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Frowning, I was about to ask what he meant by that when there was a rustling in the forest to our left. Derrick went still. His nostrils flared and his mouth quirked into a wry smirk. “We have company,” he murmured.
I glanced aside, worry hitting fast. “Who is it?”
“Mark and Henry,” he said, louder this time so that his voice carried through the wood. “No doubt sent to fetch us.”
The rustling grew more pronounced, and I was able to locate one cluster of brush where leaves and branches quivered. A moment later Mark’s dark head popped into view, followed closely by Henry and the two men stalked forward. Their too-large frames and brawny shoulders were nearly identical, but Henry was a shade on the darker side from Mark, who had a ruddy coloring that looked particularly splotched today. Neither seemed pleased to see us.
“You were supposed to be at the lake an hour ago,” Mark said.
“Were we?” Derrick said, collecting my hand and tucking it into his elbow. “I thought lunch wasn’t served for another forty minutes.”
“It doesn’t matter when lunch is served, it matters when you were supposed to be there,” Mark said, puffing his chest out. “We didn’t bring you here to make a pass at Delilah’s counselor.”
“You didn’t bring me here at all,” Derrick said. “That was Delilah herself.”
“Regardless,” Henry said, stepping in and giving Mark a quelling stare, “Ms. Maureen doesn’t want any guests wandering off. You’ll scare the game before the wedding hunt.”
Wedding hunt? That sounded distinctly ominous.
Glancing at Derrick, I saw his jaw flex, but he didn’t seem at all surprised by this announcement. And then a new, unsettling thought struck: warlock traffickers would need a place to take their victims. It was entirely possible that Derrick and I had strayed too close to their base of operations and Henry was merely using this as an excuse to be rid of us.
“We’ll be along shortly,” Derrick said.
Mark made a rumbling sound in the back of his throat, but Henry waved him off with a hand. If I had to guess, I would say that Mark had been demoted overnight. Henry had been the one hiding in the background the entire trip from Boston, after all. But now he was staring Derrick down, a conflicted frown tugging at his prominent mouth. A long moment stretched between them and the tension in the forest coiled tight around us.
Mark’s gaze strayed to me, and I could read the hatred in him. For a heartbeat I thought he would like nothing more than to transform into his were-self and shred me to bits.
Warlock trafficker, indeed.
“Fine,” Henry said and the tension around us burst. “But don’t make us come looking again. You’re guests here. Don’t go tromping through places you shouldn’t.”
A shiver sped down my spine and I leaned closer to Derrick. Flexing my fist, I felt the hardened knot of runestone grind against bone and scowled back at Mark. Self-defense had never been paramount in our house, leastwise not the physical kind. We were reliant on our wits and our magic, as Uncle Martin would put it. Only now, under the gleam of Mark’s feral hatred, with magic and the aether barred to me, did I wish that wasn’t the case.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Derrick said.
When we still hadn’t moved, Henry turned and gave a sharp gesture to Mark, and the two stalked away. Watching their retreating backs, I took a shaky breath and tried to settle my nerves.
“I don’t like the way Mark looks at me,” I said.
Derrick glanced at me, then back at his cousins. “Neither do I.”
Casting him a smirk I said, “That is nowhere near as comforting as you must have imagined.”
“He won’t do anything here. You’re an official guest of Maureen’s. He wouldn’t be so foolish as to challenge her in her own home.”
“But he would try to challenge her elsewhere?”
Derrick gave me a faint smile and shrugged. “I wouldn't put it past him. Most wolves are constantly trying to shift their way up the pack hierarchy. Not that he would keep the alpha seat for long. There are too many others who would yank him down to Omega.”
Derrick paused. There was something troubling in his expression and he covered my hand where it rested against his elbow. All at once I felt a prickling over my skin, and though I could not access the aether I knew he was using magic again. His voice came soft at my ear, though he had not moved any closer to me.
“Wolves have exceptional hearing, Nora.”
Feeling slightly foolish – of course, everyone knows wolves could hear a whisper three rooms away – I straightened, gave Derrick a nod, and changed the subject.
“You were going to tell me about your mother?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to, but I suppose I will now,” he said ruefully.
