Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Was this male here to give her direction about Daniel?
“Don’t go,” she repeated more softly.
As his eyes left hers and ran down her naked form, she had a thought he was just marveling about what she could do at will. Except then they returned and lingered on her breasts—and all at once, a scent carried over to her on the breeze… a scent of arousal.
Just as it registered, she was blinded by light, the illumination bright as a lightning strike, its origin unknown.
Yet she knew what it meant.
“Oh… God,” she whispered as she covered her mouth with one hand and her breasts with the other arm.
“Are you unwell,” the male blurted. “Here, allow me.”
As she heard a flapping of cloth and felt a swoosh of fabric around her body, she knew he had covered her with his robing. And she gripped the fine folds and held them to her trembling body as if they were a shield against arrows.
“What ails you,” he demanded.
“Who are you?” she tossed back as she blinked blindly and tried to make sure her legs continued to accept her weight.
But then the illumination disappeared. As quickly as the light arrived, the glow was gone, and the mysterious man reappeared to her. Not that he’d gone anywhere.
When she just stared at him, he took a step back. No longer covered by the robes, she saw that he was dressed in a tight-fitting black uniform that made her think he was a soldier, especially given the gun belt around his hips.
Blinking quickly, she sagged in her own skin as tears welled.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said in a tense voice.
Lydia shook her head and it was a while before she could find her voice. “I was told to come to the mountain, that something would be waiting for me, something that I was going to need to go on…”
She started shaking her head. “Oh, God… no. I don’t want this… I don’t…”
Lydia stumbled back from the male, thinking about what her grandfather had told her, about where to go to see her future.
This was not dawn, though. This was still night—
“Watch out,” the stranger said, “you’re about to fall off the rocks—stop!”
“I don’t want you!” she screamed at him. “I won’t have you!”
Just as her foot twisted out from under her, the discharge of a gun, high-pitched and alarming, sounded right behind her.
The last thing she saw, before she stumbled to the ground and hit her head on something hard, was the male who had taken off his robes to protect her modesty getting shot in the shoulder.
Disorientated, she forced her eyes to focus.
The man who came up on them with the gun was also dressed in all black, but the uniform was different—and there was something about his face that didn’t make sense. Then again, she’d been knocked in the head pretty badly—
As the soldier stepped over her, with his weapon still pointed at the male who had fallen to his knees, it dawned on her that she had seen him before. Back in the spring. When she and Daniel had been in the woods, up in the deer stand. He was the one who had been stalking them, who Daniel had taken down to the ground.
She couldn’t forget that face.
With that connection going through her mind, her eyes narrowed on the attacker, who was clearly taking for granted that she had lost consciousness. Just as that gun took aim at the mysterious male again, she lunged up and threw herself onto the shooter. She had no idea what she was doing, but she had the sense that if she could just get that muzzle angled away—
Somehow, she nailed things exactly right, pile-driving into the soldier, knocking him off-balance just as he pulled that trigger. As the bullet sailed harmlessly into the view, he shoved her free of him with such force, she went flying, her body airborne and then some.
This was going to go very, very badly, she thought in mid-flight.
Sure enough, the soldier steadied himself in what seemed like slow motion, rerouted the gun back toward the other male…
… and pulled the trigger—
* * *
They knew who he was. And he knew about them.
That was what was going through Blade’s mind at the moment the soldier came out of the pine trees right behind Lydia while she stumbled. He barely had time to turn away from the gunshot, and even as he did, he was caught in the shoulder, the bullet entering the meat of his upper arm. But he didn’t give a shit about that.
The wolven. He had to save the wolven.
As he landed on his knees, the soldier with the gun stepped over Lydia and retargeted that weapon in Blade’s direction.
Going for his own weapon, he fumbled and dropped it because of his injury—