Refuge(139)

I shook my head at her, and she shrugged. “How often will I get a chance to ask a werewolf questions?”

Roland ignored her question. “We haven’t seen much of Nate today. How is he doing with all of this?”

“He seems okay, but I think it’s going to take him a while to take it all in.” Yesterday, Nate and I had talked for hours. He told me about the female vampire, Ava Bryant, who had approached him, posing as a reporter from New York. It wasn’t hard for the beautiful vampire to compel him to go with her. He’d never met her Master, but her love for the other vampire had passed to Nate when she made him. I’d told him over and over how sorry I was for what he went through until he ordered me to stop apologizing. He said it would be different here, but the whole bachelor pad thing wasn’t working for him anyway and now he would be near me.

He had been more interested in my life here, more particularly, what was going on between me and Nikolas. Unsurprisingly, he was not happy to learn about the whole bond thing and he said I was way too young to commit to someone. I had to reassure him that I wasn’t jumping into anything. I told him Nikolas understood my feelings and we were taking it slow. That seemed to mollify Nate a little, although he did say he and Nikolas were going to have a man-to-man talk. No amount of pleading on my part would dissuade him.

Nikolas stopped by last night and today to see how I was doing, but for the most part, he was giving me space to be with Nate and my friends. We hadn’t been alone together since our moment by the river before Roland and Peter arrived, and I often found myself wondering where he was and what he was doing. When I talked to him today he said he would see me tonight, and I got butterflies whenever I thought about being alone with him again.

“Nate will be fine,” Roland assured me. “He can write anywhere, so it’s not like he’s giving up that.”

I brightened. “That’s true.” I got off the bed and logged into my laptop, hoping to see an email from David. One of the first things I’d done when I got back to my room last night was ask him to find what he could about a female vampire named Ava Bryant. Tristan had his people searching for her, too, and I’d already made him swear to bring her in alive if he found her. I had a very personal score to settle with the vampire who had tried to take Nate from me.

A new mail notification popped up just as someone knocked on the door. I went to answer the door and was surprised when Michael entered my room, wide-eyed and out of breath.

“Sara, I’m glad I found you,” he panted, ignoring everyone else. “Sahir sent me to get you.”

“Is it Minuet again?”

“No, it’s the hellhounds. They got out again and took off into the woods.”

“What?” I shoved my feet into a pair of boots. “How the hell did they get out?” I’d taken Roland and Peter to meet them a few hours ago, and I was careful to lock their cage as I always did. And no one besides Sahir and I ever went near them or had keys to their cage.

“I don’t know, but they’re on the loose,” Michael said fearfully. “They wouldn’t hurt anyone, would they?”

“No, of course not,” I replied sharply as I grabbed my coat. Would they? The hellhounds behaved when they were with me, but they weren’t exactly house pets.

I hurried to the door and turned to look at the others. “You guys stay here. I’ll take care of it and be back as soon as I can.”

Roland and Peter were already off the bed. “Screw that,” Roland said, pulling on his boots. “You’re not going to run around in the woods alone.”

Jordan stood and darted out the door. “Where are you going?” I called after her.

“To get my coat.”

Michael left the room, and I followed him. “You guys really don’t have to come,” I told Roland and Peter. “Nothing will hurt me with Hugo and Woolf around.”

“Not like we have anything better to do,” Peter replied as he entered Roland’s room and grabbed their coats.

Jordan came out of her room and shut her door. “Come on, people. Let’s go round up Sara’s little doggies before they eat someone.”

The five of us raced down the stairs, nearly running over two people on the way. Outside, it was a cold, clear night, and the full moon cast a soft bluish glow over the day-old snow on the ground. Our combined breath fogged the air around us as we started across the grounds toward the woods.

I turned to Michael. “Which way did they go?”

He pointed to a spot, and I saw it was the same place we usually entered the woods when I took them for walks. They were most likely following my scent. Still, it was strange they should go that way when my scent was probably a lot stronger between the menagerie and the main building.