Chapter 32
Evelyn
I’d done the right thing, I’d sent Stephen—my father—to Mom. Still, my body shook as he sprinted away.
He wasn’t a veil cat shifter. My father didn’t have the answers I needed. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been there. It didn’t matter that Mom was right, and something terrible had happened to him.
He could not have helped.
I folded my arms across my chest as if to hold myself together while fixated on the precise spot where he’d disappeared. Moments, maybe hours later, that warm, reassuring hand was at my lower back.
“He isn’t like me,” I said.
Ambrose huffed an acknowledgment.
“He doesn’t have the answers I need.”
“Is it possible that you put too much expectation on that missing piece? He wasn’t there for you when you needed his help, so you assumed he took all the answers with him?”
I lifted my palm to wipe a tear from my cheek, but Ambrose’s was already there, his hand warm against my cold skin. He brought his finger with the captured tear to his mouth and licked it.
A giggle bubbled up inside me. “You are so odd.”
“I’m not fond of your tears,” he said. “But I’ll need to make a note that they taste like sunlight.”
I shook my head in stunned disbelief. “What does that even mean?”
He dropped his hand from my lower back, and when I turned to look at him, he had his secret notebook and pencil out.
“Are you—”
“I told you, I’m taking notes.”
Then I snorted with laughter, and he smiled.
It was so easy—just this. Ambrose knew I would tie my mind in knots with what-ifs.
So, he’d picked a ridiculous way to distract me from what I couldn’t change.
Just the two of us here felt nice. It felt like something I could get used to.
I wished we had the luxury of exploring what was between us, without complication, for a while longer, but that wasn’t the case.
The fae leaders and gods needed their problem solved. The answer felt within our grasp.
Ambrose tucked his notebook back into his pocket and regarded me. “You think location is why we couldn’t burn the rope connecting us?”
Of course he knew where my mind had wandered to. I nodded.
“The Vesten Library in Sandrin, then?”
“The Vesten Library,” I replied.
We explained ourselves to Lord Arctos, who waved us away and said he’d meet us in Sandrin to check if it worked.
It seemed like further proof that Lord Arctos had indeed been meddling, though I wasn’t sure how.
Our presence here had not been required.
He had wanted us here for something, not necessarily to test our theories on him and the Vesten Point.
It was a mystery, but it wasn’t my biggest problem at the moment.
Carter was nowhere to be found, but ageless magic hung thick in the air around Vesten House. I hypothesized, with no small amount of disbelief, where he might have disappeared to.
He couldn’t have gone beyond the veil, right?
For the first time, I wondered if I was actually asking my veil cat. If I was asking a question to which I already knew the answer. The veil cat that lived within my thoughts stretched deep on her front paws, as if she couldn’t be bothered to participate in this internal discussion.
Ambrose and I had no reason to wait. We knew what we had to do next, so together, we walked toward the treeline behind Vesten House.
“You lead, I’ll follow,” he said.
I smirked. “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘I’ll run, you chase.’”
His ears pinkened, and his gaze darted away from mine as a low rumble emanated from his chest.
“I think your wolf likes that.”
When he glanced at me again, gold cascaded across his eyes. “We’ll give you a ten-minute head start.”
A shiver shot down my spine, and I ran into the forest before I could think better of it.
Fire burned through me with each step. I didn’t need the candy to shift.
My veil cat and I might not have fully understood each other, but in this, we did.
As I jumped, I shifted. The move was seamless, like I’d seen Lord Arctos do.
One step, my feet left the earth; the next, my paws landed back on it.
I sprinted away, running through the trees beside the forest path. There was no time to slow down and congratulate myself. As Compass Lake Village and the mountain trail came into view, a howl echoed through the woods behind me. I was out of time.
My paws pressed me forward, skipping against the ground. The tug in my chest told me I was just far enough ahead of him to trigger discomfort in our bond. That was the distance I needed to maintain to win this game.
He wouldn’t let me win, though.
If nothing else, I knew I could count on Ambrose for that.
We ran for hours this way. Clearing the mountain pass and sprinting down the switchbacks felt effortless with my focus wholly elsewhere.
My heart pounded at every rustle in the trees.
I imagined he’d somehow passed me and had doubled back to attack.
It left me little choice but to keep sprinting.
That rope between us stayed taut, even as I fled the foothills and ran through the thick woods toward the inn.
I moved with a fluid grace I had yet to truly feel with my veil cat.
Maybe being chased by Ambrose Yarrow was all I’d needed to understand how half-fae and veil cat worked together.
As with everything else between us, he pushed me to learn. Sometimes it was out of spite, but mostly, it was out of curiosity and a desire to do better. He pushed me to want.
That wasn’t quite right. I wanted things: my mom’s happiness, success in my career, and a sense of belonging in this world as a half-fae, but I didn’t speak my desires. If I didn’t voice them, then I wouldn’t be embarrassed or disappointed when they didn’t happen.
Silently wanting things might not sound powerful, but it was safe.
