Chapter Eleven #2
The creepy, breathy voice that does not belong in my skull snaps me back to the here and now. “Oh shit.”
Everyone in Witchingdom knows that making direct eye contact with a naiad means a high likelihood of being hypnotized. And like a doofus, I fell right into those big green orbs of hers.
“You looked, didn’t you,” Darius says as he picks up the pace so he’s practically sprinting through the water despite carrying me while the naiad is trying to pull him down.
“Of course I did.” I start summoning my magic, calling to it and drawing it forward so I can be of help in getting us out of here rather than just a weight Darius is carrying. But instead of a honeysuckle-scented rush of power, I get a floral dryer-sheet-smelling puff of nothing much.
Fuck.
My.
Life.
“What did you think I’d do when you said don’t look down?” I grumble.
Instead of answering, Darius walks straight through the cold waterfall and into a cave. Okay, it’s a small cave, but it’s more than enough space for the two of us, and a little more.
Darius sits me down and takes a few steps away from me. A chill seeps into my skin that is more than just the wet from the water or the damp from our hiding spot. Without thinking, I take a step closer to him, and instantly my core temp goes up a few degrees.
That is…weird. I mean, it’s not like he’s any drier than I am. In fact, after wading through the river, he’s definitely more soaked. Maybe it’s a werewolf thing? Maybe they just run hot? It’s not that my body is seeking his out. That would just be…inconvenient.
Wanting Darius is one thing (and totally explainable, because he’s one of the hottest guys I’ve ever met), but needing him? Oh no, that’s a wand made of a different kind of wood. I am not here for that.
Not.
At.
All.
So even though it makes my skin sting like an icy wind has just rushed through our cave, I reverse and go back a step.
Then he reaches behind his head and pulls his shirt off, dropping it to the smooth ground, which it hits with a wet smack loud enough that I would have jumped if it weren’t for the fact that I’m frozen with horniness.
Do you know how far gone you have to be for lust to make you immobile?
Really fucking gone.
Darius, though, doesn’t seem to have the same issue.
He bends over while facing me, giving me an interesting angle to watch the muscles in his tatted-up back move as he loosens the laces on his motorcycle boots.
Then he balances on one leg and then the other so he can yank them off and toss them toward the back, where they land with a thunk against a wooden chest.
Under normal circumstances, this is when I would start wondering what the chest has inside it and why it’s there. However, in what is beginning to feel like my new normal, these are not normal circumstances.
So instead I count Darius’s tattoos—a huge huntress running with a trio of wolves across his back, a four-pointed Kardia on his shoulder blade that looks disconcertingly similar to the arrangement of freckles on the inside of my wrist, ancient Greek lettering that I can’t read curving across his pecs, a bow and arrow on his neck, and so many more symbols that I did not get a good enough look at earlier at the barbecue, because I can’t stop staring now.
He drops his hands to the button of his jeans and doesn’t hesitate so much as torments.
He lifts an eyebrow as he waits and shoots me a little smirk that says he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.
Okay, I’ve never had a poker face, so I’m sure it isn’t, like, a big mystery, but still, in-the-woods Darius is a lot more loose than Arcadia Darius.
In fact, he was like that in the Killjoy Forest too, stripping down and chasing after me in his wolf form after I temporarily liberated his motorcycle.
Then he’d transformed out of his wolf form and walked around naked as a jaybird at dawn without a shred of embarrassment.
No, he wasn’t even close to that. He’d strutted. Asked me if I was enjoying the show.
That’s why I was so distracted that I didn’t notice when he swiped what he thought was The Liber Umbrarum.
And now he’s distracted me with his hotness again.
Darius Aetos is up to something, and I’m not going to fall into his trap this time.
So I pull on my metaphorical big-girl panties and if-you’ve-seen-one-naked-werewolf-you’ve-seen-them-all world-weariness and turn away.
I ignore the sound of the button on his jeans popping open.
(No, I can’t actually hear it over the sound of the waterfall and my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, but I swear I can hear it.)
“Did you know this cave was here?” I ask with a shrug as I turn my gaze to take in the rest of the dark, dank, and not-a-sexy-werewolf-doing-a-striptease cave.
