Hunted Mate

Chapter2

NYRA

She had four minutes before the formal welcome began.

Nyra moved through the back path to the eastern courtyard entrance, the one staff used, the one that was not visible from the main gates. Mira kept pace beside her without speaking. They had been friends long enough for Mira to know when words helped and when they did not, and right now Nyra needed to think and thinking required silence and space and the absence of the sound of black vehicles settling into the courtyard twenty feet from where Cassius Vane was now standing upright and looking around with the careful attention of a man cataloguing what he had walked into.

She had made a mistake three years ago.

Not in what she saw. In what she did afterward. She had told her father. She was fourteen and afraid, so she went to the person who was meant to protect her. Her father had been afraid, and his fear had presented itself in inactivity, and the window for acting on what she knew had silently closed.

She had not made the same kind of mistake since.

The plan that formed in her head in the two minutes between spotting Cassius and reaching the eastern entrance was not a good plan. It was the only plan available in the time she had. She needed to be nowhere visible when the formal introductions happened. She needed to get through tonight without Cassius seeing her face clearly enough to recognize it as the face of the girl from the border. She needed to find her father before the welcome ceremony and tell him, with no room for polite evasion, that Cassius Vane was standing inside Silver Moon gates and she was not safe.

The eastern garden was quiet. The moon was up early, pale and thin, and the Chicago wind moved through the silver-leafed trees at the garden's edge with enough sound to cover a conversation.

She stopped at the garden wall and turned to Mira.

Mira was already looking at her with an expression that meant she had known about Cassius being in the entourage before tonight and had been trying to find the right moment to say it.

Nyra felt something cold move through her that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the specific betrayal of withheld information from someone who was supposed to be on her side.

She said one word.

Mira said his name had been on the guest manifest for ten days. She had found out three days ago. She had not told Nyra because she had been trying to determine whether there was a way to have him removed from the list before the arrival so that Nyra would never have to know he had been close. The removal had not worked. She had run out of time.

Nyra looked at the garden wall.

She had been making herself invisible for three years, and it had worked so effectively that she had almost forgotten what it was like to be actually hunted. The sensation came back, distinct, icy, and exactly in the middle of her chest. It was so familiar that her body knew exactly what to do with it. Not panic. Something colder. Assessment.

She needed to get to her father.

She turned to go back through the garden toward the manor's side entrance.

That was when the presence hit her.

Not sound. Not movement. Something below both of those, a change in the specific density of the air in the direction of the garden path, a pressure that arrived before any other signal did, and Ember surged upward inside her with a response so sudden and total that Nyra's feet stopped moving before her mind had processed anything.

Every nerve in her body oriented toward the entrance of the eastern garden.

Zayden Draven stood at the garden's edge.

He was alone. No Kael, no entourage. Just the man himself, standing in the gap between the garden walls, dark coat, the specific stillness of someone who had come here deliberately and was not surprised by what he found.

His eyes found her immediately.

The mate bond ignited.

It was not what the stories described. The stories made it seem like warmth, recognition, or something inviting.Nyra felt a lock engage, the specific irreversible sound of something clicking shut, and every part of her that had spent three years learning to disappear screamed at the same time because the person her body had decided to claim was standing twenty feet away, and behind him, somewhere across the courtyard, was the man who would kill her if he found out.

Zayden looked at her the way she had seen other bonded wolves describe it, like the rest of the world had gone slightly blurred at the edges. Then something changed in his face. Something she could not read. Not warmth. Something more complicated. Like the thing he had found was not what he expected.

Ember pressed against the inside of her skin.

Nyra turned and walked in the opposite direction.

She walked fast. She did not run. Running would draw attention and attention was the thing she could least afford. Her hands were steady at her sides and her breathing was even and the bond pulled against her with every step she put between herself and the garden entrance, a physical resistance, like walking through resistance, like something tethered to her centre and going taut.

Behind her she heard nothing.

No footsteps. No voice.

She pushed through the manor's side entrance and stood in the service hallway, the wall behind her, her eyes closed, and the bond still pushing in the direction she had come from, insisting on rewriting the map of her desires.

She pressed the heel of her hand against her sternum.

Not now.

She had a traitor to reach her father about and approximately three hours before Cassius Vane looked at her face long enough to remember where he had seen it.

The mate bond would have to wait.

The door to the eastern garden opened behind her.

She already knew who it was.