Rejected Mate and Following Fate novel Chapter 85

“We’re here… may as well. Just don’t let your guard down and don’t hesitate to use your gifts.” She hisses under her breath and I scoot up right behind Carmen to fall back in line, flanked by two femmes and still unsure this witch is a friend at all. Sierra told us she was, but this doesn’t feel like someone who is willing to bend over backwards to do anything for anyone except herself.

We make quick work of following close to her, aware of the pitch darkness and I start to wonder how the hell we’re meant to stay out here if she ups and leaves us now. We don’t know this terrain; the truck is far enough away that we’ll encounter a fight if vampires come upon us, and I have no mental space, or physical energy, for any of that. My adrenaline is firing high and I’m already exhausted. Missing Colton has become the biggest drain on my soul, craving him, needing his touch, his presence and I seem to start of the day already fatigued, no matter how much I sleep.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Carmen’s haughty tone cuts into my thoughts and I blink up and look over her shoulder as a tiny derelict cottage comes into view, offering little to no protection from any outside invasion, a fire burning within its tumble-down walls. Smoke trickling through the hole of the disintegrating roof, glowing from inside and highlight the lack of solid foundations, or full walls on each side it has. I realize this is where she wanted us to go. Exposed at night, sat round a campfire in a strange place, of a ruined building, with only a witch we don’t know if we can trust. Not a good move and I glance skywards and prey the fates know what they’re doing this time.

“What? Afraid of things that go bump in the night? I thought you were big bad lycanthrope… never took you for being afraid of the dark. Don’t worry wee lassies, the scariest thing out here is me.” Leyanne mocks us from her slight distance ahead with that amused tone and wanders into the cottage casually, using the completely absent side wall as her path in, to go perch herself on some positioned logs settled around the glowing flames. It seems this is her resting place and is already set up to sit by the fire to see the darkness out.

She watches with amusement as we three follow slowly, glancing around in high alert, and timidly place ourselves close together on the other side away from her. We keep our backs close but spread so we take in three angles to keep watch through the fallen stones, aware, and looking around with caution.

“Aren’t you afraid of being out here?” Carmen is the one to question it, always so verbal with her thoughts, but Leyanne shrugs nonchalantly. She relaxes onto her log and stretches out her legs, exposing laced up knee high Victorian boots and adjust her skirts.

“Why would I be? Any creature stupid enough to tackle me deserves what they get. Who should I be afraid of? Nothing can kill me! I know, because they’ve all tried.” She kicks up some dirt at the flames with her heel, causing instant green sparks and crackles to ring through and I jump, on edge and antsy. “This is just a temporary resting spot for you wee fellows to rest; I have something I was doing before I intercepted Sierra trying to locate me. Needless to say, I like solitary abodes and I only had short notice to detour.” She picks up a large black kettle that had been nestled beside her feet and hangs it up on a metal bar sticking out across the fire at an angle where she props it. Seemingly not phased at all and making boiled water, while we gawp and sit stiff as rods, observing her.

“So that’s how you knew about us? Sierra somehow alerted you with the locator spell?” my interest is piqued as I home in on that detail as she nods. Remembering I was meant to give her the vial around my neck, but it seems she doesn’t need the proof of my connection at all.

“When you try to use magic to find someone like me…. I know about it. Especially when you use the spell I wrote for the purpose. So then, naturally, I had to investigate the why, with the help of my birds. I may know a lot about who you are and why you’re here, but I don’t have all the details. My little gossip mongers are only good for Chinese whispers of things they actually witness. It’s a long trek from your mountain to here and ears and mouths of passing crows are not always reliable.”

I glance around at the birds flocking the trees to watch us and squint and her term for them. A visual of birds enjoying drama and storytelling and spreading it through flocks across the land. I guess mine and Carmen’s conversation by the trees that day was reported along the line, with every single time we spoke freely in the grounds of the homestead. It’s weird and makes me feel we should be watching all those innocent creatures back home if this is the truth of what they do for witches. If it is, then Tawna running, they would have known fast that she did if the birds were messengers. Our forest is teaming with them and they are always around, day and night.

“What do you want to know?” Meadow interjects, ignoring what she probably mentally summarized about the birds too and Leyanne ponders her for a long moment, quietly.

“Everything, but that takes time, and I can’t linger for long. So maybe I can see for myself with your permission. Condense, rapidly learn, and extract what is necessary from all the other boring tidbits of life.” Her words bring my eyes back to her in wide surprise, my mouth falling open, guessing she’s hinting at being able to pass mentally, like we can.

“You can mind link?” I’m awed, unsure I have ever heard of any other species apart from ours that can even do that, but she just looks at me with a ‘please’ of sarcasm across her face. That air of boredom that we really seem to underestimate her at every turn. Just who the hell is this witch?

“I mean, sure.” I hesitate a little flustered with her response and lean forward without a second thought, to get up when she raises her hand to still me. Once again ignoring my question, she gets up and walks to me instead, gently laying her fingertips on my temple and I’m startled by the unearthly warmth and tenderness of her skin. It’s a gentle almost maternal touch that doesn’t coincide with her demeanor at all.

Immediately a strange sensation tugs at my skull, so unlike what happens when we mind link as wolves, and I feel like warm rivulets of my body heat are flowing right out of my head. It’s almost pleasant and my eyes grow heavy with tiredness as I begin to relax and feel pleasantly soothed.

I blink up at her, seeing her eyes are locked on mine, unblinking, glowing a little eerily, but not blue like Sierra. No, this witch’s eyes are darkest chocolate with glowing veins of honey amber threads around the inner pupil and I close my own to shut out the way my body trembles at the sight of them. It takes only seconds, this tugging, almost draining of my energy around my face. A sleepiness invading a little too abruptly the longer she goes on and then she stops suddenly, and releases me so I blink awake, the effects instantly dismissing as though being hit in the face with a blast of cold air again

“Interesting…… very, very interesting.” Is all she mutters softly and wanders back to sit down with a thoughtful glance at me, then Meadow, and then Carmen. It’s as though she’s sorting through the thoughts, filing them into an orderly timeline and working out our relation to one another.

“So, you saw the fog, you know what to do?” Meadow zeros in and tries to pull her attention, but Leyanne continues to stare at me in an unnervingly intense way. Her face poised, still, a slight frown over one brow and a hint of a little dimple at one side of her pretty mouth, showing a slight strain to her expression.

“Hmmmm……” that’s all she says, and I blanche at her sudden lack of verbal’s when I have just given her god knows how much backstory. Unlike when wolves link and we can filter and control what we share, I had no insight into what she took, saw, dug into and she might have seen my whole existence for I know.

“What does hmm mean?” Carmen snaps losing patience, her usual irritable persona showing face, not that I blame her, and Leyanne smirks.

“It means, hmmm…. I thought that phrase was universally understood. It’s not like I’m not speaking English… although some from that country would disagree.” She chuckles at some vague self-joke and again fixes that penetrating gaze back at me.

“Hmmm you know how to help, or hmmm, you don’t?” I chirp in, tenser by the second and honestly getting so sick of this. She’s so good at vague, dragging things out and evasive answering and it’s annoying as hell.

“Hmmm as in, well now that makes sense, and hmmm as in ….. I know what I have to do. Does that clear up your inability to understand the worldwide use of Hmmm?”