Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Saturday afternoon, Leo drove Adam’s SUV to the fairgrounds in Willow’s Crossing. Solan was in the passenger seat, and Adam and Cinder were in the second row.
“Did you guys have a nice full moon hunt?” Cinder asked. “I usually try to stay up until Adam gets home, but I passed out watching a cooking show.”
Cinder, a magical wolf called a lygisa, was able to use spells to bless the pack and keep them safe but wasn’t able to shift since she was pregnant. It would be their first child, and the pack was deliriously happy that their alphas were starting a family.
Leo and Solan had been out with a few of the younger, newly shifted wolves, teaching them the skills to hunt in their shifts.
“We had a good run with a few of the kids,” Solan said.
“Alex is already a great hunter,” Leo said. The female was sixteen and could hunt with the best of them.
Adam hummed. “Some people are just naturals in their shifts.”
“Was that a crack at me?” Cinder asked with a grin.
“Not at all, babe,” Adam said. “It’s perfectly normal for the alpha female to be unable to actually catch a rabbit, no matter how many full moons she tries.”
“Hey!” she said, elbowing him. “It’s the same damn rabbit every full moon. I think it shows up to taunt me!”
Leo and Solan laughed as their alphas bantered about hunting prowess. Or the lack of it.
“Do you know anything about the star, Velastra?” Leo asked, glancing at Cinder in the rearview.
“The one the festival is following?”
“Yeah.”
“Not really. The organizers of the festival follow new stars, so the Festival of the Revel will follow Velastra as it moves across the sky, and then when another new star appears, they’ll change course.”
“What’s the point of that?” Solan asked.
“Magic can be more powerful during new stars, especially when they’re actually tied to magic like this one is.”
When they reached the fairgrounds, Leo’s wolf started to act antsy again, and as he got out of the SUV and shut the door, he rubbed the space over his heart.
“You okay?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, my wolf’s just been acting up.”
“Like something bad is coming?” Adam glanced around, his gaze suspicious.
“Not really. My wolf has been antsy for the last few days. I can’t really place it, just that I thought a good shift and hunt might settle things, but it didn’t.”
“Maybe something good is coming your way,” Cinder said, taking Adam’s hand. “Our wolves can be in tune with things on other planes that we can’t see until they’re right in front of us.”
Leo nodded and scanned the area as his alpha had, wondering if they were right.
The second SUV parked next to them, with Brick, Jade, and several other security team members getting out.
Jade and Cinder immediately gravitated to each other, the two thick as thieves, as Solan ran through the security protocols for their people.
Adam and Brick stayed by their females’ sides, with the others loosely around them and watching for anything out of the ordinary.
Cinder wanted to restock her magical supply cabinet and apparently eat her body weight in fried and sugary foods, and they kicked off the afternoon by stopping at a cotton candy booth.
The scents in the air were so muddled that Leo couldn’t really get a bead on anything but roasting meat, fried dough, and sugar.
And an air of magic, too. It was hard to explain how magic smelled; it just smelled magical. Other.
The way that blue raspberry tasted blue, which didn’t really make sense, except that it’s exactly how it tasted.
As they made their way slowly down one aisle, stopping at every booth so Cinder and Jade could look at what was being sold and talk to people, Leo’s wolf started to act up even more.
Whining in his head.
Pushing him toward…something.
“We still on for tonight at Lykos?” Solan asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said.
“You okay?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Hey, maybe what was really going on with your wolf is that you need to get laid. Which is exactly what Lykos is great for. Plenty of females to meet.”
“I thought you were looking for your truemate like me?” Leo asked. “My mate’s not going to be found in a bar full of shifter groupies.”
“You never know,” Solan said. “And I am looking for my truemate, but I’m also not going to be a monk while I wait for her. I’ll find her when the time is right.”
Leo felt a faint, inexplicable tug in his chest, and he looked around, turning slightly as the tug on his heart increased.
Something was drawing him, but to what?
