I knew I had to stop before I made him weak, so I drew back, closing the bites the way Viktor had taught me. Still, I could tell I’d bitten too hard, leaving a monster hickey on Alarick’s neck. But he hadn’t complained. In fact, he kept touching me even when I pulled back from his throat. His big hands pushed up my shirt, and he lifted me higher, his mouth moving hungrily over my skin.
“I want you, Timberlyn,” he said, drawing back to catch his breath. “Can we do it here?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” I said, reaching for his shirt and peeling it over his head. He laid it down, laying me on it, and I let myself sink into the relief of our bodies together again, finally. Into the bliss of his mouth, his hands, his body on mine as if it had been made for me, every stupendous inch of him was somehow, incredibly, mine. And I was his.
Chapter Fourteen
The trees on either side of the two-lane road swayed closer as we approached, as if beckoning us. I hurried forward, excitement building inside me. I’d seen this place in my dreams. Yes, it looked like any other road through the rural Ozark Mountains, but I was sure it was the one. As we passed between the trees, they sighed—a welcoming, relieved sound. But something else wasn’t so welcoming. A crackle of electricity zapped along my spine, making my fur stand up.
Alarick let out a low, menacing growl, and the others halted, their hackles raised, too. I stopped, staring up at a tree that had been struck by lightning, one half of it lying at an angle against another tree, cleaved from the living side. Spikes of fibrous would jutted skyward from the break, and on the tallest one, a raven sat watching us. I knew that tree. It was unmistakable, copied in photographic detail into my sketchbook just the night before.
The raven called once before taking flight and disappearing over the trees. A shiver of excitement and trepidation went through me. This was it.
At the same time, I was flabbergasted. My parents had driven along this road a dozen times, with Josie and me in the back seat arguing or singing or ignoring each other. It was literally ten minutes from the town where I’d grown up. Mr. Ravenwood had said he stashed me with a family nearby, but this was fucking ridiculous. I’d literally grown up just a few miles from my birth mother, never knowing she existed at all.
In fact, in all the times we’d driven this road, I’d never noticed the splintered tree. I couldn’t remember anything I’d seen on this road at all. I knew there was a gas station down the road, and that further on, there was the Buffalo River, where outdoorsy tourists and locals went to swim and canoe when the water was high. Now, it looked like any other road, with barren, leafless trees lining it on either side and a bent guard rail where someone had driven too close to the edge.
I didn’t like shifting in front of the pack, but when sometimes, it couldn’t be helped. Like now. I shifted into human and gestured at the tree. “That’s the tree from my dream last night,” I said. “I’m sure you all felt that magic, too. I guess they don’t have wards on the valleys keeping people from entering, but they might know we’re here. And if they have disguising magic on the whole valley, they probably don’t want us knowing what they are. So, we should probably go in as humans. I’m going to change.”
I stepped over the guard rail, grabbing onto some saplings to keep from sliding down the steep slope. Once I found a spot I could stand on without tumbling to the bottom of the mountain, I changed into my boots, jeans, and leather jacket. Everyone else had brought lightweight nylon pants and jackets, but I didn’t own any outdoorsy gear. I’d gone along on the occasional hike when my parents required a family outing to a local trail, but I’d always been the stay at home and read kind of girl. After hauling my heavy-ass wardrobe across a continent, I would definitely be rethinking my attire before taking any more cross-country journeys.
When I arrived back up on the road, the others were standing there waiting. For me. It was jarring to suddenly be in a position where people were looking to me for guidance, believing in the dreams that had made me a freak for so long.
“What now?” I asked, turning to Alarick, our leader.
“Have you seen anything else in your dreams?” he asked. “Or can you use that internal compass that got us here?”
“The problem is, I’m not sure what the compass is pointing to,” I admitted.
“The wolves, right?” Jose said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or it could be my mom, or maybe Delilah…”
“Your old roommate?” Donovan asked. “Why would you be called to her?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Well, this is just great,” Brooklyn said. “We followed you across an entire fucking continent, and for all we know, your hunch led us into a death trap?”
“I hope not,” I said. “But I don’t know what we’re going to find. I’m not psychic. I just know where to find things.”
“And you said you were coming here to find our mates,” Jose said. “I came for that.”
“So, what are we going to do? Go knocking on doors and asking girls to try on a glass slipper?” Adolf asked.
“If there are wolves here, they’ll want to find their mates as much as we do,” Alarick said. “Let’s just keep going until Timberlyn sees something else
