He turned my face back toward his and met my gaze with hard, loving eyes. “You are not. You’re the woman on whom all our hope hangs. I feel it in my gut. Don’t let that dream or the council or the prophecy make you doubt yourself. I believe in you more than I do any prophecy.”
Before I could deflect, he bent his head and lightly dragged his lips along mine. My body melted, and I closed my eyes as I pressed my mouth against his.
It was so soft, so gentle, the opposite of the hungry passion we’d shared two nights before. Tender. Beautiful and probing. Lips that weren’t desperate but searched and discovered. And with each kiss, I found someone who fit perfectly against me.
Slowly, Jaxson’s kisses traveled from my mouth along my throat. I tilted my neck and slipped my arms around him. Pulling him close, I buried my chin against his shoulder. He slowed and broke off his kiss just to hold me.
The world was collapsing so quickly around us, and I didn’t want to let go. I just wanted to hold on to him forever in that moment. To draw it out. To never have to face the future or the past.
But eventually, I opened my eyes to face the world that was.
A woman looked back at me from the woods. I tensed and dug my nails into Jaxson’s shoulders, and then she was gone.
“What is it?” Jaxson whispered. His body was taut and ready, but he didn’t look around.
“Someone was watching us. Maybe someone from the council?” I disentangled myself from his arms and headed up the slope to where she’d been standing.
No sign. I sniffed, but my wolf-less human senses were pretty terrible. Why did people even have noses?
Jaxson did the same. “I don’t smell anything but our own scents.”
My heart began pounding. Magic? Ghosts? Could it be one of the Dark God’s agents, spying on us? I closed my eyes, searching for the presence I’d felt at Pere Cheney and the Dreamlands.
Nothing.
“I don’t feel him here. It’s something else,” I said.
Jaxson nodded.
We moved from tree to tree, searching for any trace, but there was no sign of the watcher.
Then a subtle movement in the corner of my eye pulled my attention. I whipped my head about as a faded figure stepped around a tree. She looked at me, then moved out of sight behind the trunk of a nearby pine.
My heartbeat accelerated as my wound began to itch. That meant one thing: we had an ethereal visitor.
“What did you see?” Jaxson whispered.
“A ghost. A woman.”
We moved cautiously, scanning the woods. After a minute, the ghost emerged ahead and motioned to me with her finger, then moved off into the woods and was gone.
“She wants me to follow her, I think. Alone.”
Still searching in vain for the ghost he couldn’t see, Jaxson said, “Not a chance. I’m coming with you.”
I shook my head. “I have the feeling that she won’t talk if you’re there—just like the first time I met the witch of Pere Cheney.”
He gave me a frustrated glare. “It could be a trap. One of the Dark God’s agents.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t feel his presence. And so far, ghosts have only given us warnings.”
“So far,” he muttered.
I started moving off into the woods. “I’ll shout if I need you.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he growled quietly.
The spirit led me deeper into the woods, slipping from tree to tree. She was there and then gone again, like the glow of a blinking lighthouse in the night.
Where was she going?
Jaxson followed behind, keeping me in sight. The land began to rise, and soon, I found myself on a ridge, looking down at the waves battering stones on the shore. There was something hypnotic about the way the water churned, and something familiar. For a second, I saw a dark shape lying at the lake’s edge, rocking in the water, and then it was gone. A black wolf. A memory I would never forget.
Billy.
I sucked in my breath, and the vision faded. The spot was similar, but that was a different place and time.
“You killed my mate,” a woman said from behind me.
I spun and instinctually called for my claws, but I had none—once again.
The ghost stood five paces from me. I recognized her instantly from pictures.
Stephanie. Jaxson’s sister.