Chapter Twenty-Eight
Calista
We cut along a low shelf of rock where the sea threw white water at our boots. Pine gave way to brush, then to a skinny run of sand that smelled like old kelp and tar.
Everest’s hand closed around my arm. “Stop.”
I froze.
He lifted the edge of my cloak and rubbed two fingers together. They came away black and sticky. He brought them to the slits of his mask and inhaled once. His posture went razor-still. “Nightreef,” he growled. “Damn it. I thought the scent was from the hunter we’d slain.”
My stomach dipped. “Reef tar?”
“No.” His voice turned cold. “This is bait resin. Kelp-pitch they brew to cling and call. It carries farther than smoke and lasts longer than blood.”
My stomach dipped. “Moon’s curses.”
“This stuff carries on the wind.”
“But the Nightreef hunter is dead so he can’t come after me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was like ice. “There are still at least half a dozen other hunters out there, possibly more if a Court sent another in the place of the fallen.”
Frost take me.
“An Alpha is also permitted to take a hunter’s place. But few of those males would be bold enough to follow you out here.”
“But Nightreef would?”
He nodded. “Nixon is as wild as they come. Some claim he’s not right in the head.”
“Can’t we just cut it out like the tar?” I asked, already reaching for my blade.
Everest caught my wrist. “Cutting only spreads it like spores on a mushroom. The more contact with it, the more it will expand. It’s in the weave now.” His eyes dropped to my sleeve, then to the edge of my hood, and his jaw tightened. “And it’s on you.”
A chill crawled up my spine. “On me?”
“Likely me as well.” He brushed two fingers over my cuff, then held them up again. Black glistened in the moonlight. “We have to clean it now.” He tipped his chin toward a split in the rock. “Behind cover before it seeps into our skin.”
I followed my guard up the steep incline into the small niche. It hid us from three sides and gave the wind a narrow throat. I removed my cloak, fingers clumsy with cold. The resin glistened in thin strokes near the hem. How had we not noticed it earlier?
The kiss. I’d been so distracted by the thought of his lips, I’d been careless.
Everest stripped out of his cloak and all thoughts vanished.
Heat rolled off him in the cold like a secret fire.
Broad shoulders, all cut muscle and old work, tapered to a waist roped tight with strength.
A pale scar bit across one rib like a struck line.
Another nick crossed his hip, half hidden by the band of leather breeches. Oh, Selraya, eyes up, Cali.
Dark runes covered every inch of exposed skin, along his forearm climbing up toward his biceps, stark on sun-browned skin despite the icy weather. Each mark was a story I suddenly wanted to read with my mouth.
He bent to shake frost from the fur and every line of him shifted under skin, clean and efficient, as if his body had long ago learned how to move without waste.
Snow clung to the dark hair on his chest, melting fast, beading and sliding down the cut of his stomach.
My desperate gaze followed one drop like a fool.
His head tipped, eyes catching mine. The corner of his mouth curved, slow and devastating. “Cold?” he asked, voice low.
“Yes,” I lied, because the temperature in the nook was rapidly rising, the effects of his bare body consuming my focus. Get it together, Calista.
I dragged my gaze back to the resin-streaked cloak before I embarrassed myself further.
Everest crouched and pulled a fistful of snow into his palm, grinding it with gritty sand from the rock shelf until it turned to a rough, slushy paste. “You should try to get the resin off your skin with the scrub. Or are you just going to stand there ogling me?”
My pulse jumped. “Excuse me?”
His gaze flicked up, dark and steady. Teasing. “The resin will transfer. If it soaks your leathers, it will ride with you for miles. You must remove your clothes.”
My stubbornness rose on instinct, but the wind carried a faint, sharp sweetness even here, and my stomach turned at the idea of hunters following it.
I swallowed and stripped out of my jerkin and gloves, down to my shift, breath puffing white in the cold.
Gooseflesh rose along my arms before I turned away from him, peeling the last layer off.
“Calista…” The edge to his voice was so sharp, I spun back around. Quiet horror twisted his expression.
In the chaos, I’d momentarily forgotten. My scars.
His eyes snapped up to meet mine. “Who hurt you?”
I wrapped my arms around myself, but it was too late. “It was years ago,” I murmured, voice flat by habit. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” he all but growled, stalking toward me. Something feral sparked in his eyes. “Who did this to you?” he repeated.
A tremor rolled up my spine at the onslaught of memories, and I clenched my fists at my side to keep my fingers from trembling.
“Saltspire’s former Alpha. With my father’s leave, of course.
” I hadn’t realized how much I’d resented Pa all these years for allowing it until this very moment.
“Warrick believed that pain might force my Wolvryn to emerge. He was wrong.”
