Page 28 of Mate Night Snack (Hollow Oak Mates #2)

KATNISS

K atniss knelt among the raised beds of the garden behind Miriam’s Inn, her fingers gentle as she harvested the ingredients Twyla had requested for a protective ward.

The mate mark had been pulsing steadily since dawn, responding to visions that flickered around her consciousness like half-remembered dreams. Nothing clear, nothing immediate, just the constant sensation of wheels turning and plans falling into place somewhere beyond her sight.

She'd tried to explain it to Emmett before he left for his Council meeting, but how did you describe the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff you couldn't see?

"Just a few more sprigs of sage," she murmured to herself.

The Council meeting had run long, and she'd grown tired of sitting in Miriam's parlor like a china doll everyone was afraid to jar.

The garden was still within the inn's protective wards, still safe, and she'd promised Emmett she wouldn't go beyond the property line.

Which was exactly why she didn't notice the danger until it was already too late.

"Picking flowers, little seer?"

The voice came from directly behind her, smooth as aged whiskey and twice as poisonous. Katniss spun around, herb basket tumbling from her hands as she came face to face with the monster from her nightmares.

Ashwin looked almost disappointingly human.

Tall and gaunt, with jet-black hair slicked back from a face that might have been handsome once before something cold and hungry had taken up residence behind his eyes.

Those eyes were exactly as she'd seen in her visions, pale yellow like old amber, but worse in person because they were focused entirely on her with the kind of attention a hawk gave a field mouse.

"You're smaller than I expected," he continued conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather instead of the fact that he'd somehow breached Hollow Oak's most secure location.

"All that fuss over such a tiny thing. Though I suppose it's not the size of the vessel that matters, is it? It's what you can pour into it."

Katniss's hand went instinctively to her neck, feeling the mark burn with sudden intensity.

Through the bond, she could sense Emmett's alarm, his immediate shift from whatever he'd been discussing to raw, protective fury.

He was coming. But the inn was a fifteen-minute walk from the Council chambers, and fifteen minutes felt like an eternity when faced with those predatory eyes.

"How did you get past the wards?" she asked, proud that her voice came out steady despite the terror clawing at her chest.

"Oh, child." Ashwin smiled, revealing teeth that were just slightly too sharp. "You really don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? Wards are just energy. And energy can be... redirected... when you have the right tools."

He gestured casually, and Katniss saw the amulet hanging around his neck. Dark stone carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly, pulsing with a sickly light that reminded her of infected wounds.

"Thirty years," he continued, beginning to pace around her in a slow circle that made her skin crawl. "Thirty years I've been collecting the tools I need. Do you know what the secret is to breaking protective magic? You use the very thing it's meant to protect."

Understanding hit her like ice water. "The missing girls."

"Such bright eyes. Their power, twisted and bound to my will, makes an excellent key for locks they once helped create." His smile widened. "And soon, you'll join them. But first, I thought we should have a little chat about your wolf."

Every instinct screamed at her to run, but her feet felt rooted to the spot. This was the moment she'd been preparing for, the confrontation she'd known was coming. Except she'd imagined facing it with Emmett beside her, not alone in a garden with herbs scattered at her feet and nowhere to go.

"Emmett's nothing like you," she said, lifting her chin in defiance.

"Isn't he?" Ashwin's laugh was like glass breaking. "Tell me, dear one, has he mentioned what really happened the night he was cast out? The real reason his pack turned against him?"

"He made a mercy kill. Chose compassion over cruelty."

"Is that what he told you?" Ashwin stopped pacing, fixing her with those terrible eyes. "How very... selective... of him. Did he tell you about the others? The pack members who died because of his moment of weakness?"

Ice formed in her stomach. "What others?"

"Three good wolves, loyal soldiers who followed his orders into an ambush because he'd compromised our position by letting that pathetic whelp escape.

" Ashwin's voice took on the cadence of someone reciting a beloved story.

"They trusted him, you see. Believed in his leadership right up until the moment enemy claws tore out their throats. "

"You're lying."

"Am I? Ask yourself this, little seer: if his choice was so noble, why does he wake screaming from nightmares? Why does he carry guilt like a second skin? What kind of mercy leaves a man so broken he can barely stand to touch another living soul?"

