A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(47)

He pressed his mouth close to Melisande’s ear and yelled above the gale, “We’ve got to find shelter. Somewhere defensible.”

Glancing up, she met his gaze with a tense mouth, hard agreement in warrior eyes. He tightened his grip on her hand with an instinctive need to protect. She couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, and he feared that the wind would lift her up and send her flying. Together, they ran from the beach toward the tree line above.

A shiver took hold of him, one he’d come to recognize as the kind that preceded some of his intuitions, now. And sure enough, as before, he suddenly knew where to go.

“This way!” He tugged on Melisande’s hand. Within the forest, debris flew, branches snapped, trees bending as if pushed low by a giant hand.

His gut led him toward a particularly thick clump of trees in which they could find some shelter. He pulled back a wide palm frond for Melisande to precede him through. She stepped forward, then froze and began to backpedal.

“What’s the matter?”

“Look. Carefully!”

He leaned forward to see what the problem was. A pit. Bloody hell. By the looks of the trampled palm fronds around it, and the fronds lining the bottom some twenty feet down, the pit had been hidden. Before the storm? No. By the track marks up one side and the badly disturbed ground on top, whoever, or whatever, had fallen in had been hauled out again. And recently.

Why in the fecking hell had his gut brought him this way?

“Look!” Melisande yelled above the howling wind, pointing.

He followed her gaze to where someone lay sprawled and motionless a short distance away, partially hidden by a downed palm tree. Castin? Carefully avoiding the trap, they made their way to him. But as they approached, Fox saw that the body was missing its head. And it wasn’t alone. There were three in all, the heads scattered nearby like so many bowling balls.

A suspicion tugged at him and he nudged one of the heads with the toe of his boot, turning it until he could see its sightless eyes. The brown irises were ringed in shiny copper. Mage eyes. Approaching the second, he lifted one closed eyelid. Mage eyes again.

Melisande checked the third. “Mage.”

“Three dead Mage. No wonder there’s a hurricane.” Mother Nature got angry when her Mage were killed. Millennia ago, the Mage had been the closest to true nature spirits that existed on Earth. Now they were, more and more, a bunch of soulless bastards trying to free the Daemons to destroy the Earth they’d once protected.

“Who killed them?” Melisande asked.

“Damned good question.” And he had an idea. “Hold on to a tree. I don’t want you blowing away.” When she’d done as he commanded, he pulled on his own inner power and shifted into his fox, startled by the feel of hurricane-force winds through his fur. Opening his senses, he began to sniff around the bodies. Sure enough, he caught the scent they’d been following before they entered the labyrinth.

Castin, he told Melisande. He followed the scent straight back to the pit. He’s the one they caught, I’d wager. The question is, did he get away or were there more Mage than these three?

As he shifted back to human form, a strong gust knocked Melisande sideways, and she barely hung on to the tree. He grabbed her against him. “We’ve got to find shelter.”

“Yes.”

The storm’s fury was leaching into him, stealing his equilibrium. He was struggling to stay in his skin, to keep from going feral.

Hand in hand, they pushed into the forest of tropical trees, climbing over downed palms. Fox continually scanned for any sign of Castin or Mage, but he saw no one, nothing but flying trees and palm fronds.

About fifty yards in, he found what he’d been looking for—several boulders clustered together, surrounded by brush and trees forming a natural shelter from the worst of the storm. They ducked into the space, tucking themselves against the rocks as the wind continued to howl.

Melisande glanced up at him, old hatred in her eyes. “Castin’s here.”

“He was here. He may not be any longer. It appears your suspicion of a Mage gauntlet is accurate.”

Melisande nodded. “A gauntlet usually follows a single path.”

He longed to put his arm around her, to hold her close, but he didn’t trust himself not to draw claws. Even now, they were throbbing beneath the surface of his fingertips.

“The question is, where does it end?” he asked.

Melisande pursed that kissable mouth, drawing his attention, making him long to taste it again.

“It’s delivering us to the Mage,” she said. “To Inir. At least it’s delivering you there. Me, it’s trying to kill.” Her words were without emotion, but he felt the shiver go through her. And he knew an answering rage that only fueled the loss of control he was already struggling against. Because it was true, and they both knew it.

She leaned against him with a trust that curled around his heart and was utterly misplaced. “Don’t.” He pulled away. “I’m losing it again, pet. If I go feral, I’m going out into the storm. Stay here. Stay safe.”

How was it that this fierce, vulnerable, prickly woman, had come to be so important to him? All that mattered was protecting her.

Even . . . especially . . . if that meant keeping her safe from him.

As the howling wind threw palm fronds in every direction, uprooting trees and slamming them to the ground, Melisande watched the agitation rise in the shifter at her side and saw the moment Fox’s eyes changed from sky blue to yellow animal eyes.