Page 26 of Fae Devoted (Fae Touched #3)

Unless Mater Russo was a skilled actress in her past, Johnnie didn’t think the vampire could have faked her non-reaction when Jeremiah’s double stroll into her office.

“Not personally, but there are several Dádhe who are members of the city Guard, and a pack-less, Ferwyn male with a permanent disfigurement garners the magical community’s notice. Especially when he’s asking about a children’s playground fire.”

Jacob sat back, crossing his left ankle over his right, hands resting on his stomach. “Is he still in town?”

Johnnie tried to mimic his nonchalance, folding her arms and scooting deeper into the sofa’s cushions. A useless pretense since a vampire fledgling could hear how fast her heart was beating.

Would they be seeing Jeremiah before the night was over? Did finding Jacob’s brother mean the possibility of confronting the Elven Lord or more of his assassins? Holy sh—

“My sources say the outcast left sometime last night.”

A wisp of something resembling frustration touched the bond. Or maybe it was disappointment? The Dance hadn’t progressed far enough for her to tell. The mating link would be a good deal stronger with a second Mark, then instead of guessing, Johnnie would know what Jacob was feeling.

She smothered a heavy sigh.

And if wishes were horses…beggars would ride.

She risked a peek to her right. No one would know anything was amiss by Jacob’s outward appearance. His broad body was relaxed, and his expression showed mild interest.

“Any idea where he was headed?” he asked in a steady voice.

“No, but one of my people got the make, model, and plate number of the vehicle the male was driving.” Angelica held out a Post-it note. “I had my hotel staff prepare two rooms if you wish to stay the night and get a fresh start in the morning.”

Jacob rose to accept the information, squared the paper in half, and stuck it in his shirt. “We’re leaving right after this meeting.”

“Of course.” The corners of the mater’s coral-painted mouth turned down. “Though if you wouldn’t mind, I wonder if you could confirm my suspicions that it was something more than wild magic that—”

“Thanks again for everything.” Johnnie forced a bright smile and moved to stand next to Jacob, taking his hand.

The less anyone knew about Charlotte’s unique abilities, the better.

She wasn’t even sure the patriarch and his consort realized what type of fire the witchling cast as none of the witnesses mentioned blue flames.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to help.” The vampire pushed away from her desk and stood, her posture stiff.

Jacob nodded without commenting, but Johnnie could feel the tension in his fingers.

“There is one other thing,” Angelica added as they turned to leave. “But it might mean nothing.”

“We’d still like to hear it,” Johnnie spoke for them both. No matter how minor, any information could make the difference in waylaying Jeremiah before he found Charlotte—or help them understand his true motives for hunting her down.

“A female shifter was jogging near the park and noticed two adult men in baseball caps sitting in an all-terrain type vehicle in the street across from the playground.”

“It could have been a child’s parents waiting to pick them up.”

“I think that’s what she originally assumed. But when she looped back to get her car, she spotted another set of men wearing the same dark hats and waiting in an identical vehicle a block from the first one. She didn’t think to call the Guard until after hearing about the strange fire on the news.”

“Plate numbers?” Jacob’s fingers flexed in Johnnie’s hand.

“Unfortunately, no.” Angelica shook her head. “But both of the vehicles’ plates had the Pure Michigan motto, and one of them had a UP sticker on its windshield.”

Upper Michigan’s largely forested landmass was too vast to cover without a specific area or destination to narrow it down. It was also the chosen seat of the Ferwyn king for a large portion of the year and where most shifter packs in Michigan made permanent homes.

“If any new information surfaces concerning either search,” she continued, “I’ll call you immediately.”

“Appreciated,” Jacob clipped in response, attention pulled to his cellphone vibrating with an incoming text.

Johnnie waited until they were outdoors and far beyond Angelica’s vampire hearing to ask, “So, we’re heading to the Upper Peninsula next?”

“We are.” He slid his phone into his jean pocket and walked toward their truck.

“Now that I carry your Mark, we can go back to my original plan. We’ll still need to be careful, but if you wait on the outskirts of town while I visit the shifter compound and local hangouts, I’m positive we can avoid the Guard’s notice.

” She shivered and told herself it was the evening’s cool breeze and not trepidation sending a chill up her spine.

