Page 6 of Her Wolf Protector

As a kid, he'd thought Couch Creek got its name from the rock formation that looked like a sofa, complete with cushions, along one bank. When the creek ran high, the water sometimes reached the bottom of the sofa, and there was a good spot on the far bank where you could take photos of the giggling kids, sitting on the stone sofa, dipping their bare toes in the stream. It had been the favourite spot for group shots at the end of a retreat, for as long as he could remember. Hell, he thought there were pictures of him and Shaw and Carmen up here from one year, long before Carmen met her wife, Tihannah. Ylva must have taken that one.

It was Ylva who'd told him the real reason for the name: otters. A holt was where they lived and raised their young, but a couch was a temporary shelter, where they hid from predators or bad weather if they were caught away from home.

In fact, Tate thought he could hear them squeaking somewhere nearby.

Tate shrugged. Otters were tiny things that tended to stay in the water. The worst they could do was steal his sample bottle, if they could pry it loose from the sampling pole, and he had plenty more bottles. He fitted the first bottle into the holder, extended the pole, and dipped it into the water. He capped the bottle of crystal clear water, then opened a second bottle to take a duplicate sample, just in case. He took a step closer to the water, wanting to take the second sample further out than the first, in case that turbidity was from him scraping the bottom.

One more step – the water wasn't running high, so he could afford to stand on the edge without getting his boots wet today. Only the edge was already taken. The whole damn shore was taken. With a pile of squirming, squeaking otters.

"What the fuck?"

Otters were solitary animals, who spent most of their lives in the water. They didn't do anything in groups like this, and they swam away from humans and wolves.

Dozens of beady eyes fixed on him. Frozen in fear, surely.

Hundreds of teeth bared and it was Tate's turn to freeze. That moment was all the pack needed to turn on him.

FIVE

If Arwen had been an ordinary human, this forest would definitely be giving her Disney villain vibes. She half expected the next turn in the road to reveal a cursed beast's castle or at the very least, creepy grasping trees with eyes, like in that really old Disney cartoon, though she couldn't for the life of her remember which one. One with a charming prince and lots of singing, anyway.

Well, there might not be spooky trees or singing, and she wasn't a princess in this realm, though she might be in the fae world, but her scooter battery was definitely dying, with no sign of a charging station in sight. And the pull on her heart told her she'd need to leave the road and venture into the woods proper, if she wanted to reach the fairy ring.

With one final pitiful whine, the scooter sputtered into silence. It was time.

Arwen slugged back the last dose of antidote, hoping it would be enough to rid her system of those hateful heart pills, and stepped between the trees.

At first, she was glad of her gumboots, for the muddy game trail would have swallowed her sneakers within the first dozen metres. But as she staggered onwards, deeper into the forest, her legs began to feel as leaden as her arms, and when one of her boots got stuck almost knee deep in a particularly stubborn mire, she no longer had the energy to pull it out. Only her sock-clad foot came free.

She stared at her empty boot. In a moment, it would sink beneath the surface, and she wasn't sure she cared. The persistent tug in her chest, telling her where she needed to go, urged her onward. Away from the gumboot that had already given up on her quest.

But Arwen would not give up. This was her father's dying wish – what he wanted her to do. She didn't dare disappoint him now.

So on she staggered, until the remaining boot got caught in a tree root and tripped her, tearing that boot off her foot, too.

She glared at the second boot, but it was stuck fast. Fuck it, too, then. In her father's stories, the fae folk never wore shoes, not even in Scotland, and his first pair of shoes had been a gift made for him by his second wife, a woman who'd lived and died centuries before Arwen had been born.

Well, she still had her socks.

Now, if only she'd brought a bottle of water...

Three steps later, a tiny tarn soaked through her socks. Arwen dropped to her knees and drank her fill. Scotland might be cold and damp, but you'd never be short of water, for you couldn't walk more than a mile before tripping over a stream.

Three streams later, when she rose from another deep drink, dizziness drove her back to her knees. She hoped it was just exhaustion, but she didn't know how long it had been since she'd eaten, and dizziness was one of the symptoms of digitalin poisoning. Perhaps she hadn't taken the antidote early enough, and the drug had already damaged her heart...

If only she could have stayed in hospital, where they might have been able to help. Then again, if they had, surely they would have done something to cure her father's heart condition, too.

Yet another reason for her to flee to the fae realm. They'd have magical healers there, capable of things that the human world could only imagine. She had to keep going.

Another attempt to rise sent her to her hands and knees. No, more walking was beyond her now. But she could still crawl. Just another beast in the woods. It was a pity she wasn't a shifter, something swift and sure-footed. But then she wouldn't be able to get to the fae realm, for only someone with fae blood could open the gate. Every human who'd stepped though a fairy ring had only done so because someone with fae blood had chosen to let them through.

This was the right forest. It all felt so familiar, somehow, though it had been years since she'd visited. There was fae magic in the trees, magic that greeted and strengthened her every time she touched another trunk. She would not have made it so far without the trees. Trees that wanted to cheer her on. She would not disappoint them. Or disappoint her father.

The game trail seemed to go on forever, but Arwen knew she was going the right way. Until her path was blocked by a tarn too wide to step across.

Once again, she drank her fill, before sitting up to survey her options. Her destination lay across the water, so she had to get across somehow. Ah, there was her bridge – a row of stepping stones so covered in dark moss they'd been invisible at first.

By the time Arwen reached the far bank, she was soaked as if she'd swum across the stream instead of crossing by the stones. Pale sunlight filtered through the trees, but it wasn't enough to stop her from shivering. But she was close now – she could feel it. Just a little further...