“Every Aetos werewolf prepares for the blue moon gauntlet.” The unmistakable sound of wet denim hitting the floor is followed by something softer that has to be his underwear (boxers? briefs? the combo thing?).
The temptation to turn my attention to what I know is a now-naked Darius is practically overwhelming, but I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands and stay strong, despite never having wanted to be weak-willed more in my life.
“We all have hidden spots in the woods that we think only we know about that appear when we need them,” he goes on, the sound of his steps going from the front of the cave to the back where I spotted the wooden chest earlier.
“They are places where we can hide out when the others are too close for us to run. Mine is this cave.”
I keep my attention on the nearly glowing blue of the waterfall hiding the cave’s entrance as I sit down on a flattish rock before my knees give out. Of course, I have instant regrets when the damp soaks into the seat of my jeans.
“Is this race an eat-or-be-eaten thing?” I ask, straining my hearing to try to figure out what he’s doing now.
There’s a snap and a creak I assume is the chest being opened.
“More like extreme tag,” he says, his voice slightly muffled as if something is covering his mouth.
“The usual gauntlet race is the whole pack running through the woods with the goal to be the first one back to Arcadia using only our instincts to know the correct path through the woods—a task made more difficult because the woods move like the board of a game at night, so every day you’re starting at a new location in your effort to find your way home. ”
“Seems suspiciously easy and straightforward.” Which means it’s anything but.
I may not know a lot about the Aetos Werewolves, but I know they love their games, because, really, what’s a heist besides a series of escape rooms, traps to avoid, and a prize at the end?
“If another pack member tags you,” he says, voice clear again, “the woods zap you back to just outside Arcadia, and you have to start the race again.”
I’m starting to shiver a little from the chill, but since I can’t even summon up a spark of magic, a bonfire is pretty out of the question (especially since the other werewolves with their heightened senses would probably smell it), so I just wrap my arms tighter around my middle.
“But this isn’t a usual gauntlet race,” I say.
“Exactly,” Darius says from directly behind me. “This is a blue moon gauntlet race.”
The air shifts, and a second later, a deliciously thick gray hoodie falls into my lap, followed by a ridiculously large matching pair of joggers.
I glance back over my shoulder to say thanks, but Darius is facing away from me.
He’s wearing an identical set to mine and is throwing his wet clothes into the chest.
I hold up the hoodie and take a big sniff of earthy goodness that is one hundred percent pure Darius before I start peeling off my wet clothes and pulling on the dry hoodie and joggers.
I have to pull the string in the waistband tight and roll them up about a billion times (thank you, very rounded hips, for helping hold them up), but I’m dressed and warm.
Darius sweeps up my clothes and tosses them in the chest before closing the lid, tapping a wind charm on it three times, and then stepping back after it starts to whir and emit heat.
A delighted chuckle escapes before I can even think to stop it.
Who’d have thought that janky pirate-treasure-box-looking crate is actually a dryer?
Score points for Darius on thinking of that one.
Then he pulls out a loose rock in the cave wall and pulls out bread, peanut butter, honey, an unopened box of almond milk, and a plastic container of protein power.
“We gotta refuel,” he says as an explanation as he starts putting together the shelf-stable feast of my dreams.
Ten minutes later, we’re sitting on a dry blanket he grabbed from a high shelf carved into the wall, our backs against the front of the dryer, which emits just enough heat and just little enough noise that we don’t have to worry about attracting unwanted attention.
“So you didn’t tell me what a blue moon gauntlet race means,” I say before popping in the last bite of my peanut butter and honey sandwich.
He finishes his fourth sandwich and follows it with the final gulp of his third protein shake. “Anyone who doesn’t make it back to Arcadia before the moon turns back to white is jinxed until the next blue moon.”
I roll that around in my head. Crappy things happen all the time to everyone; it’s just part of the natural order of things. But being jinxed? That’s not a spell or a hex; it’s a curse—the kind that sticks to a person like gum on the bottom of your shoe in August.
“How long does the moon stay blue?” I ask, already hearing a countdown clock in my head.
Darius sighs. “As long as it feels like it.”
Of course, why wouldn’t the woods be their own magical playground of no rules and fuck you. “So how big are the woods? How long does the race last?”
“The woods are as big as they need to be during the gauntlet, and the race lasts as long as the moon wants it to,” he says, his tone totally unbothered.