I didn’t realize I was rocking against him in rhythm with the stroke of his tongue until the pleasure and pressure crested inside me, and I gasped for him to stop. It was too late, though. Stars burst behind my eyes, and I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out as it rippled through me in waves, making my toes curl and my hands clutch him even tighter against me. Slowly, my head cleared, and I unclenched my hands from his inky black hair. When I came down from the reeling high, I realized he’d stopped biting me when I’d told him to. He was just holding me, letting me ride out the storm inside me.
I jerked back, pushing against his chest so hard I shot off his lap. I almost toppled to the floor before I got my feet under me and stood on shaking legs, smoothing my skirt down. Viktor tugged at the knees of his uniform slacks, which only made me notice the bulge in his pants was still there. Damn it. We were friends. Just friends. I hadn’t known drinking his blood was like taking a powerful aphrodisiac while pressed intimately close to him.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, hurrying to the door, too embarrassed to face him.
“Timberlyn,” he called after me, but I didn’t wait around to hear what he had to say. The last thing I wanted was to talk about what had just happened.
Chapter Nine
I sat up, gulping in a breath of air, my lungs burning from the dream. In it, I’d been underwater, in some kind of well, trapped beneath the surface of the water. I could still feel the cool, wet stones under my fingertips. My hands felt cool and damp, and I remembered Mr. Ravenwood saying I could move through time and space. I’d teleported before—once into the woods the first time I shifted into a wolf, and at least once before that, when I’d gone out onto Gramma’s porch and fallen asleep thinking of the wolves. I’d woken up in the same place, but I’d obviously been out in the woods, and Alarick had found me and brought me back, wrapped in his blanket.
I could feel the call of the full moon outside my window tonight, even though I didn’t hear the wolves. I knew they were out there, hunting, running free in a way I couldn’t anymore.
I switched on the lamp, feeling my damp hair brushing my shoulders, and reached for my sketchbook. I wasn’t allowed to be a wolf anymore. I couldn’t run in their woods, couldn’t share the night with Alarick’s pack. Instead, I slept through the full moon now. But tonight, I didn’t have that option. I hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks, but now I had something to report to Mr. Ravenwood.
He hadn’t been at the last two council appearances, where we’d gone to report basically nothing. I didn’t know if he was pissed Lindy had been adopted by the wolves, or if he was just too bored to show up and listen to a bunch of teenage vampires gossiping about high school drama.
I quickly filled in the sketch in my book. The well. Me. And above it, a girl with red hair who wasn’t me. I focused on her, teasing out the details. The more I drew, the more frustrated I became. I was drawing myself. Or… Someone who looked an awful lot like me.
My mother, I realized with a start. My birth mother, the faerie who had raised my parents’ child as her own.
I had to see her.
I swung my legs off the bed and then stopped. The only person I’d dreamed of and then met was Lindy. And I’d dreamed of her because she was the wolves’ salvation. At least, she’d have a baby with Vance and carry on their species. But that baby would need a mate, which meant that at least one of the others needed to find a mate. Did that mean my mother was someone’s mate? And since she was much older than the Wolf brothers, I had to assume she’d be Mr. Wolf’s mate. Which meant I’d be related to him—and to Alarick.
“What’s wrong?” Svana asked, pushing up onto one elbow and blinking sleepily at me. “You look upset.”
“You could say that,” I muttered.
“Did you have another dream?” Svana asked, looking excited as she sat up.
That’s when I remembered that she was the one who had told Mr. Ravenwood about my dreams last year. That slip had gotten me targeted.
But it was worse than that. Because Mr. Ravenwood had already known about me. Maybe that had brought his attention to me, given him a clue about my powers. But he’d already called me here, had already been watching me.
“Who assigned you as my guide?” I asked.
“What?” Svana asked, her eyes widening.
“When I started at Ravenwood, you were my guide for the first day,” I said slowly. “Who assigned you that duty?”
She didn’t answer, but her guilty expression told me everything. Of course. Mr. Wolf hadn’t known I was anything but human. The wolves hadn’t claimed me and shown me around the way they had Lindy. I’d stuck my nose in their business, drawing Alarick’s attention. But before that, Svana had told me to stay away from them. She’d drawn me in, befriended me, kept her sights on me. Not because she liked me, but
