Anger and pain flared in Aric’s eyes as he advanced toward me. When he reached me, his body trembled violently. “You are the most important being in this world to me. More than my brothers, more than my pack. I need you to believe that . . . no matter what happens.”
I gasped, unsure and frightened by what he thought the future held. The demons were gone, weren’t they? And his Elders . . .
I remained silent. Heat lingered in Aric’s gaze, cementing us where we stood. I started to shake, not from fear or cold—something else. Tahoe. Tahoe’s energy hit me with one hard sucker punch. It was strong, primal, and my essence welcomed it like a lost loved one.
My back plunged into the quickly warming water and lolled above the surface as if the very lake held me to keep from drowning. When I blinked my eyes open, Aric was carrying me along the wooded path back to our house. Water dripped from his long hair onto his face. His eyes remained fierce, but his focus was unusually distant. “You’ll always be mine,” he whispered. “And I swear to always be yours.”
• • •
“Do you want to stop for lunch or keep going?” Koda slipped his arm around Shayna as we continued our hike through Eldorado National Forrest, not the ideal way to trek through the thick vegetated woodlands, but Shayna didn’t seem to mind.
Shayna leaned into him. “Let’s keep going until we reach the creek. It’ll be a nice place to picnic.”
The destruction of the demon lords had satisfied the Elders enough to give Aric and his Warriors time off. We’d spent the remainder of the summer at the lake, boating and Jet Ski–ing. I even managed a romantic getaway alone to celebrate Aric’s twenty-seventh birthday. I’d kept all my “I love yous” to myself. And while my admission had caused a strain between us, Aric’s vigilance, affections, and kindness soon helped repair the hurt he’d caused.
I breathed in the scent of fresh pine, happy with my surroundings and the fact that we weren’t competing with the tourists for beach space over the Labor Day weekend. I took in the trees thick with lush green leaves, the small fragrant flowers waiting to be devoured by deer, and the rolling hills littered with stones and wild ferns.
Aric admired his own view behind me. “Damn, sweetness. I love the way you walk.”
I turned back to grin at him. “My eyes are up here, wolf.”
Aric wrapped his arms around me and nibbled on my ear. “I know, but I’m having a hard time getting the image of you naked in the woods out of my mind.”
“Well, maybe we can sneak off later,” I said quietly.
Aric’s entire body stilled. “You mean it?”
Cold and terror suddenly chilled the warmth between us, and goose bumps skittered up my arms like insects on a festering corpse. At first, I thought I was the only one affected until the wolves threw their packs on the ground and surrounded us protectively.
Taran’s irises turned almost white. “Shit. What the hell is that?”
Emme, who was already shaking, grabbed my arm. “Celia, what’s going on? I don’t see anything.”
“I don’t know. Emme, stay close to me. Shayna, grab some wood.”
Whatever it was, it was closing in. My hackles rose, and my claws protruded. An unearthly growl escaped my throat just as screeching erupted around us. My heart leapt into my throat as a horde of demon children broke through the surrounding trees. They flew overhead, scurried on the ground on all fours, and crawled on the trunks of trees like creepy toddlers with wings and arachnid legs.
“Celia, get out of here, now!” Aric yelled before he and the wolves changed and attacked.
I shifted the girls the moment they grabbed me, traveling beneath the soil as far and fast as my gift allowed. We surfaced a couple of hundred feet away from the fight. A quick glance back temporarily stunned me. The creatures crawled and flew everywhere, traveling in clumps thick enough to veil our four wolves. My God.
The reality of our situation smacked the fear out of me. We hadn’t destroyed the demons. We’d only given them time to breed.
A cluster of demon infants attached themselves to the wolves’ furry backs, clawing at them mercilessly and saturating the forest floor with their blood. The metallic scent of their essence burned my nose and still Aric and his Warriors shredded through their opponents like paper, seemingly unaffected despite the wicked pain their twitching muscles revealed.
I sprinted back toward the fight. “Shayna, get those things off their backs!”
A stream of long silver needles flew past me. They knocked the creatures off the wolves’ backs and impaled them into trees like frogs in biology class.