“We’re setting up a meeting with King Alexander.”

“What? Why?” She came to an abrupt stop. “You’re not even supposed to be here. The king would have every right to throw you into a cage and demand an outrageous bounty for your release. It could take months to work through all the formalities.”

And dammit, they’d just started the Dance.

“Jo—”

“No, I won’t stand for it,” she all but yelled, putting her foot down.

Johnnie refused to be separated from Jacob due to his bravado, or whatever the hell was going on in that stubborn male head.

She pulled her palm from his and smacked it above his dark brows, checking for fever.

Ludicrous since shifters didn’t get sick.

She sighed and dropped her hand to her side, then her forehead to his chest, and mumbled, “You’re going to get yourself locked up, and we haven’t even had sex yet.”

Jacob chuckled, wrapped her in a gentle hold, and set his chin on the crown of her head. “Samuel’s coming.”

“I don’t care if…” Heat hit her cheeks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh ,” Tucker echoed with amusement. “We’ll join the Alpha in less than forty-eight hours at a private airport a little farther north of here, then fly into Chippewa International and drive from there to Sault Ste. Marie to meet with the king.”

“I take it Samuel obtained official permission to enter Remington’s territory with a small entourage in tow?

” The king would assume she and Jacob were on the initial flight from Memphis and a part of Príoh Walker’s retinue.

Once Jacob was in the ENC legally, he wouldn’t need Johnnie’s help any longer and try to send her home.

She held in a snort. Over my dead body.

“Yeah,” he replied, breaking away to continue to the truck. “We have to find a safe place to stay until then.”

“Mater Russo offered—”

“If Daimhín knows Jeremiah came here…”

“He’ll assume we did too.” Johnnie hopped into the front seat, the door swinging open with ease.

Russo’s people had repaired the crushed side panel during the day, but there wasn’t time to do more than bump out the dents the rogues made when they crashed into them and check the engine for damage.

The truck started on the first try, and she waited for Jacob to reach the main road before asking, “We could find a hotel near the airport to wait on the Alpha?”

“Too easy to track our location.”

“A less reputable place wouldn’t ask for a credit card or identification.”

“Daimhín’s people will be checking every low rent motel and bed and breakfast within a hundred miles of here for that very reason. If he finds us and sends in a larger group of his vampires,” Jacob’s jaw flexed, “I might not be able to protect you.”

“And a local pack is out of the question.” She couldn’t hide Jacob among shifters in tight quarters for two full days.

Even she wasn’t that good. “Okay, well, we could find an empty campsite and sleep in the truck? Not the most comfortable option, but if you go wolf, that’d leave me the backseat,” she grinned, “and the only blanket.”

Jacob tapped his tanned fingers on the steering wheel, brow creasing in thought, or indecision. “I may have another option.”

“I’m all ears, or is that your line now, Bunny ?” She grinned, hoping to lighten the mood by teasing him with the ridiculous pet name. Jacob’s lips didn’t even twitch, and her own smile fell. “What’s the idea?”

“A former clanmate recently settled in this area.”

“Clan Walker or a McCoy outcast?” Like you were once.

“Walker.” His hands curled around the wheel, and the leather creaked. “He joined a small pack near Mackinaw City six months ago.”

“And he’ll keep our arrival a secret?” Not an easy decision for any shifter to make, especially one who swore a blood oath to a new Alpha not long ago.

If caught harboring an illegal Ferwyn from an outside Clan, his punishment for breaking what the Untouched population would call probation would be swift and harsh.

“The male has kept in contact with Samuel since he left the ESC.” Jacob hesitated. “He’s trustworthy.”

Upon acceptance into another Clan, a shifter’s slate was wiped clean, but achieving redemption and unquestioned loyalty from new clanmates took time.

In cases where a Ferwyn chose to leave their home territory—an occurrence so rare only outcasting a she-wolf happened less often—integration was more straight-forward.

Whatever this male did or didn’t do to warrant his prior outcast status, if Samuel and Jacob trusted him, then so would she.

“But it doesn’t seem right to ask him to risk being outcast again for us.” She knew Jacob wouldn’t feel any more comfortable dragging someone else into their problems than Johnnie did.

“It won’t come to that.”

