AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I can help. Seth rotated in my arms to lay like a baby. Better to have two guards than one, right?
“I guess,” Caden grumbled.
I’ll be good.
“I’m not even convinced you know how to be good,” Caden retorted.
Rude. Seth wriggled, stretching out his back leggies until every toe was separated and he looked up at me with enormous eyes. Toe stretch magic. You stopped crying.
Caden wiped away the lingering tears on my cheeks and settled more comfortably, dragging us both with him. “We don’t have much time left. If there’s anything left to pack, we should get it in the car. I don’t want to rush you, but?—”
“I know. I’ll be okay, just feeling a lot at the moment. Give me a few minutes and then we can head out.”
Caden left me with cat-Seth to pack up while he went around unplugging all of the appliances except for the freezer.
I tucked a star-shaped lepidolite into my bag alongside a handful of tiger’s eye and hematite.
Seth paw-tapped a bowl of dried hawthorn berries, flicking them like he couldn’t help himself. Bring these ones.
“Yeah?”
Can’t hurt.
Run, little star. The voice reverberated in my head, ancient and smooth as flowing water.
Run?
Seth didn’t seem like he’d heard the voice.
Urgency snaked up my spine, panic locking around my throat. What the hell?
Go. Now.
Seth stiffened. Oh, fuck. He shifted so quickly I jumped back, and he yanked on his discarded clothes. “Caden!”
A sound reminiscent of ice scraping against glass had the hairs on my arms standing up. I swept my arm across the altar, sending items tumbling into the totes in my arms before zipping it shut and racing out the door with Seth. He snatched my purse off the kitchen table, and with shoes in hand, the three of us dove out the front door. I turned only long enough to lock the door before I froze in place.
At the end of the street, a wavering aura fractured the fragile, pale light of dawn. Before I could blink, it moved towards us like a river over the asphalt. Ice sank straight into my bones and my body felt like it was being ripped in half. My feet lifted off the ground, chilling claws carving into my skin. Memories of falling through the ice as a child on vacation, when I’d been playing where I shouldn’t have been. That all-consuming cold that felt like knives was what I remembered most.
Caden slammed against me, the two of us crashing against the grass before he hooked an arm around my waist to toss me over his shoulder. He hurled me into the backseat in a pile with Seth and leapt into the driver’s side. The impact had me seeing stars, and I didn’t even have time to right myself before the vehicle was racing down the residential streets.
Scrabbling for purchase, I hauled myself upright and stared out the back window. What had been nearly invisible before was now a tangle of light and shadow, twisting and writhing strands rolling around a central pulsing point. I could hardly breathe as it trailed further and further behind.
Every ounce of my energy drained away and I collapsed into Seth.
“Shit. Hey, Lo, are you okay?” I managed to wrangle Logan onto her back, her head in my lap while Caden tackled the roads of Syracuse with reckless abandon. She was still breathing fine, and she shied away when I poked her cheek, so that was a good sign. “Who the fuck designed an evil entity that could travel during the day? That’s just plain fucking rude.”
“How is she?” Caden asked.
“Uh, not great, but definitely alive.”
“Fucking hell. I thought this thing was targeting shifters. Why did it touch her? I couldn’t even fucking see it.”
The look my brother leveled on me in the rearview mirror when he saw Logan sprawled over me could have melted steel.
“I don’t know why it went for her when we were both there. I know you didn’t want me to come, but Logan is squishy. She could do with another bodyguard. I don’t want her hurt.”
“Since when do you care about the well-being of my mate?”
