Escaping Death

Chapter 20

Hunter

This must be part of my punishment, why else would the woman I was going to marry ignore me and take up with my friends — my brothers. I daren't go for a run, Goddess only knows what moves my pack mates would make on her while I'm gone. They've always been playfully competitive with one another but it's decidedly not as entertaining to watch them when their conquest is my would-be-bride.

She spent half a day with Tate in a glorified computer lab, so I'm beyond fumes right now that she was straddling his lap and that the scent of her arousal was blooming around her.

No matter how hard I drive my ax into these uncut logs it doesn't clear away the thoughts of how many suitors she must have had in the last four years. What embers could she possibly still carry that burn for me? Is it really possible that the last four years could douse the flame we kindled for almost a century?

I wasn't born with fire — I can't create it, control it, or withstand it — but Gods does it feel like it lives within me right now, fueled by my abundant fury and pain. Just as the heat becomes so great that I'm sure my body will have no choice but to combust, the sharp edges of my rage dull and the heat rash on my heart cools.

Fucking Dean.

"You're supposed to chop the wood, not burn it," Dean chides playfully.

"I'm fine Dean, you can stop with the empath shit." I summon him an ax and toss it to him to join me in my task.

"I could feel you from the house, I was worried the whole yard would go up in flames." He grunts through his first drive of the ax. "What happened? Did Sol punch you again or something?"

In a manner of speaking, yes. "Or something."

When I catch her scent this time it soothes my rage far better than Dean's gift ever could. Four years wasn't enough for my body to forget hers...I doubt even a lifetime would be sufficient. When we were together it was like holding the sun in the palm of my hand. All that heat and all that power should have incinerated me, but she gave me the ability to master it — to master her.

After feeling a warmth like that, being cast to the shadows is enough to flash freeze you.

It's not just her I can sense, though. There's a sound that starts faintly and it grows louder and more urgent every millisecond. This sound typically precedes the squelching of metal through meat and the grunt of air that is forced out when her target hits the ground dead.

Her blade.

Her blade is currently spiraling through the air across the lawn aimed directly at the back of my head. If it were any other blade I might not have known I was its target. I exchange my ax for a wooden bat then lift it behind my head so her blade embeds into the wood and not my skull.

I catch Dean standing there with his mouth agape in shock. Whether it's shock that she used me for target practice or that I was able to block her throw remains to be seen. For the first time in days I smile. Whether she's attacking me or talking to me...her attention is still on me.

With a wink and a grin at Dean I rip the blade from the bat and whip the dagger right back at her. I overshoot the mark, missing her laterally by two inches. I made this blade for her, it's practically an extension of her own arm, so I'm not disappointed that my aim is so off. I don't command it like she does.

She catches the damn thing in mid air as it's passing her ear. She grabs it by the handle and lowers it to her side.

Come on, Sol.

Light dances to life in her eyes and I know it's game on. I volley dagger after dagger at her, aiming high, low, left and right. Like a cartoon thief bending in impossible ways through a room of lasers, Solana dodges each and every blade as she prowls acrobatically towards me.