Page 20 of Hidden in Plain Sight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #3)
~Felix~
Vaughan’s voice sounded in my head as soon as we left the prison behind, slipping through the nighttime shadows on the way to Evalina’s house.
Ten more minutes and we need to go, Felix. I’m serious.
Understood , I responded since I couldn’t say anything else. We’d already left a trail behind us. Guards had been waiting as soon as we entered the portal, but between the four of us, we managed to get them subdued. From the small bag she carried, Calista produced rope and duct tape.
“A hunter is always prepared,” she explained with a shrug when Darius and I exchanged impressed looks.
With that group of men tied up and their mouths taped over, we proceeded towards the prison since I remembered the way from my earlier escape. From there, I planned to find the prince’s residence, remembering that Evalina worked in the kitchen, but it turned out we didn’t need to go any further than the prison. As soon as the circular structure came into view, I could smell her.
She’s in one of the cells , I mind-linked the others, and we quickly incapacitated those guards too.
No one had been seriously injured but we were definitely not flying under the radar and Vaughan didn’t want to stick around to find out what kind of trouble it might cause for us. Neither did I, so I had to make the next ten minutes count.
“Why were you being held?” I asked Evalina, keeping my voice down so as not to attract any unwanted attention in the dark forest. Every creak of the trees whispered of potential danger.
“Tarron guessed that I helped you escape,” she explained, her eyes staying forward as she darted gracefully down the narrow path, her steps light and sure on her tiny feet. “He doesn’t know how I did it, but he doesn’t need proof. It’s one more thing he can hold over me.”
That wasn’t the first time she made a comment about Tarron trying to manipulate her, and each time, I liked it less. “What does he want from you?”
Evalina didn’t answer, but to my surprise, the other man with us did. “He wants what any man wants from a beautiful woman. It’s obvious.”
“Don’t go saying things like that, Jermyn,” Evalina hushed him. “You’re in enough trouble already and you don’t know anything about it.”
“Is he wrong?” I asked, guessing from her reaction that Jermyn had hit the nail right on the head. When she didn’t deny it, that certainty grew and so did the possessive, protective urges inside me that were part and parcel of the mate bond.
The fae prince wanted my mate? Not happening. Not in this world or any other.
“You’re not married, then?” I followed up, trying not to sound too eager. Was that even the right word? I didn’t know how her species marked their commitment. “Or in a relationship?”
She glanced over at me but the nighttime light wasn’t strong enough for me to make out the expression on her face. “No,” she answered simply before pointing ahead of us. “We’re almost there.”
I let a smile break across my face as she hurried the last few steps towards the small settlement she’d described earlier and the house where her mother and my friends were waiting. She wasn’t in a relationship. That eliminated one potential obstacle to us being together. Next, I just had to figure out how to get around the whole living-in-two-different-worlds thing.
How hard could it be?
Evalina dashed through the door of the house, as gracefully as she did everything, while I had to turn sideways and duck to get through the door, smiling as I imagined Vaughan and Darius doing the same thing. Inside, my friends had gathered in the small living room that sat to the right of the kitchen we walked into, only a half wall separating the two rooms. The men sat on the floor since they were too large for any of the chairs and would have had to bend over to stay standing, thanks to the low ceiling. Only Calista had found a spot to sit without breaking any of the furniture.
“You put the silver in the pantry?” Evalina asked the others, not stopping for an answer as she ducked into a small room to the side of the kitchen, barely bigger than a cabinet.
“It’s on the top shelf in a red box,” Vaughan answered, his deep voice almost making the walls of the house vibrate. On the spongy ground, even the foundations of the buildings seemed flexible.
I took a step closer, ducking even further to avoid a light fixture at eye level, and found Evalina on her toes, trying to reach the red box on the top shelf. I reached over and grabbed it, and her grateful smile when I handed it to her filled me with warmth from head to toe.
“Thank you.” She glanced down, hiding a blush as she took it from me and squeezed past me, back into the main part of the kitchen. “You should go. If Tarron realizes I’m not in the prison, he’ll come looking for me here and I don’t want him to find you.”
“What happens if he finds you ? We’re not leaving you to face him alone.”
If he imprisoned her for helping me to escape earlier, I didn’t want to think about the punishment that might await her for breaking out.
Picking up some kind of pan from a pile by the fire, Evalina opened the red box, her eyes widening as she saw the bars of silver inside. Since I had no idea how much she needed, I’d brought as much as I could.
“Felix is right,” Calista said, getting up from her seat and stepping into the kitchen to join us. “If you’re going to be in danger here, you should consider coming with us.”
Evalina’s hands stilled for the first time since we walked into the house, her pretty blue eyes glancing between me and Calista warily. “I can’t leave. My mother’s here.”
Her hand waved towards a closed door that must lead to a bedroom, but that didn’t seem like much of an objection to me. “We’ll take her too, then.”
“She can’t walk,” Evalina protested. “She’s barely conscious most of the time.”
“Then we’ll carry her.”
She sized up me, Vaughan and Darius, calculating that I meant it literally. If her mother was the same size as Evalina, none of us would break a sweat carrying her.
“Can I come too?” Jermyn asked, the first words he’d spoken since we arrived at the house. He’d been hovering by the door, trying not to draw any attention, but when he spoke, every head in the room turned to him.
“You don’t even know where they come from!” Evalina pointed out.
“It’s got to be better than the pens,” Jermyn retorted with a shrug before turning to me. “Is there food there?”
“Plenty of it,” I assured him.
“Count me in.”
Evalina let out an exasperated sigh at the man’s easy abandonment of his entire life. “We can’t just…”
“We don’t have time for this,” Vaughan interrupted, curtly but not unkindly. “Here are the facts: we’re leaving. If you stay, you may be in trouble. If you come with us, we’ll protect you as well as we can.”
“Why?” Evalina asked, her eyes searching his face for answers before turning to me. “Why are you helping me?”
Because you’re ours, Kai answered in my head. Because there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you.
True as they were, those words would only confuse her, so for the time being, I stuck to a simpler explanation. “Because you need help and we can give it. After everything you went through to get this silver and help your mother, do you want to risk being separated from her if you’re put back in prison?”
Or worse, I added in my head, but since I still didn’t know exactly what Tarron wanted from her, I left it at that.
Evalina chewed her bottom lip, the silver and the pan still in front of her, while everyone in the house leaned forward to wait for her reply.
“Will I ever be able to come back?” she finally asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
I turned to Calista for help with that question since she intended to disable the portal, and she quickly stepped in. “If you really want to, we’ll find a way for you to return. But for now, I think it’s safer to come with us.”
My lungs forgot their job as I waited for her to speak, but finally, Evalina gave a tiny nod. “Okay. We can go.”
Instantly, everyone sprang into action.
“Darius, check for activity outside,” Vaughan ordered. “Calista, help Evalina pack anything she needs. Felix, you and I will figure out the best way to transport her mother.”
I nodded, moving with him towards the closed door as I whispered my appreciation. “Thank you.”
He clapped me on the back, his expression still serious but with understanding in his eyes. “She’s your mate. I get it.”
If anyone would understand, he would.
Just before going in, I glanced over my shoulder at the woman whose life we were about to completely upend, and found those beautiful blue eyes of hers fixed on me. I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile and nod, and when she nodded again in reply, everything felt right with the world.
No matter what, I’d make sure she never regretted deciding to trust me.