Each word hit like a physical blow, finding cracks in her certainty she hadn't known existed. She'd seen Emmett's nightmares, felt his guilt through their bond, but she'd thought it was just the natural aftermath of leaving his pack. Not... not this.

"You see it now, don't you?" Ashwin moved closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. "He's a killer, dear one. Oh, he dresses it up in pretty words like honor and protection, but underneath all that noble posturing beats the heart of a predator. Just like me."

"No." But the word came out weaker than she intended.

"He'll turn on you eventually. They always do.

The violence is in their nature, bred into their very bones.

How long before his 'protective instincts' become possession?

How long before protecting you becomes controlling you?

How long before you disappoint him the way that poor whelp disappointed him, and he decides mercy isn't worth the cost? "

The world tilted sideways. Everything she thought she knew about Emmett, about their bond, about the man she'd fallen in love with, suddenly felt uncertain.

The guilt she'd sensed in him, the careful way he held himself back sometimes, the shadows that haunted his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking.

"I can see the wheels turning," Ashwin purred. "All those little moments that didn't quite add up, all those careful words that danced around the whole truth. You're starting to understand, aren't you? What he really is underneath all that control?"

"Stop." Her hands were shaking now, the mate mark burning like acid against her skin.

"A killer, sweet child. A killer who's very good at pretending to be tame.

But you've seen glimpses of what lies beneath, haven't you?

The way his eyes change when he's angry.

The careful way he measures his strength.

The violence that lurks just beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to break free. "

Through the bond, she felt Emmett getting closer, his panic and fury blazing like a beacon.

But alongside it came something else, something she'd never noticed before.

The weight of old guilt, the careful control he maintained over something dark and predatory, the constant vigilance of someone who didn't trust himself completely.

"Run, little seer," Ashwin whispered, and suddenly his human mask slipped just enough to show something monstrous underneath.

"Run before he gets here. Because once he finds you with me, once he sees what I've shown you, that careful control is going to snap.

And you really don't want to be here when it does. "

Terror overrode thought. Not terror of Ashwin, though he was terrifying enough, but terror of the doubts he'd planted, of the possibility that everything she'd believed about Emmett might be built on lies. She turned and ran, crashing through the garden gate and into the forest beyond.

She ran blindly, branches tearing at her clothes and her hair, the mate mark pulsing with such intensity it felt like her neck was on fire.

She could hear Emmett calling her name somewhere behind her, his voice raw with desperation, but she couldn't stop.

Couldn't face him until she'd sorted through the chaos in her head.

She should have recognized the signs, should have noticed the way the trees seemed to bend inward, the way the light took on that strange, ethereal quality that meant she was approaching a thin place in the Veil.

But her mind was too full of Ashwin's poison to pay attention to her surroundings.

The trap closed around her like a fist.

One moment she was running through normal forest, the next she was caught in a web of twisted magic that sent her seer abilities into overdrive.

Visions slammed into her consciousness from all directions, past and present and possible futures tangling together until she couldn't tell which was which.

She saw Emmett as he'd been years ago, younger and harder, standing over bodies that had once been pack mates.

Saw the moment he'd chosen mercy and the terrible consequences that followed.

Saw the guilt that had eaten at him ever since, the careful walls he'd built to contain the violence that was as much a part of him as breathing.

But she also saw other things. The way he'd held her when she collapsed from her first vision. The gentle patience he'd shown when teaching her to defend herself. The absolute terror in his eyes when he'd thought she might leave.

The real Emmett. The man who'd chosen love over fear, who'd built something beautiful from the ashes of his past.

But the Veil trap made it impossible to hold onto clarity. Magic designed to disorient and confuse turned her own abilities against her, until she was drowning in a sea of conflicting images and emotions that belonged to someone else entirely.

She fell to her knees in the moss, mate mark blazing like a star, and wondered if this was how it ended. Lost in her own mind.

At least now she understood why her preparations hadn't mattered.

She'd been ready for physical danger, for magical attacks, for threats she could see coming.

She hadn't been ready for the doubts that had been lurking in her own heart all along.