Page 129 of Hunted By Fae

It would be all too easy to kill Tesni. Remove her from the equation. But without Tesni, can he keep Bee in line, can he keep her imprisoned for the length of the journey?

The questions lull in his mind when, standing on the ice, the breeze drifts by—and carries the scents with it.

Bee’s scent, he recognises first, and strongest.

He lifts his nose and inhales the other two scents from further away—and he starts for the source, the boat.

The two scents are tangled over there, and the closer he gets, the thicker they get.

Tesni was not alone. There was another human.

His brow furrows. He drags his gaze over the length of the toppled boat, along to the frosted treeline.

Three scents weave together in that direction.

Bee, Tesni—and who?

Maybe a spare, insignificant companion of theirs. Maybe another dear friend.

They went through the treeline, no doubt in Dare’s mind. It is a certainty that they escaped into the woods after the water engulfed him.

The rage resurges in him, too quick, too sudden, an instinct daring to take over. He growls against it, a twist of his mouth, a twitch in his muscles.

The urges reach all the way down to his bare hands, clenching at his sides, the urges of what he aches to do to them…

Once he finds them.

And yet, he’s not drawn to the treeline.

To track them down, to chase them, means to follow their scent…

But Dare hears a different song calling to him.

Fate.

He knows her when he feels her.

A lure like no other.

The touch of gods, of Fate and Mother, reaching through the realms, through the veils, and breathing that faint whisper of a song on the wings of the winds.

No.

That is what it tells him.

Not that way.

Dare turns his cheek to the woods and looks up the path, beyond the lake.

Yes.

The song touches him, ghosted fingertips along the flesh of his heart. He tenses against it. No matter how manytimes he has felt that touch, heard the song, he goes rigid against it.

But he knows better than to question it.

Fate is the one who guides him, but Fate is a child of Mother, and Mother is all.

He has not yet been steered wrong.