It was safe until Ambrose made me speak my truths—until Ambrose drew me to fight for what I wanted instead of letting it pass me by as another out-of-reach goal.
As if my thoughts summoned him, the rope in my chest loosened.
He was close.
We’d run all day. Exhaustion picked at every part of me that wanted to keep going, that wanted to win this game between us. Had this been his plan all along? Wait until I was at my most vulnerable to pounce?
The leaves shook in the trees.
It’s just the wind.
I knew it wasn’t. The rope between us was too loose, but the inn was in my sights, and I had no choice but to try.
A growl sounded—far too close.
Maybe I won’t make it.
I pushed myself harder. My muscles burned, but nothing motivated me like the idea of proving Ambrose wrong. If I could make it to the inn steps without him, maybe he wasn’t as good a predator as he thought he was.
The tug in my chest was gone completely. I couldn’t spare a thought to consider how slack that rope between us must be. My legs were on fire, and all I wanted to do was sploot here on the forest floor.
That one distracted thought cost me.
One minute, I was sprinting toward the flickering lights of the inn. The next, I was rolling off course, through the woods, and a massive gray wolf tumbled with me.
Fur and limbs tangled together. It felt a little wild—what I’d always suspected lurked beneath the surface of Ambrose’s golden boy persona.
But even as we tangled together, I found his cautious preparation.
Every time I flipped over him, his paws adjusted.
He kept me safe even as he shattered my pride by catching me.
On the subsequent tumble, I let the fire burn through me and shifted. If I lost, at least I should get to tell him off. Gold flashed across his eyes, and on the next roll, he shifted, too. He conveniently landed on top of me, my body pinned beneath his weight.
“You were toying with me the whole time,” I hissed as I wiggled beneath him.
He huffed. “I wish. You’re fast when you want to be.” He shook his head as if coming out of a haze. “How that’s even possible, when I’m confident the only exercise you get is lifting books to a shelf above your head, I’ll never understand.”
“You’re a library researcher,” I pointed out. “Have you ever considered that your athletic activities are the abnormality here? What kind of historian has those shoulder muscles?”
The sinful smile was back. “Oh, Evelyn, I wasn’t sure you noticed.”
I laughed. “Yes, you were.”
Any fight fled me as he leaned down to capture my mouth in a kiss.
We hadn’t had time to talk about last night—about what it meant, about the competition we still faced.
My body decided all of that was irrelevant.
Pinned beneath him, I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him down completely, desperate to feel his weight.
He’d known exactly what to do to stop my mind from spinning.
It wasn’t a distraction so much as another, more tangible goal on which to focus.
He gave me so much and asked for so little.
He seemed only to want more time with me.
More time to learn about each other, more time to discuss our ideas, more time to grow together.
I wanted to grant him that, even when we severed the blood magic connecting us.
In the darkness of the woods, I saw him so clearly. His lips skated down my jaw, my neck, and I freed a hand to reach for him, slipping it inside his trousers.
“Evelyn,” he hissed as his hips jerked. “We’re in the woods.”
My hand found his length and stroked him. His hips jolted forward with my movement. “Does that bother you?”
He canted his head in consideration. Then he buried his face in the crook of my neck. “You know, I don’t think it does.”
I continued to stroke him as he nipped and licked his way down my body. With his progress, his hips slipped from me. I reached for him again, but he held me in place.
“I’ve wanted to taste you for so long.” His teeth were at the waistband of my leggings. My hips lifted automatically to help him achieve his goal.
With the first lick of his tongue across my center, my back arched from the forest floor.
A desperate moan accompanied the movement.
Ambrose’s free hand slid toward my mouth.
He paused for a chuckle as he offered it to me.
“We’re not that far from the inn, Evelyn.
Bite down if you can’t control yourself. ”
I sucked two of his fingers into my mouth in an attempt to toy with him as he did me, but at the next stroke of his tongue, I bit down—hard.
He didn’t yelp; instead, his lips curled into a satisfied smile, and he continued his work.
“Better than I imagined,” he said, pausing for a moment as the fingers of his other hand pressed into my center. He pumped them in rhythm with his tongue. Then he feasted.
Flame built within me, and my pulse raced like he chased me again.
But Ambrose caught me. He wanted to find me, no matter where I ran. With the thought, I shattered beneath him.
Desperate for more, I quickly freed him from his trousers. Lined up and ready, a single thrust granted my desire. My hips lifted to meet his, eager for a deeper connection. We moved together, challenge and response, a perfect synchronization to chase our shared pleasure.
My body heated, sensation built, and flames curled forth like a roaring inferno. Ambrose wasn’t far behind. His forehead touched mine, and his eyes flashed gold when he found his release. We collapsed together, sharing panting breaths on the forest floor.
He studied me, scanning my features slowly as if he had something he wanted to say. Then, in the next instant, his face turned playful. “Do you want to bet they have two rooms tonight?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Don’t even think about it.”
He kissed me deeply before pushing backward, straightening himself, and helping me up. “It’s like the law of nature. They will absolutely have two rooms at the inn this time.”