Chapter Fourteen
Darius…
It’s a truth universally known that when an alpha wolf wakes up in a cave with a curvy and naked chaos witch’s soft, round ass nestled against him, the last thing he wants to be thinking about is getting back to Arcadia.
And yet here I fucking am, one hand cupping Effie’s full tit while I plan out our day in my head because everything that happened last night only exists in the weird in-between time of the gauntlet race.
An Aetos werewolf and a witch? Yeah, there’s a better chance of everyone in the pack becoming vegetarian than that.
Fucking for fun is one thing. Anything more is not even worth contemplating, no matter what Aunt Artemis says about fated mates.
It would break the pack, and that’s the last thing I’m going to let happen.
So it’s better to focus on how to survive the day and get back to Arcadia (as much as I can plan) before the blue moon turns white than on how good Effie feels snuggled up against me.
Getting back to Arcadia won’t be easy. I have a decent idea of where we are based on the angle of the sun coming into the cave, but these woods are known to mess with a wolf’s head.
Next to me on the blanket, Effie starts to stir. She stretches, the full length of her pressing against me and her hair tickling my chin.
“Who ever thought a cave floor could be so comfor—” She jackknifes up into a sitting position, temporarily speechless as she stares open-mouthed at the cave’s opening.
The waterfall that hid the cave’s entrance last night has been replaced by a pair of pine trees and a blackberry bush whose leaves have turned brown and are starting to fall.
There’s not a waterfall or a river in sight.
It’s not as effective of a cover to keep people from spotting the cave as the wall of water, but we’ll be out of here soon anyway—at least until tonight.
“What’s going on?” Effie asks, turning to me, her eyes as round as dinner plates, if still hazy with sleep.
“Where is the waterfall?” There’s almost half a beat of silence before she jumps up, crosses her arms, and hits me with a glare that even makes my wolf a little wary. “Did you kidnap me again?”
Of course, the fact that she’s stark naked and her nipples have hardened into pale pink peaks that look like they could be used to carve into the cave’s stone walls steals some of her thunder, because instead of worrying about the physical safety of my balls, all I can do is stare.
Are her nipples hard from adrenaline or the cold morning air, or is she just turned on by accusing me of crimes?
Whatever the reason, I put my hands behind my head like a pillow as I recline on the blanket and commit the curve of her tits, the dip of her waist, and the line of freckles framing the top of her hip to memory.
“Hello, horndog.” She snaps her fingers in front of my nose, yanking my attention back to her face. “I thought we were done with that. We had an agreement that we were doing this together.” She throws her hands up in the air in annoyance. “This is what I get for trusting a werewolf.”
Then Effie starts pacing back and forth in front of the blanket where we’d slept.
She continues to chew me out, but it’s hard for me to parse what she’s saying because the sway of her hips and the jiggle of her ass as she stalks from one end of the tiny space to the other is excessively distracting.
“You should kiss her again,” my wolf says.
The oh-yeah-sure snort that escapes in response earns me another dirty look from Effie as she launches into round two of why she knew better than to think I’d keep my part of our bargain.
“Not gonna happen,” I tell him in my head. “I don’t feel like getting turned into a pork chop or a frog or whatever she decides to magick me into.”
“It would be worth it,” my wolf says, his tail swishing back and forth in time with Effie’s steps. “She’s ours. We’re hers. She won’t stay mad forever.”
Maybe she wouldn’t, but that doesn’t make the rest of his statement true, and I tell him, “The whole fated mates thing isn’t real.”
“She’s ours. We’re hers,” my wolf repeats.
Effie stops dead in front of me and kicks my feet apart.
Her hands are on her hips and her brown eyes are sparkling with anger.
She’s fucking magnificent. The whole fated mates thing is just my aunt Artemis getting her oracle wires crossed, but if Effie is it, I’d be a very lucky guy.
Even though she looks like she’s already planned out exactly how she’s going to spell me into oblivion.
“Are you even listening to me, Darius Aetos?” she asks, her voice deadly low. “Isn’t that just like a guy. I thought you werewolves were totally cool with nudity. It’s why you have the orgy bed in your little clubhouse.”
I’m on my feet in an instant, a possessive heat burning its way through me.
“No one else gets to see you like this.” The words are out of my mouth before I even have time to think them, and my wolf howls in agreement while the rustle of my wildness blows through me.
