Page 55

Is Samhain a celebration that revels in witchy debauchery?

Also yes.

Apparently it’s also a low-key orgy-fest, judging by some of the witches we’re passing. The forest is alive with the sounds of moans and pleasured cries. Each one of them seems to reach inside me and twist me up tighter and tighter.

I have a two-thousand-year-old soul mate who is coming to take care of my needs,I remind myself when I feel like I’m going to burst from the ache of it all. I can probably command him to do kinky shit. Bet he’d be down.

“Bottom’s up, girlies!” Mai shouts.

Another pang of lust hits me, and I covertly pour my drink out. I’m all for being irresponsible, but I have zero desire toblack out. That story ends with me waking up in the bed of some douchey fae lord who now thinks I’m his wife because he’s decent at kidnapping drunk girls.

Thank you, no.

“We can leave our glasses here,” Mai says, taking our cups from us and placing them at the base of a nearby fir tree. “They’re spelled to eventually return to the cemetery.”

We leave the glasses behind and resume our drunken march forward. I eye the rest of the group—Sybil with her flushed cheeks and her spelled wings fluttering madly, as though they’re trying to get away, and Mai, who was dressed as a knight but is now dressed as a topless knight, and Olga, who is skipping along and singing some creepy song about corpses.

Oof, we are a ragtag bunch.

“So where are we going again?” I ask Sybil.

“Hmm?” she says, swaying a little.

“Where are we?—”

Deeper in the woods, an ominous howl goes up, followed by another and another, the sound raising the hair along my forearms.

Olga decides now is a fantastic time to stop singing creepy songs and howl back like a demented wolf.

“Did you forget already?” Mai says, noticing my shocked expression. “We’re hunting for wolves.”

I release my friend’s hand, even as my skin still throbs. Fuck,allof me throbs. I’m a mass of overstimulated nerve endings. “We cannot be on lycanthrope territory during the Sacred Seven,” I say adamantly. Doing so is essentially consenting to being bitten and turned. Which can happen, especially during the Sacred Seven when a shifter’s animal instincts often overwhelm their human motives.

I back up from the group. “If any of us get bitten?—”

Another howl interrupts me, this one much,muchcloser.

“No one’s turning into a wolf,” Sybil says.

I rotate in a circle, uselessly searching for the faint, luminous blue line that marks the boundary between Henbane Coven and the Marin Pack. Did we pass it already? I place a hand on my head, distressed.

Sybil comes over to me, and she doesn’t look worried. Why isn’t she worried?

My friend lays her hands on my shoulders. “It’s the seventh night of the Sacred Seven. This last evening of seclusion is basically a formality for lycans.”

I shake my head. I heard Kane’s roughened voice only hours ago; he sounded like he was only partially holding on to his humanity. “This isn’t a formality,” I insist. “They need this night too.”

Another bolt of desire courses through me. My panties are drenched, and this was an uncomfortable enough situation when I was lusty around a bunch of ghosts and coven sisters. But we must smell like sex and magic, and any shifter out tonightwillnotice. We’re lingering out here like bait.

The lycans have extended me protection, but there is no protection against getting bitten on their land.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. “I don’t want to be here.”

I glance around again. Which way is home?

I can’t tell.

Ahead of the group, a twig snaps, and my eyes flick to the sound. There in the darkness, I catch sight of three pairs of luminous eyes.