Chapter 48
AURORA
I peered around the corner…
But the hall was empty. A door closed just where I was sure I’d heard Evelyn. I knew she was in there with someone.
Someone she’d been kissing?
Was it possible?
Evelyn had been the bane of my existence for so long. She was always there, putting a wedge between Dane and I, calling him away to spend time with her when he wasn’t working, whining and asking him for things, then accusing me of gold digging, when I didn’t have a fraction of what she did.
How could it be possible that she was cheating on him?
And if she was…was her child even his?
I pressed my hand to my lips. Part of me wanted to barge into that room and find out for sure. The other part…
If I wanted to walk away from this with my children, I needed her to have his baby.
It was better if I didn’t know. If I knew for certain, I would have
to decide whether or not to tell him.
I tucked this moment into the back of my mind. Maybe I’d have Trajan investigate. She’d spent years lording over me.
It would be a welcome change to have something to lord over her.
After the incident with Evelyn, I tried to find Dane. But he was nowhere to be seen. Not in his office or his rooms. The only other places I could think of that he might be were training…or visiting Piper and Connall in the infirmary.
I wouldn’t disturb him in either of those places.
*****
That night, I dreamed. I was walking around the pack house again, searching for Dane. All of the doors were thrown open, but the pack house was empty. But moonlight shined through the windows, and I knew, somehow, he was here.
“Dane?”
Find him…
The words came from somewhere inside me…like something faint and distant and half–forgotten was speaking deep inside. my mind.
I stopped and looked around. “Hello? Who was that?”
Chapter 48
The voice didn’t respond.
When I came around the corner to the grand ballroom where the gala had been held, there he was.
3/6
He stood alone in the moonlight, holding out his hand so the silver light fell on it. It changed from pale hand to claw to paw and back again.
I thought he wouldn’t see me. But when I reached the doorway, he turned.
“Aurora,” he whispered.
We moved toward each other, and he took my hand. I couldn’t explain why I did it, or why it felt so right in this place to leave everything that troubled us in the real world behind.
As he touched me, the house melted away and reformed into a grotto deep in the forest. We were on a narrow spit of land in the center of a raging river, its waters roaring around us. The breeze whipped the leaves of the trees into a frenzy, and I swore I heard a voice.
Behold what is broken….
It wasn’t the same as the voice that had come from inside me. Instead, this one was all around, like it came from the land, itself. Like it came from the silvery light, shining down on our heads.
“What’s happening? Where are we?” I asked.
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“I don’t know.” Dane’s voice was gruff. His hand was still in mine.
4/6
Below my feet, the ground crumbled away and fell into the raging dark water. I scooted back, but it kept crumbling until there was no more room. Until I ran into Dane.
I nearly expected him to shove me in the water rather than share his space with me, but he grabbed me and turned me toward him and put his arms around me.
“Hold on to me,” he said. “If we go into the water, don’t let go.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my fast against the hot, hard muscles of his chest and waited to fall. Soon, any second, the earth beneath me would be gone and we’d plunge into the river…
But we didn’t. When I raised my head and looked around, the river was gone. We were in a moonlit clearing. Dane still held me tightly.
“Dane…I think we’re safe.”
He gazed down at me. “I’m still not letting go. Here, at least, I can pretend. Here, I can have what I want.”
Then he bent and kissed me, sweet and tender, then harder, more passionate. His tongue slid into my mouth, and my core lit with a slow, rising heat.
Chapter 48
“Dane…”
“Give me this,” he said. “Take it with me.”
So I stopped thinking, and I kissed him back.
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I wasn’t sure how much time passed when I woke from the dream, but I woke hot and twisted in my sheets and aching, with tears streaming down my cheeks.
I could still feel him, still taste him. But it would never be real. And that hurt more than almost anything I’d ever felt in my life.
DANE
I shot up in bed, my body hard and throbbing. I gritted my teeth.
Stupid fucking dream. I hated it…and I wanted it back.
I rubbed my face and got out of bed and checked the time. 4:30 AM. Whatever. I could survive on a few hours of sleep. I certainly wasn’t getting anymore.
To take my mind off Aurora and the dream, I opened my computer. I might as well get some work done.
Then I saw what was waiting for me in my email inbox.
A
Chapter 48
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The analysis of the recording Esther gave me. The one that proved Aurora was part of the kidnapping, that she planned to drug me.
