The Taming

Spies

Eventually morning came and Sebastian felt the bed dip as Elsabet rose.

She was pulling on her gown and doing the fastens down the front.

"Where are you going?"

She glanced over her shoulder. Dark lashes fluttering over her nearly purple eyes. "I'm heading out to tend what's left of the garden. The frost has been hard on it."

Sebastian knew she'd planted one in early spring, he'd seen her doing it, but he kept forgetting to peek at it when he came back from his errands and now snowfall had been coming and going for many months. Likely all that was left in her garden was a few berry bushes.

"You could lay back down." He patted the bedding next to him.

"That would be unlikely."

"Why?"

"Alazareth slid a missive under the door at first light."

"I didn't hear it." He sat up.

She handed him the bit of parchment. "You were in that...trance."

I was Chavias. He mentally corrected. Feeling his stomach grow heavy at the mere memory of what he'd experienced while in Chavias's skin.

He folded open the missive.

Ship's here.

"You read it?"

She stood in the window. Braiding her hair over one shoulder, absentmindedly. "You know I did."

I did.

"You're unhappy?"

"I'm trying not to be." She was quiet for a moment. "I assume this is your winter deliveries?"

"Yes."

"Then you won't be back until the day after the morrow then?"

"No. I always celebrate the crew's return with my First Mate. Then we make the rounds the following day and much of the next before I return home."

She chewed her lip. Not liking the sound of it.

"I'll bring you back a gift, I vow it."

She gave him a curious look but said nothing.

***

Rosewynn Manor, Grier Country

Sebastian was making his way to the LandingTown harbor, but he decided to veer a distance out of his way to have a look around Rosewynn and perhaps check on the alpha.

And Nora Bishop. The alpha's mate was still trying to come to terms with who she was. Which was when she was in the most danger.

Radix always sought to try to sway her to the side of demonkind before she recalled how she felt about Deragan.

It's a race to her loyalties. Sebastian thought.

Just as he set foot on the edge of the Rosewynn lawns he caught the scent of someone not of the Bishop family or the Forever Knight pack.

Familiar though.

Sebastian felt his nose curling, disliking the sense of irritation that bloomed through him at that smell. I've whiffed it before.

He ducked his head and began to make his way through the denser grove bordering the edge of the Rosewynn lawns.

Someone is here.

Sebastian didn't like the thought that someone had been this close to the alpha's house. Someone who carries a bit of Radix's stink.

Sebastian knew he was close but he had to push through a wall of tightly knit shrubs. He parted them and stepped through.