the bare log, appreciating the warmth on my skin, which chases away the attack by the water spirits. I’m still wired, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Eventually Kieran joins me and sits down on the other side of the campfire, looking equally alert, his ice-blue eyes reflecting the faint orange glow of the flames.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask, and he grunts in return. “Me neither.”
“This fae thing…” He pauses for a long moment, weight in the silence between us. “It feels bigger than it should be. Much, much bigger.”
I agree with him, but I’m afraid to voice the thought aloud and make it real. “We should talk about what we’ve learned,” I suggest, breaking the tense silence between us. “Compare notes, see if we missed anything. Since I know about fae lore and you know about the packs.”
Kieran nods, his expression guarded. “Might as well. Where do you want to start?”
“This madness… it’s affecting the shifters in a way I’ve never seen before.” I think of my own pack, my long-lost family, and my heart constricts. “You said that Waylon couldn’t feel Gage through the pack bond. Has anything like that ever happened before to any of the other packs or alphas?”
“Not that they’ve mentioned, although I’m not sure they would tell an alpha-to-be,” he admits. “Something about these fae attacks feels… desperate. Less planned than any I’ve heard of before, almost like…”
“Like they’re clawing for their very survival?” Glancing out into the darkness where the lake was, I feel a foreboding deep in my chest. “I had the same suspicion. None of the stories Carrie told me about the old fae involved destroying entire packs. They would come here, have a little fun, leave their calling cardsbehind, then go back to their realms and forget about it. This time…”
“They’re acting like they’re going to move in,” he says, his jaw clenched. “Like they’re clearing space for themselves or something.”
I shiver at the thought of the fae coming in from their realms and staying put. The things they would do to humanity, the resources they would carelessly destroy with their magic—well, it doesn’t spell out good things for us or for them.
“Tell me everything you know about the fae,” I tell Kieran, “and I’ll tell you everything that I know from Carrie.”
As we trade information and take notes, the emergency lantern propped up between us for light, I feel a strange sense of nostalgia. This feels familiar, reminiscent of the study sessions we used to have back in school. Kieran is relaxed, almost boyish again as he tells me about an alpha who shared a fae legend with him.