“As if that’s up to you.” Effie rolls her eyes, obviously completely unimpressed by my declaration. “I’ll walk out into the woods like this if you don’t tell me what’s going on. I know you said the woods would move, but you never said we wouldn’t move with them.”
The idea of her walking through the woods naked is both the hottest thing I ever heard and—for practical purposes—the worst idea ever all at the same time. “The bugs will eat you up if you do.”
The scent of honeysuckle fills the air around us, and I swear I can see sparks arcing out from her fingertips, and suddenly a pork chop seems like one of the nicer things she could turn me into.
“The woods shifted, that’s why the waterfall’s gone, but we stayed in the same place,” I say before Effie turns me into an entrée.
Her eyebrows disappear behind her bangs, but she doesn’t look away from me even as she bends over, bypasses my extra hoodie she wore last night, and grabs her own now-dry clothes from the cupboard. “Why?”
“It’s like I told you. There isn’t really a reason beyond the moon’s impulses.
The Arcadia woods aren’t static, but my cave is,” I tell her as she slips on her bra and reaches behind herself to fasten it—an action that makes my wolf groan in disappointment.
“That’s what makes a gauntlet race so difficult: There’s no straight path or marked trail.
It’s all instinct and skill, and you never know where you’re going to wake up. ”
“So that means the people we got ahead of last night might be camped right outside the entrance?” she asks, her voice muffled because she’s tugging on her sweater.
I nod, even though she can’t see me at the moment. “Yep.”
“Great,” she says, as if it’s my fault the woods are like this, as she puts on her underwear and jeans, which makes me sigh out loud while my wolf is full-on cry howling. “At least my clothes won’t get wet when we leave.”
“Shocking, you’re a silver-lining kind of witch,” I tease, not moving a millimeter toward my clothes.
“Not all of us can be bossy grumps for a living,” she scoffs. All business, she scoops up my now-dry clothes and drops them on my lap before crossing her arms and staring down at me expectantly. “So, what’s the plan?”
I’m tempted to ignore the clothes, but she’s right. It’s time to get moving. So I ignore my wolf’s protests and stand up so I can start to get dressed. “We follow my instincts and make as much progress as possible toward Arcadia before the moon rises and the shift starts again.”
She glances out at the bright blue sky visible between the long branches of the pine trees. “How does this not make you lose it?”
My only answer is a shrug. The woods do what the woods want to do when the woods want to. Nature isn’t interested in a werewolf’s or a witch’s preference.
“And, um,” she says, her tone distracted, “how do you know that’s happening? Like, what if it’s raining or overcast or something?”
She watches me do up the button on my jeans and then tug on my T-shirt.
Do I go a little slower because she’s biting down on her bottom lip as she watches?
I absolutely do. Last night might have been the exception, not the rule, but I have to admit it’s fun to unsettle the wild Sherwood sister.
I have a feeling she’s really not used to that.
Ego?
Me?
I am the alpha, of course I have a fucking ego.
“My cave appears,” I tell her.
That snaps her attention off my now-covered chest and to my face. Her gaze is sharply curious. “I’m going to need you to explain about that, and in more depth than last night—and don’t try to distract me with your dick again.”
Fuck. Where to start? It’s hard to pick words when she’s so focused on me.
The pack’s future is on the line, yet all I want to do is reverse the last few minutes so we’re both naked again.
I want it so bad, I’m already taking steps toward Effie before I realize it and bring myself in check.
There’s too much at stake for that. Yeah, giving in to my wildness is what my dad would have done and his mother before him, but I can’t do that. If I do, the pack won’t survive.
“The Arcadia woods are both a protective barrier and training grounds,” I say, my voice gruff with the effort not to reach for her.
Instead, I grab the hoodies and joggers from last night and cross over to the wooden chest at the back of the cave.
“Since the woods rotate most nights, our enemies have a hard time getting through to the village if they make it through the mountains. However, every member of the pack has a moonstone that acts as a talisman to provide shelter and safety if they’re out when the rotation occurs.
This is mine.” I open the rough-hewn box with a milky stone set into the middle of the lid.
She lets out an aha of understanding. “That’s why there was a change of clothes in there. This cave is yours and only yours.”
I drop the joggers and hoodies into the chest and flip the lid closed. “It always pays to be prepared.”
If only I felt the slightest bit prepared to go through the woods with Effie. An unpredictable witch in an unpredictable location. What could go wrong?
I’m predicting a lot.