Hunted (War of the Covens 1)

“ … don’t care. You are not dragging my mate off to be used as a weapon—”

Caia cut him off by standing so abruptly, her chair clattered hard against the island behind her.

“Marion,” she said evenly, feeling everyone’s eyes on her. She drew in a deep breath. “You would be right that I’m not going anywhere until I get Jaeden back, so my answer right now is that I will think about it. I will really, really think about it.” She smiled a real smile for the first time in days. “And thank you.”

She thought Lucien would yell at her, but when she was met with only silence, Caia dared to look at him. And he was looking back at her as if he’d never seen her before. A hurt, a deep hurt, burned his eyes and swelled out of him to gnaw angrily at her heart. She didn’t have to look at Ella and Magnus to see their reactions because she felt their hurt and astonishment too. They all thought she was betraying them.

And so that was why everyone was treating her with icy disdain.

Sebastian had been different. He swore he just wanted her to be happy, going on about how even if she did go, it didn’t mean he couldn’t visit her. He’d heard the Center was full of lykans and vampyres. Hey, maybe he could even train to be a soldier too. Yeah. He was surprisingly chipper about the whole thing, and Caia suspected it had more to do with it meaning she wouldn’t be with Lucien than anything else.

So now it was just the two of them against the world, with two days gone and no luck on her mission to rescue Jaeden.

“Ignore them,” Sebastian said as they sat alone in the cafeteria. He was referring to the way she kept guiltily glancing over at the others who refused to look at her. She found it especially weird being confronted with Mal’s actual anger. He’d never been serious about anything in his life, but there he was, glaring at her. “You know they’re just being loyal to Lucien.”

“I can’t believe it got around the whole pack so quickly.”

“Gossip travels fast among wolves.”

Caia snorted and played with her food, her expression grim. “What if I can’t reach her again?”

Sebastian didn’t mention her change of topic. “You will. Keep faith.”

“I swear to Gaia if this has anything to do with me stressing over other things, I’ll be so pissed.”

“Caia.”

She looked up and was met with his focused, tawny gaze. “I believe in you.”

Those words struck her so hard, they knocked the breath out of her. She had to stop herself from reaching over to touch him like she wanted to. He really had become her rock. Her frown melted into a smile and the tension eased from her body. “Then I guess I better find her quick.”

Magik was exhausting.

“I think you’ve killed me,” Caia wheezed, flopping onto the ground. She heard Marion’s soft chuckle and resisted the urge to flip her off.

After she’d gotten home from school (to an empty house for the third night running), Marion had pushed Caia right back into her training, and this time it was all squadrons go. The backyard was now a battle zone where plants were either drowning in a deluge or dying in ashes. For the last two hours, Marion had chased Caia around the yard, throwing fire at her while she had to douse it with water or duck. The strain on her focus, and not to mention the nonstop running out of lykan form, had reduced her ribs to a tapestry of stitches.

“Was that really necessary? Ella’s going to kill you for destroying her yard.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the yard.”

“Are you kidding me?” Caia sat up and shut up just as she was about to gesture at the war zone. There was no war zone. Everything looked just as neat and alive as it had two hours ago. She looked wide-eyed at the witch. “You did this?”

Marion nodded and ambled gracefully over to her. “Of course.”

“Wow.”

“You’ll learn soon enough how to do it. It’s called glamour.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t, but you will. I’m starting off with the hard stuff. We’ll get to the easy stuff later.”

“Glamour is easy?” Caia asked, incredulous.

“Believe me, in comparison to what we’ve been doing for the last few hours, it is.”

Caia didn’t reply, just stared around in wonder at the yard as Marion sat beside her.

“You know, Caia, normally I would never do an exercise such as what we’ve been doing this afternoon with someone so early in their training. The fact that you not only rose to the challenge but doused ninety percent of my fire is …” She chuckled, sounding amazed. “Impressive.”

Caia wanted to blush. Marion was this mega magik, and here she was calling Caia impressive. She listened as the witch rambled on about the extent of her power, what she could be capable of doing. Her abilities with trace magik for the Midnights was what really fascinated Marion, and the more she talked about it, the more Caia wanted her to be right. She needed her to be right.