Chapter Thirteen
Skylar
“What did I get mixed up in when you ruined my bounty?” I asked.
“Not now, Skylar,” Elias said. “Keep quiet.”
I clenched my fists and glared at him. This whole thing was his fault. All of it. Why didn’t I keep running?
Light caught my eye and I looked down to see his hands were lit up and I remembered exactly why I stopped running.
“You hide in the bathroom, I’ll take them out and then we’ll go,” he said.
Elias could likely handle whoever was outside that door unless that magic signature that felt like his was unleashed. “No way. I’m not a bad fighter myself. You might need me. And I sure as hell don’t want to be cornered in a little room if they get past you.”
“You want to help me?” He seemed surprised.
“Just to be clear, all of this is your fault,” I said. “But you did help me in the bar. And you were right, I’d have followed the lead even without the threat on me.”
“Alright. We do this together,” he said.
Fuck me. I was in the middle of something with an agent of Queen Marcella and involved with the wolf shifters and their moonstone. This wasn’t what I signed up for.
My dad had always warned me that there’d be times every hunter was tempted to take sides. We still had morals and values of our own. We had empathy and we felt things. But he told me to turn that off. He always said,Cry it out in the shower while you wash off the blood.
Now I understood what he meant. If I wasn’t already in too deep, I was quickly approaching it.
If whoever was after Elias considered me with him, I was screwed. I couldn’t be hiding in my line of work and hunting was the only thing I was good at. It was literally my only skill.
Thanks, Dad.
I nodded. “So now what?”
“I’m going to make a shield around us and then we’ll open the door. They won’t see us for a few seconds so while they’re looking for us, we get out of this death trap of a room. Maybe in the open, we’ll stand a chance.”
“Alright,” I said. “I assume you’re taking on whoever has that unknown magic signature. I’ll take the shifters.”
He cocked a brow. “Both of them?”
“You haven’t seen me at my best,” I said. “Two, I can handle. Four was unfair.”
“Alright.” He lifted his glowing hands and then swept his arms down. A shimmering gold circle appeared in front of me. I held my breath, nervous to be this close to his unknown magic. I’d seen only the dangerous aspects so I shouldn’t be surprised that it could also do something good. Something less violent.
“Together, then,” he said. “You take the shifters, I’ll take my brother.”
“What?”
“Not the time, Skylar,” he said.
This was way more complicated than I thought. He was right, they were waiting for us and we needed to focus. But if he thought I wasn’t going to ask after this, he had another thing coming. “Let’s get this over with.”
The door flew open and I found myself staring at three huge males. As promised, they lifted their chins and turned their heads as if looking for us.
We used the moment to dart forward, squeezing between them. Once we were standing in the parking lot, I felt some of the magic dissipate and I knew the shield was gone.
It would have been nice if he could have held it long enough for us to get to his car and away from here, but I knew all magic had limits. This was his.
I squinted against the bright sunlight. The three males turned to face us, each of them wearing a grin.