Something changed in Everest’s face. It was anger so cold it looked like control. He stepped in close, hands careful, eyes anything but. “They laid steel on you to attempt to make you into something you weren’t?”
My head dipped, humiliation and anger churning in my gut. “They called it training.”
He breathed once, slowly, as if choosing which fury to use.
His hands closed around my shoulders, firm and grounding.
“If anyone dares touch you again under my watch, I’ll cut off their hand before they can try.
” His voice roughened around the edges. “And if any Alpha thinks to finish what Warrick started, I’ll take his crown and his head and feed it to the sea. ”
I should have bristled at the savagery. Instead, my throat burned.
He checked the tear on my thigh again, knuckles brushing my skin with reverence instead of the pity I expected.
“It’s fine,” I murmured.
His eyes narrowed. “It’s not fine,” he growled. “Those were wounds that were never theirs to give.”
“Everest—”
“I heard you,” he said, eyes dark. “I understand. Not just about this, but about all of it. I know why you are fighting for a choice and not chains.” His jaw ticked. “But understand me, Calista. Those who carved that into you won’t ever touch you again. Not while I breathe.”
Heat flared low and complicated.
His eyes seared into mine. “And when the Hunt is over, I will have a word with Saltspire.” A razor smile without humor. “A long one.”
“Magnus wasn’t—”
“I know. The new Alpha will hear from me all the same. I was not aware that beatings were common practice to deal with the wolfless.”
“And the king?”
“I’m sure he is unaware, but he will deal with it.”
A heavy silence thickened the air between us, wild eyes locked to mine.
No one had ever offered to protect me like that.
For years now, I’d been the one holding our family together.
The surge of emotions rushing to the surface was just too much.
I told myself it was exhaustion, the fear, the Blood Hunt…
Whatever it was, I couldn’t dwell on it now.
Everest bent down, reached behind him and held out his fur cloak. “Put this on. I’ve already checked it for resin, and it’s clean.”
“I can manage.”
“Please,” he murmured.
I took it because I enjoyed that word from his lips.
Warmth still lived in the fur. I pulled it over my shift and the heat of his skin moved over mine like a memory I had no right to borrow.
The collar carried his scent, cold-smoke cedar and frostmint, and something steady that lived under both.
Gratitude hit fast and hot, but I refused to name it.
Everest stepped in close enough that his shoulder brushed my arm. “Hold still.” The command should have annoyed me, but it didn’t.
He used the snow-sand paste first, scrubbing carefully at the resin on my arm, then along my hairline where the hood had touched my skin. The grit bit at my flesh, but his touch was controlled, practiced, like he was undoing a trap with his hands.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“It’s the damned cold.” Lie.
His breath hitched once, almost imperceptible, and his hands slowed. “It’s not.” Heat slid through me, sharp and humiliating. He exhaled and reached for a small tin in his pack. He popped it open, and a pungent scent rose clean and strong.
“This will lift what the snow can’t.” Was I imagining it or was his voice rougher now? He rubbed oil between his palms and smoothed it over the last stubborn streak across my arm, then along the inside of my wrist where the resin had kissed my skin.
My pulse stuttered. His thumb lingered a heartbeat too long.
And I felt it everywhere.
When he finally stepped back, his eyes tracked over me in his cloak, and something hot flickered there before he buried it. “Better,” he murmured, but it sounded like he was talking to himself.
“What about my cloak?” I nodded to the resin-streaked fabric at our feet.
Everest’s jaw set. He gathered the marked hem between two fingers like it was poison. Then he drew his knife and shaved the worst of it away in thin curls, letting the blackened slivers fall into a crevice between the rocks.
Digging through his satchel yet again, he struck steel once.
A tight blue flame licked up, small and hungry, and the pitch hissed as it burned. He smothered it the instant it flared, grinding wet sand over it until the flame died without a plume. The sea wind stole the faintest wisp out over the water.
“Not a trace that matters anymore,” he said at last.
He shrugged into my torn cloak then pulled on the sheaths with his axe and sword at his back with efficient, silent movements, as if he could dress his restraint back on with leather.
I hated that I missed the sight of him bare the moment it disappeared.
Everest’s gaze found mine, dark and steady behind the mask. “We should keep moving.”
“You’re going to wear my cloak?”
He nodded. “I told you the cold doesn’t bother me.”
With a huff of resignation, I followed him out of the notch in the cliffside, curling into his oversized fur. The wind brought a new smell then, not salt and pine. It was crushed thorns and wet earth, and something that tasted like iron on the back of my tongue.
Everest’s nostrils flared. “Gods’ damn it. Thornwild.”