“Okay, then.” She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Let’s go ask our old clanmate for a place to crash.”

Johnnie snapped upright when her head flopped forward for the hundredth time in the past two hours, startled from another light doze. The truck hit a rut in the dirt road and bounced. When had they left the interstate? She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 1:42 am.

“Are we there yet?” she asked, digging inside the purse at her feet for a piece of gum while yearning for a large latte and a toothbrush. Not necessarily in that order.

“Almost.” He drove one-handed, his posture less rigid now that they were miles away from civilization and the immediate threat of another vampire attack.

Unwrapping her peppermint gum, Johnnie popped it into her mouth, chewed, and counted silently to ten before repeating in the whiny voice that drove her older brothers crazy on family trips, “Are we there yet?”

Unlike earlier, Jacob’s lips curved up at her silliness.

“Where is there , exactly?” Squinting into the night shadows, Johnnie made out the blurred shapes of trees and more trees. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep again.

“We’re on the outskirts of the Wilderness State Park where Kincaid has a cabin.” He reached across the center console, laced their fingers together, and rested their joined hands on the top of her thigh. “You’ll be safe there.”

Her gaze dropped to where Jacob’s sun-kissed fingers were entwined with her paler ones and knew there was no safer place to be.

He separated their hands without untwining their fingers and stroked the center of her palm with his thumb.

The familiar butterflies in her stomach took flight—then crash-landed in a pile of broken wings when his words registered in her sleep-deprived brain.

“Kincaid?”

“Our ex-clanmate. Dylan Kincaid.”

“Dylan…Kincaid?” Johnnie’s heart thump so hard the blood whooshed in her ears.

“You know him?” Jacob swung her a questioning look.

Ninety-nine percent of the world’s population was human.

The magical community was minuscule in comparison, yet there were still tens of thousands of Fae Touched residing within the borders of the ESC’s four states.

The odds of crossing paths with a particular unmated Ferwyn male from outside Johnnie’s pack should have been extremely low, even after attending one of the few undergraduate schools available to shifters in the region. She would have bet against it and lost.

“We were…friends a long time ago. Like way, way back.” Johnnie’s attention returned to her lap and their linked hands. “Ages ago.”

“Ages as in when you were pups?”

“A little more recently,” she admitted, fiddling with the frayed edge of a hole in her distressed jeans. “College, actually.”

“A college friend?”

“We might have been a tiny bit more than friends…once.” She cleared her throat.

“Kincaid is an ex-boyfriend?” The timbre of his voice was all wolf.

“Boyfriend isn’t precisely the right term.” Johnnie’s face and ears felt like they were on fire. She didn’t want to have this conversation with anyone, least of all Jacob. “Dylan and I were…and then he decided that…well, after he…I thought, maybe…”

“He was a potential mate?” he growled, releasing her to grip the steering wheel with both hands, the dashboard’s dim lighting turning the whites of his knuckles an eerie blue-gray.

“But, um, as it turned out, I was…wrong.” So very wrong.

The truck jerked to a stop. Jacob had barely jammed the gearshift into park when he bailed, slamming the door shut so forcibly it rattled.

He paced in front of the truck with his hands clasped behind his neck, headlights illuminating his furiously moving lips.

Johnnie’s emotions ping-ponged between empathy and selfish-joy watching him struggle with the possibility of her with someone else.

His chest heaved as he came to a sudden halt, slapped his palms wide on the hood, and hung his head. A wisp of Jacob’s distress bled through their bond, and Johnnie’s chin quivered in shame. How could she feel anything close to happiness while he was hurting?

Jacob’s eyes lifted and landed possessively on Johnnie, his wolf’s bright yellow gaze communicating louder than words.

“Yes,” she said aloud, though he wouldn’t be able to hear the words—or read them on her lips in the cab’s dark interior. “I’m yours. I will always be yours.”

His lids slid closed as if he’d heard them anyway, and when they reopened a few seconds later, the golden glow was gone. Johnnie exhaled as he shoved upright, came around to the driver’s seat, and rejoined her inside.

She bit her cheek to keep silent, and although his shoulders were tense and his jaw tight, Jacob’s voice was all human when he said, “Let’s go see Kincaid.”