Page 20 of Mushy Stuff (Guardian Mates #1)

I furiously chase Lydia’s scent all day. The sun begins to set, and my body is exhausted. I can’t stop moving though. If I lose her scent or the other females’ scents, then I will lose her forever. I must keep up with the scent.

A little after dark, I reach a place on the road where her scent is much stronger and lingers more. I catch threads of fear intertwined with her normal smell. There are new scents in the mix now; the one that worries me the most is a male scent. An Elven scent. I roar with rage.

I climb back into the trees and leap my way after her.

I can see now that she must have been hidden in a cart.

That’s why her scent was so faint. She wasn’t touching anything outside of the cart, so her scent remained contained.

The females that took her must have known I would hunt her down, and they were trying their best to keep Lydia’s scent hidden.

They must have met the Elven male here, and I’m guessing he wanted to see what they brought him, so he uncovered Lydia for a couple of minutes. Long enough to let enough of her scent drift onto the wind.

Now I know exactly what I’m hunting. Even if I lose her scent, I have his scent and the horses’ scents. I have cart tracks and hoof tracks.

I will find her, and I will rescue her. I will not allow her to be taken as a prisoner like so many others.

Gods, I hope she remembers to take the mushrooms that I gave her.

She placed them in the clothing that holds her breasts.

I can’t remember what it is called right now, and I’ve thought that it was the dumbest piece of clothing ever invented.

But now I am thanking the gods for those silly little scraps of cloth.

It means that she should still have the mushrooms, unless they took her clothes.

That thought causes ice to run through my veins.

There are ways to break the glamour if the Elven has glamoured her. I will stop at nothing to get her back healthy and whole. I will break any spell that he has cast on her .

I chase her scent well into the night, and it eventually leads me to a lavish estate. I can see where the cart tracks enter the front gate.

Now that I am here, I recognize this place.

This is my birth mother’s estate.

***

Lydia

The rest of the cart trip feels like it takes forever. I think it must have been a couple of hours, but with no way to tell time, I have no idea. It could have been two hours, or it could have been thirty minutes.

I feel the cart slowing to a stop and hear more voices outside. I hear something large moving with a heavy scraping sound, maybe a gate of some sort? We must be at the Elven’s estate.

I hear his voice; he’s barking orders to others. Gods, how am I going to get myself out of this?

After a few shouted instructions, the cart starts moving again. I curl up in the hay and try not to panic. I have no idea what’s waiting for me here. They mentioned cleaning me up, so maybe a bath?

I wish I were with Wold. I wonder if they drugged him like they drugged me. I hope he’s okay .

I hope he is looking for me.

The cart comes to a stop, pulling me from my thoughts about Wold. I hear people talking. I hear the females from earlier.

Someone pulls back the fabric covering the cart, and I’m suddenly looking into the faces of several people. One of those people is the female I saw following Wold and I at the market. I gasp and say, “You! You did this!?”

Then I see the other female guardian. She’s the merchant from the dress shop.

The one that was pushing me to try on the dress.

I gasp and point a finger at her, “You were in on this too?! All of that pushing to get me to try on this dress was so you could kidnap me? Where is Wold? What did you do to him?” I’m yelling at her by this point, and she just gives me a wry smile.

“If you know what is good for you, you will hush right now, woman.”

This just enrages me more, so I yell louder. “I will not hush. You drugged me and kidnapped me!”

A cold, melodic voice cuts in from the other side of the room.

“Well, I see that this little kitten is a feisty one.” The Elven male is leaning in a doorway watching all of this unfold.

“That’s okay, I like feisty females. They take a little extra taming, but it is worth it.

I will have you purring for me in no time. ”

I glare at him. I want to yell and scream and throw things, but I don’t want to push him.

I know deep down that he is depending on being able to glamour me, and I do not want him to discover that I can’t be glamoured.

Hopefully I’m right, and he was trying to glamour me earlier because that means the mushrooms work.

I don’t even want to think about what it means if I’m wrong.

He says, “Aww, don’t be angry, kitten. I promise I will take good care of you. You will want for nothing.” He saunters toward me. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and then we can have a nice dinner and get to know each other.”

He snaps his fingers twice, and two Elven females quickly come over and bow before him.

They are not quite as fantastical looking as him—he practically looks like a golden god—but they still look beautiful in an otherworldly way.

They both have deep burnt orange skin and hair, and seem to emit an ethereal glow.

It reminds me of something, but I can’t quite place it.

I study them for a few moments. I notice the way the light shimmers off them.

Suddenly it hits me what they remind me of.

When my mother was still alive, she always wore a pendant.

It was a simple pendant with a stone set in silver, but the stone was beautiful.

It was a dark orange and flashed like fire when the light hit it.

I loved looking at it when I was little.

I would sit in my mother’s lap and play with it while she told me the story of where it came from.

I could turn it in different directions to catch the light and see the little flashes of fire within it.

I was so mesmerized by the stone, that I missed most of what she said.

I was never good at listening when I was a child, but I remember that it was my grandmother’s from before my grandmother was sent far away from her home to marry a wealthy man that she didn’t know.

My mother inherited it when my grandmother died, and then my mother passed it on to me.

I’ve always been too afraid to wear it. I was so afraid I would lose it, that I put it in a safe deposit box at the bank before I moved away from the city.

The Elven male snaps me out of my thoughts when he says, “Take this woman to her rooms, draw her a bath, and make her presentable for dinner.”

Then he turns and walks off. I’m left standing in the cart, glaring at the two females from the market. The two Elven servants walk over to the cart. One of them says, “Come, we will take you to bathe.”

I glare at them for a minute, too. I want to fight.

I want to tell them no and to fuck off. But I suspect that will only draw attention from the one that wants me as his plaything.

I think it will be in my best interest to play nice and not cause any problems until I can figure out a way to escape from here .

I jump down from the cart.

The one that spoke says, “Follow us.” Then they turn and start walking. I follow them through a doorway.

The two female Guardians, the ones that kidnapped me, stay behind in the garage or whatever you would call it.

The doorway that we go through leads straight into the most opulent foyer that I have ever seen.

I gasp as we walk in. I feel like I have just walked into a palace.

Maybe I have. This Elven is obviously wealthy and powerful, so he must have some sort of title.

Everything is gilded in gold or covered in silk.

I momentarily forget my situation and murmur, “Wow, look at this place.”

The two servants look at me, but don’t say anything.

We turn right out of the foyer and walk down a long corridor that is just as extravagant as the entryway. Along the corridor, there are golden statues of women in different poses. At the end, we turn right again and enter a luxurious suite.