Page 56 of Crossed Fates

My lips twitched. “If you met Sapphire, you’d agree with my guess. She’s a conniving little witch.” I looked at him. “I’m willing to bet she saw our fates crossing and decided to throw me in your path, too.”

His blue eyes sparkled. “I’ll have to thank her later for castrating me.”

Ah, yes, that little reveal about his inability toperformfor other women. “Maybe that, uh, will fix itself, when I leave the realm?” I winced as I said it and quickly searched for something else to say to change the subject. Only, all the hairs along my arms began to dance, drawing my gaze to the window.

Something felt…off.

Alaric tensed beside me, clearly picking up on the electrical charge in the air.

His hand settled on mine, the action protective.

Then a scream rent the air, sending us both to our feet and through the front door.

To find a dead body lying in the grass.

Alaric

“What the…?!”I shouted as I vaulted off the porch and ran to the mutilated body lying on my front lawn.

Petite frame.

Tangled, long strands of hair.

Blood.

So. Much. Blood.

My wolf growled in fury, the utter savagery of the scene calling to all my instincts toprotect.

But it was too late.

The girl was very dead.

I knelt beside her slain form to check for a pulse anyway, the habit coming naturally. Black-and-blue marks littered her pale skin, making me wince as I rolled her to her back.

With a broken nose, split lips, and blackened eyes, it would be difficult to determine her identity. Her lack of belongings and clothes only made it more difficult.

But she was definitely a wolf.

I could smell it on her skin.Bitten.

Not one of mine, though. Not from Silver Lake.

Fuck. Who the hell would do something like this?

Makayla dropped down on the girl’s other side and began examining her in a clinical manner. Perhaps I should have expected that reaction after all I’d learned about her, yet it still surprised me that she seemed so desensitized to the scene before her. I recognized it because it echoed my own reaction to the situation. We’d seen too much for this to do anything more than fuel our need to capture and kill the culprit.

A crowd began gathering nearby as I scrutinized the body and the area surrounding the victim, searching for anything that could be of potential use.

“She hasn’t been dead long,” Makayla murmured.

I nodded in agreement. “Maybe five or six hours. Still enough time for whoever did this to be long gone.”

My wolf snarled, urging me to let him free so he could hunt the murderer down.Not yet.

“Unless they are from around here,” she said, voicing a possibility I didn’t want to consider. Her lips curled down, her nose twitching. “Do you smell that? It’s…” She sniffed, her eyes narrowing.

I inhaled with her, searching for whatever she’d caught with her senses.Blood. Bitten wolf.I frowned.Two. There aretwoBitten wolf scents. Sort of.“A shifter.”Maybe a mate? A friend?