It didn’t take long to realize he would be crucial to saving Rez.
After witnessing multiple battles where Bosse stood like a tower of muscle waiting to destroy every opponent, she realized he showed up thinner and not healed some days. She’d been leaving the wolf shifter extra food when she could drop it off unnoticed and thought that was why he’d entered her dream world, but the dreams showed him battling someone to keep them from Rez.
Only Rez.
Not Alifair, but that was okay.
She couldn’t blame him for how a dream worked out. He’d pleaded with her to leave with him or let him help her save her friend. The only person who had shown any concern for her in too long to remember had been a wolf shifter.
Her clan feared shifters after losing three to a pack of vicious wolf shifters and believed they shouldn’t even exist. Those three young men had gone looking for trouble, but her people still claimed shifters were unnatural.
Really? Every person in the clan had some form of gift or magic. How were they above other supernatural beings?
She believed there were good and bad beings of all kinds.
This trip opened her eyes to developing her own views.
She’d feared all the captives in cages that had slammed up against the bars when she walked by and snarled at her. Not Bosse or his wolf. Neither one had acted aggressively around her, and everyone here knew Bosse could kill anything.
Then he’d kissed her before escaping.
She’d almost walked out with him in that one moment until her conscience scolded her. How could she explain to anyone in her clan she would never regret that kiss and last moment? She’d never see him again, which was fine if he found freedom and safety.
Keep telling myself that.
Why didn’t she deserve to have a life like other women?
Because she’d been born a woman in a long line of female protectors.
Whatever. Her attitude had been crumbling for a while, but watching Bosse go after he’d kissed her like a man who wanted her pretty much kicked her fragile sandcastle life to pieces.
She had yet to see how her dreams would turn out with him helping rescue Rez. He’d had no money or resources when he left her. Time to stop wondering about how he could return and accept that saving Rez was still on her shoulders.
Her mother had told her to trust her dreams.
As a child, Alifair had thought her mother meant for her to believe in the dreams she held in her heart until she began having clairvoyant dreams. That’s what her mother had been talking about.
She punched the flour again hard enough for Hessie to frown at her.
Smiling like the simpleton she was supposed to be, Alifair calmed down and stopped mistreating the innocent dough.
If she did escape, she would rethink her place in a clan that expected her to face all this alone and didn’t blink an eye at tasking her with an impossible mission. At this rate, she’d never experience the happiness of having a family when her duty came first.
Why waste time thinking about having a family and life?
She’d seen her bloody demise in the last dream where Bosse stopped a threat to Rez.
Her future would be short and not include a happily ever after. That should convince her Bosse was far better off being in another country. Her rushed plan to get him out of here may have altered the projection of him being present to help Rez, but he would be safe, and she’d do her job as long as she could.
“Are you done with bread?” Hessie shouted.
Alifair looked down, and she folded the bread in the strangest shape. She folded it in half again and said, “One minute.” She had to make it look right before handing the dough to the gloomy woman.
Hessie groused about lazy servants.
Folding the dough one last time, Alifair decided that was her best rendition and took it over to show Hessie, who scowled at the shape. “That is not good bread.”
“I did as I was told,” Alifair defended herself even if she had worked the bread three times too many. She had probably just stepped out of line with that reply, but she’d never had the personality to be ordered around.
