Hunted (War of the Covens 1)

But that would be rude.

She strolled cautiously into the kitchen. Lucien had obviously caught her scent because he was watching the doorway for her.

“Caia.” He looked happy to see her, which was a little disconcerting.

Cheeks a little hot under his perusal, she avoided his gaze, her attention on the attractive older blond seated at the table across from him.

“Hi.”

“Caia, this Yvana, Ryder and Aidan’s mother.”

Caia smiled at the older woman, seeing the resemblance now. She rounded the table to hold out her hand to the wolf.

Yvana stared up at her. Then freezing icicles crept into her eyes and she cringed away from Caia’s outstretched hand. “I hadn’t realized how much you look like your mother.”

Caia flinched. The venom in her voice was shocking.

First Alexa, now Yvana?

What was going on?

“Yvana …” Lucien snarled in warning. Caia had never heard him use that tone before, but she was still too shocked by Yvana’s reaction to look at him. She was caught in this woman’s bleak gaze. What had Caia done to her? Or more likely … what had Caia’s mom done to Yvana?

“Griffin died because of your parents … because of you.” Yvana stood, trembling with anger and grief.

Who was Griffin?

Lucien’s face mottled with anger, the muscles in his forearms taut as he rounded the table. “You can leave.”

“Lucien,” Yvana protested, “You must understand!”

“What’s going on?” Irini’s voice drifted toward them from the doorway.

“You can’t expect me not to be upset. That you would even expect me to be in the same room as that,” she spat toward Caia.

Caia recoiled as if she’d been hit. She staggered, her mind roiling with confusion. This woman really hated her. Not the petty teenage hatred of Alexa, but real, intense dislike. As if she had wronged her somehow. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want to be here, where everything was unfamiliar and cold, where she was welcome but unwelcome, where secrets hung in every doorway and no one trusted her enough to confide them.

Instead of asking for an explanation, exhaustion defeating her, she marched out of the room, shoving past a worried Irini. She didn’t stop until she was inside her bedroom.

Tears threatened.

Tears she fought because these people didn’t deserve them.

But for all that she’d lost in her young life, Caia had never felt so lost as she did with the pack.

She let the tears loose and they scalded her cheeks as she stumbled past the bed and into the bathroom where she could lock the door behind her. Relieved, she crumpled onto the bathroom floor.

Maybe it was a bad idea coming back to the pack. Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for pack life.

And Caia was eighteen now, almost nineteen. Surely, she didn’t have to stay here if she didn’t want to.

A knock on the bathroom door brought made her heart thump.

“Caia?”

She tensed.

It was Lucien.

“Caia, open the door,” Lucien demanded.

“I’m okay.” She swiped frantically at her cheeks. He was the last person she wanted to be vulnerable around.

“I’ll just break it down,” he teased.

But there was a note of threat beneath his humor.

Sighing, she slid away from the door to the opposite wall. She must look a mess.

Oh well.

Stretching up, she flicked the latch on the door and then settled back against the wall with her knees pulled to her chest, her arms protectively around them.

“It’s open.”

Slowly, the door eased open and Lucien appeared. His hair brushed the top of the door frame as he stepped inside, his expression concerned. In fact, Caia could have sworn there was anguish in his eyes.

“Yvana’s gone,” he told her quietly.

“I’m not crying because of that.”

“Of course not.”

For a moment Lucien just stared down at her, and then somehow he managed to fold his huge body into a sitting position next to her, his entire left side pressed against her right.

His heat saturated her. Her cheeks flushed hot.

“So … why are you crying?” he persisted gently.

“Tired, I guess.”

“It’s been a long couple of days for you. But I thought … I don’t know … I got the impression last night that you enjoyed dinner.”

Caia peered up at him from under her lashes. His expression was strangely wary. “I did.”

“But today you don’t want to be here?”

Why else would she be crying on the bathroom floor?

Lucien exhaled heavily. “Yvana has her reasons. Not great ones. What she said, she never should have, but the rest of the pack wants you here. You belong with us.”

“Her reasons?”

“Griffin was her husband,” he explained, grief in his own voice. “He died alongside your father … I mean, your parents … protecting you.”

She blamed Caia. Blamed her, and her parents, for bringing the Hunter upon the pack. She guessed she could understand her rage. Most lykans when mated are mated for life. It was said that when a lykan’s mate died, a part of them died with them.