* * *
Their group made their way down each aisle, and by the time they reached the last aisle, his wolf was in a frenzy. He was having trouble stopping himself from growling or stomping down the aisle to find what was drawing him forward.
He needed to stay on target and keep his pack members safe. Their group headed down the aisle. Leo scanned the area ahead of them, and when he laid eyes on a booth that had a tent of purple and blue fabric, his wolf let out a happy howl in his head.
The pull was so strong that he couldn’t brush it off any longer.
“Can you cover me for a second?” he asked Solan, not taking his eyes off the tent.
“Uh, sure. What’s up?”
“I just need to…check something out down the aisle.”
He walked away, his gaze on the tent. The closer he drew to the tent, the more the noise of the festival dulled and faded into the background.
He still wasn’t sure what was drawing him there, but then he heard a voice that made everything inside him go profoundly quiet.
Behind one side of the tent’s thick fabric curtain, a feminine voice, tinged with anger and sadness, reached him.
“Don’t tell me to get over myself, Lark, I’m not even kidding. I just found out my entire life is a lie, and I can’t even do anything about it!”
The tent’s sign boasted a psychic telling fortunes. Magic hummed around the entire tent, pulsing like a living thing.
Leo pulled the edge of the curtain back and found the owner of the voice.
There were two females facing each other. One gave him a curious raised brow. The other turned to look at him, her eyes blazing with anger.
It hit him like a freight train.
The beautiful blonde was his truemate.
And she was furious.
Her eyes widened, and that’s when he realized they were mismatched—one blue and one green. His breath caught in his throat, his heartbeat roaring in his ears as loudly as his wolf was howling.
Her face went pale, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
He lunged, catching her before she hit the ground.
The people in the tent shouted at him as he backed out of the tent with her in his arms, a snarl in his throat.
His pack instantly surrounded him as the people in the tent moved toward them. There were six of them: three males and three females.
“Hey, put her down, damn it! What did you do to her?” the female she’d been talking to demanded.
Adam stepped in front of the wolves and put his hands up. “Let’s everyone chill out for a minute. My wolf and your psychic are clearly going through something right now. We’re not going to attack, but we will defend our people if necessary.”
One of the males moved forward, face grim. “That’s my daughter he’s holding. What the hell happened? Is she okay?”
Leo looked down at her. “She’s okay, just unconscious.”
“What happened?” Adam asked, glancing at Leo.
“I felt drawn to this tent, and when she and I locked eyes with each other, she passed out. She’s my truemate.”
The psychic male’s brows rose. “We’ve got chairs set up behind the tent. Come back this way, we’ll get some smelling salts to help revive her.”
Leo’s hands tightened on his mate. He wanted to literally run all the way back to Thorn Hollow with her in his arms, but instead, he followed her people behind the tent. He set her on a chair, and she slumped against him as he sat next to her and laid his arm over her shoulders.
“I’m Daphne, her mom,” one of the females said. “Her name is Mira.”
“Leo. I’m part of the Thorn Hollow Pack.”
“Hey,” Adam said.
Leo looked up at him.
“So this is why you were feeling weird.”
“Yeah.”
“You were feeling weird?” Mira’s dad—Gideon—asked.
“My wolf’s been acting up since Thursday.”
“That’s when we came to town,” Daphne said.
Leo couldn’t take his eyes off Mira. She wasn’t just gorgeous, she was enchanting, and she smelled amazing. Like sunshine and blue skies and blooming flowers.
“She’s a psychic?” he asked.
“It’s…complicated,” Daphne said. “We’ll let her tell you everything.”
One of the psychics appeared with smelling salts and broke the capsule, waving it under her nose. Mira woke with a startled yelp, thrashing, and then she calmed down the moment her gaze landed on Leo.
“Oh my gosh, it’s you!” she said. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “I knew the moment I saw you that you were mine!”
“Me too, Mira,” Leo said, his wolf howling happily. “Me too.”