11. Chapter Eleven
~Felix~
The ground changed beneath my feet from one second to the next. Leaping from the dirt of the forest floor, I landed on something as soft as velvet, cool and almost spongy beneath my wolf’s paws. The pink streaking the pale blue morning sky reversed, leaving blue streaks across a sky of pastel pink. The scent of pine disappeared, transforming into something I’d never smelled before, something bitter that stung my nose and left my mouth feeling dry.
Where the hell are we? Darius asked in my head almost before I could form the question myself.
At a glance, I took in our unfamiliar surroundings until my eyes landed on the man who had tumbled onto the ground next to us. The very visible man, staring up at the two wolves above him in disbelief.
The fae realm, I imagine, I answered Darius before shifting into my human form and hauling the man in front of me back to his feet. One hand bunching the fabric at the neck of his velvety clothes kept him in place. Lean and slight, he only came to my shoulder standing up.
“I think you’ve ‘accidentally’ taken something that belongs to my friends. Care to explain why?” I kept my tone light but my hands firm as I held him with my left hand and used my right hand to search for items stolen from the weapons store.
It didn’t take me long to locate a small black pouch tied around his waist on a green-coloured string. The string snapped easily when I tugged it, and I tossed it over to Darius who had shifted behind me, my eyes never leaving the man in front of me.
“A few bullets and a couple of arrowheads,” Darius confirmed, itemizing the pouch’s contents. “Looks like we found our thief.”
The man in my grasp bristled at the word but he didn’t deny it. How could he when we caught him red-handed?
I lowered my face to his, noticing the unusual purple colour of his eyes. Pointed tips of his ears poked out through the strands of his long, black hair. I couldn’t tell whether he was an elf or a fairy, but he clearly wasn’t human or werewolf. “Why did you take them?”
“I don’t answer to you.” His voice had a slight lilt to it, not quite an accent, but nearly. It made his speech sound more melodic. Under the right circumstances, it might even be called pretty.
These weren’t the right circumstances.
My fist tightened in his shirt. “Right now, you do. What do you want with our weapons?”
“Weapons?” His frown suggested a genuine uncertainty. “I didn’t realize they were weapons.”
It seemed my theory about the thief being more interested in the silver than the items itself might have been dead on. “So what did you want them for?”
“Felix, let’s go.”
Darius’ voice over my shoulder barely registered until he placed a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back from the fae man.
“We retrieved the stolen items, let him know that we’re onto him, and we’ll see him if he comes back. We don’t know anything about this place. We should go home.”
Our pack’s head of security couldn’t help looking at things through a security lens, and I had to admit he had a point. We didn’t appreciate people turning up on our land uninvited and we had no idea how the people in charge of this realm felt about it.
Reluctantly, I dropped the man’s shirt, or whatever the hell he wore. It might have all been one piece of clothing, I couldn’t really tell. “Stay out of our realm,” I warned him, jabbing a finger into his chest to emphasize my point.
We turned back towards the portal, ready to step through it again, when the scent hit my nose. Much fainter than before, but undeniably familiar, I recognized the scent of my mate immediately.
My feet stopped, my body unwilling to move forward, and I looked back over my shoulder at the man glaring a hole in my back. “Was there someone else with you? A woman?”
His unusual purple eyes narrowed. “I still don’t answer to you.”
“Felix.” Darius tugged at my arm as a wind rippled through the unusual trees around us, but I shook him off to try again.
“Did someone else go through this portal last night?”
“I can’t tell you that, but I will tell you one thing.”
My heart leapt at the possibility that my mate might actually be nearby, that I could really find her. That it hadn’t been a trick after all. “What’s that?”
One corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk. “You should have left while you had the chance.”
From the trees, men emerged in similar garments to the man we followed, their weapons strange and angular, glinting faintly in the pastel light. Apparently, that hadn’t been wind moving the trees after all; with every scent and sight new, we hadn’t known exactly what to watch for.
The air vibrated with an eerie hum as they aimed their bowed weapons directly at us. The strings glimmered as though they were made of pure energy.
Darius’ voice rumbled in my head through our mind-link. We need to run for it. We have no idea what those weapons will do to us. The portal’s only a few feet away. Shift and run.
I ran the calculations in my head. Only a few feet separated him from the portal. I had a few feet more. He had a much better chance of making it through unharmed than I did. More than that, my mate was here, she had to be, and the thought of leaving without meeting her felt like tearing off a piece of myself.
Staying meant immediate danger but leaving would slowly tear me apart. Every instinct screamed at me to stay, to fight, to find her, no matter the cost.
You go. I’ll distract them.
Felix…
I didn’t give him a chance to voice whatever protest he had. Let Vaughan and Calista know what happened. You know where the portal is, and since you’ve been here, I think you can come back. Maybe you can bring them with you. If I don’t come back on my own, you can come and get me.
I’m not leaving without you, he growled.
And I’m not giving you a choice.
With no further warning, I shifted and sprang not towards the portal but away from it, further into the fae realm. Every pair of eyes followed me, every weapon aimed in my direction, and though I heard a grumbled shit in my head from Darius, I knew without looking back that he took advantage of the situation to make his escape.
“Stop him,” the man I’d been speaking to ordered, his posture shifting with the ease of someone who knew he had the upper hand.
“Yes, Your Highness,” they replied almost in unison.
Your Highness? Darius had it right: Shit.
I only made it a few more steps before a sharp, searing pain exploded in my side, and I stumbled, my breath hitching as warmth trickled through my fur. My legs faltered, the ground tilted beneath me, and before I even had time to regret my decision, my vision blurred and the world around me went black.