A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(32)

Wulfe. This woman would be Wulfe’s mate?

Saying nothing, he pulled his hand away, then suddenly lunged, grabbed her, and shoved his thumb beneath her ear, knocking her out. The woman crumpled, hitting her head on the headboard with a dull thud. Lifting her, he positioned her on the bed just as she’d been when he first arrived until she looked like she was sleeping. Then he rose and opened the window. Wide.

What the hell? It was nighttime. The draden were drawn to the Radiant’s energy above all others. If they got in, they’d drain her life in minutes.

But without a backward glance, he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Kieran?” Worry laced Olivia’s voice. The stroke of her hand over the top of his head jerked him back to the present. “Are you okay?”

He shifted into man form, then rolled onto his back, covering his eyes with his arm, shutting out the people standing over him, trying to shut out the vision he’d just seen. He was going to kill her. The new Radiant. Was that what the Mage would do to his animal? Turn him evil, too?

“What happened, Fox?” Jag’s voice was, for once, warrior hard.

Fox sat up, blinking, and found Melisande watching him from behind the others. Golden brows were drawn in worry, a hint of compassion softening hard sapphire eyes, and he held onto that, his gaze clinging to hers, feeling it like a lifeline pulling him from the chaos of the vision, tethering him to the here and now. Slowly, as he stared at her, the confusion slipped away.

But not the despair.

“I’ve been getting premonitions,” he admitted, shifting his gaze to Jag. The scene played out all over again in his head, holding him hostage. I’m a mated female and well you know it. Wulfe would not be happy to find you here. Wait. Wasn’t Wulfe the mate of the previous Radiant, the one before Kara? Could he be chosen again? Or . . .

Holy fecking goddess.

Leaping to his feet, he swung toward Jag. “How did the previous Radiant die? Wulfe’s mate.” What if he hadn’t been seeing the future but the past?

Jag eyed him keenly, as if he wasn’t entirely sure Fox hadn’t lost his mind. “The Cub killed her. The damned Mage had gotten to him months ago and cut out his soul without anyone’s knowing, including him. He acted the same as always, but he was partly under the thrall of the Mage. He killed Beatrice, our Radiant, six months ago. He opened the window of her bedroom one night. The draden, of course, came right for her.”

“What color hair did Beatrice have?”

“Why?”

His patience snapped. “Just answer the fecking question, Jag. It’s important.”

The other Feral held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Red. Not as bright as Olivia’s, but she was a redhead. Again, why?”

His gaze slid back to Melisande, an inner need to connect with her pulling at him. If she were his, he’d have her in his arms right now, tight against his side, her heartbeat steadying his own.

Slowly, his gaze returned to Jag’s. “I think I just saw the Cub kill her. Through his eyes.”

“Shit, Fox. Has this happened before? These . . . sight things?”

“Twice in the past twenty-four hours. I thought I was starting to get premonitions, but now . . . I’m not so sure.”

Jag turned all warrior. “Tell me about the other two.”

“I was captured. By the Mage. And they were trying to separate me . . . him . . . from his animal.”

“The Cub?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. The vision looked completely different. Like I was seeing the world in sepia tones.”

Jag frowned. “Color-blind, maybe? Sly, the fox shifter who preceded the Cub, was color-blind. Sounds to me like you’re getting flashbacks from your animal. I’ve never heard of that happening before. We never knew how Sly died. He was one messed-up f**k.”

“How long was he missing?”

“About a year. He’d been a Feral for almost two millennia, second-oldest of the bunch, but a real loner. A year after he disappeared, the Cub showed up, twenty years old and newly marked. The new fox shifter. That’s how we knew Sly was dead.” He looked at Fox carefully. “Do you think the Mage succeeded? In separating animal from Feral?”

“In other words, do I think my animal was compromised, too?” Bloody, f**king hell. He’d been so sure he was the lucky one for not being marked by one of the seventeen. Instead, he might be as damaged as the rest of them. “I don’t know. So far, all I know is they had him and were torturing him.”

“Kieran should be fine,” Olivia said, but there were traces of worry in her eyes. “Haven’t you all decided that a dark infection transferred to the new Feral through the animal marking would only affect the next one marked? That the one marked after him should be fine? The Cub was the infected one. Not Kieran.”

Her loyalty warmed him. But Jag didn’t look entirely convinced, and Fox couldn’t blame him. Why would an unaffected Feral be getting sudden flashbacks from his animal?

There was no doubt in his mind that something more was going on. He just hoped to hell the Ferals didn’t decide to toss him in prison, too.

Jag clasped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get going. We can think about what it all means as we walk.”

Fox nodded, glancing at Melisande, who watched him with eyes once more cool and enigmatic. The compassion he’d briefly glimpsed in her was gone. Shaken and unsettled from that vision, he turned to follow Jag, remaining in human form, while Jag took the lead in animal.