Caleb’s POV“Rhiannon?” This time, when I said her name, it wasn’t a breath of relief. It was a question, fraught with nerves over whatever had happened since she’d left the camp with Amelia.“She’s upset,” purred Amelia. The sound of her soft, sinful voice had the tiny hairs on the back of my neck raising. She slithered onto my lap and wound her arms around my neck. “Leave her be.”Stephen and I shared a look. Yeah. It had to be bad if I was sharing looks with bloody Stephen.‘I quite like him, actually,’ said Knight, but his eyes kept dipping to Rhiannon and the closed tent. He was as distracted as I was, then.‘He’s not completely awful,’ I agreed. ‘But, more importantly, buddy, what the hell happened out there?’Knight considered it before replying. ‘Amelia seems eager to talk. Rhiannon does not.’ He whined. ‘Do you think she hurt her?’‘There’s only one way to find out,’ I said slowly, already hating myself for what I was about to do.I looped my arms around Ames’s waist and pull
Caleb’s POVPanic gripped me. Its cold, unforgiving claws dragged down my spine as I stood up and started towards her tent. My eyes roved over the area frantically, searching for any sign of her.Ever since she’d been hurt, I hadn’t been able to think clearly when it came to Rhiannon. Now I’d seen her collapse, too, it was like my nervous system had been replaced by a live wire – one always a fraction of a second away from shocking me. It was too easy to picture her hurt when I'd seen it in reality so many times.My knees locked as I bent down in front of the tent she’d shared with Stephen. I scanned the snow for tracks, but fresh had fallen in the night, covering any sign of her. My heart thudded so fast it was almost painful.Knight let out a low whine. ‘I can’t smell her,’ he said.The cold claws dragging down my spine grabbed me tight. I yanked their tent open.Two sets of wolven eyes looked up at me angrily. ‘So that’s why I couldn’t smell her,’ Knight huffed, disgust prominent
Rhiannon’s POVTiger’s fur bristled as I said, ‘Luna Amelia told me what you did.’I’d not been able to think about anything else since. As much as the mate bond made me crave Caleb, I couldn’t see past what he’d done. And I knew, I knew, that the Luna was playing me like a fiddle.She’d picked the one song that I couldn’t evade, though. It sung to me, spun me in circles, kept me angry, kept me hateful.Because Marcella hadn’t deserved that.I added, ‘I want to hear it from you, Caleb. I want – no, I need – you to tell me what happened with Marcella.’Even in his shifted form, I recognised his frown. ‘What happened with Marcella? Rhi, isn’t it obvious? She hurt you. Fuck, she nearly killed you.’ Knight’s eyes hardened, taking on a red glow as his anger built. ‘I had to kill her.’I held his gaze defiantly. ‘No, you didn’t.’He scoffed. ‘What? This is what you’re angry with me about?’ I could see his own anger still growing; Knight was practically shaking with it. ‘You ignored me, made
Rhiannon’s POVRocks tumbled down all around us. They came too quickly for us to dart away, even in our wolf forms; they surrounded us quickly, locking us in the dark, alone together.They groaned ominously in the winter wind. The grinding and shifting of stone on stone set my teeth on edge. Tiger's paws slipped on the snow; she locked her muscles to stop herself from wobbling into the precariously balanced rocks surrounding us.“Caleb!” Amelia roared.“Rhiannon!” cried Stephen.I mindlinked Stephen. ‘We’re trapped in the rocks. Are you guys okay?’‘We’re fine,’ he replied. ‘We’ll try to get you out. What happened?’‘I’m not sure. Was it a landslide? I didn’t see what could’ve caused it…’ I trailed off. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I went on, before he could answer. ‘We’ll try to find a way out from in here, and you look for a way to get us out.’‘We’re already on it.’‘And, Stephen?’‘Yeah?’‘Be careful.’Slants of white light fell through the gaps in the stone. That was the only light we ha
Rhiannon’s POV“Fuck!” Caleb grunted, slamming an arm up just in time to hold up a rock. His eyes were alight with a wild sort of panic. “That almost hit you,” he bit out.He shifted his stance, pressing both of his arms and shoulders back against the wall of rock to hold it in place. The tendons in his arms stood out and his muscles flexed. Despite the situation, my core throbbed at the hazy sight of his naked body demonstrating his raw strength.My gaze flicked past him. The offending stone was shuddering with his trembling arms, threatening to crush us both in an instant if I didn’t do something.“Shit,” I hissed, forcing the word out through chattering teeth. Cold air whipped through the cracks in the rocks.I started assessing the way the stones had fallen. Caleb strained to hold them back, but there was no way even the two of us would be able to hold them off for long. We had to think of a way out of this, not come at it with brute force.“A bit of help might be nice,” he said,
Rhiannon’s POVBefore either of us could make any sense of it, Stephen and Amelia were hauling us out of the landslide. It all felt like such a heady rush that I could barely process the warm press of clothes being forced over my head and the heat of Stephen’s body as he held me up.I tried to talk, but my teeth were chattering too hard and I bit my tongue. I winced.“Hey, hey,” soothed Stephen, adding a coat over the two jumpers he’d already shoved onto me. “We need to get you warmed up.”I wasn’t about to let him dress and mollycoddle me, no matter how cold I was. I gently peeled myself out of his arms and dressed in the rest of the clothes spilling from my bag. “Thanks for getting us out,” I said eventually, twisting around to see what Caleb and Amelia were doing.They were stood a bit too close together for my liking, their foreheads touching, Amelia’s hands on Caleb’s shoulders. I ground my jaw at the sight of them. “Well, we weren’t going to leave you under there,” said Stephe
Hyacinth’s POV‘It’s just a fly in the oink, sweet thing,’ said Dolly, with all the conviction of someone who wholeheartedly believed they were actually right.‘A fly in the oink?’ I lifted my head, barely able to muster up a laugh. ‘Like, the sound a pig makes?’‘Exactly! Why would a fly want to go into a pig’s nose? That poor pig.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘It must just ruin his day.’In a roundabout way, I supposed Dolly was right. This definitely was ruining my day. Not that they’d be all that great since I’d left Night Wind, anyway.I couldn’t take a single step forward. Not one. I tried, and tried again, and again – but nada. Nope. Nothing. It was like there was a wall of thick air ahead of me, following the curve of our territory line. But why?And how?I shook off the questions I wouldn’t be able to answer on my own and started pondering one I might have a chance at.What was I going to do now?‘You could turn back,’ Dolly suggested, her voice a little bit strained and a whol
Stephen’s POV Everything I’d been feeling – the good, the bad, the guilt – came to a head in that moment. When I saw Hyacinth there, looking so very small, curled up in the snow, I knew it was all true. All of it. Rhiannon had never been my true mate. Hyacinth was. Brian shifted out as I reached her. I fell to my knees at her side, carding my fingers through her hair, tracing the perfect pout of her too-pale lips. She was still, too still, and as I bent low over her, cupping her frozen cheeks, I felt my heart splinter. Distantly, I heard the others come over. Distantly, I knew they were asking me things, asking her things, trying to get close enough to feel for her breath, to feel for her pulse. I also knew they were the things I should’ve been doing – but I couldn’t. I was as frozen as she was, my hands barely warmer than her pallid cheeks, my wide eyes locked on her closed ones. Then her eyelids started to flicker. “Hyacinth?” I whispered, the sound desperate, pining. “Cin?” ‘