Hunted

by Samantha Stone

  Sebastian followed her, smirking, dropping a kiss on Sophia’s head on his way.

  The rest of the pack dispersed soon after Briony and Sebastian’s departure, leaving Sophia and Heath alone.

  “I have an idea,” Heath began, before he told Sophia his plan for the day.

  If the worst happened, he wanted her to look back on this last day with her powers and smile.

  * * * *

  A few hours, a phone call to the New Orleans Police Department, and a trip to a store that carried fireworks illegal in Orleans Parish later, Sophia and Heath sat on the roof of the firehouse, Full Moon beers in their hands and colors lighting up the sky above them.

  The day was overcast, giving a backdrop just dark enough for the bright flames of the fireworks to stand out against the sky. As Heath guessed, Sophia had never experimented with fireworks before.

  His mate relished the challenge.

  The first few he lit went off without her interference, causing her to curse and sit up straighter, eyes bright with concentration.

  Then Sophia took his lighter from him, held up a ball of flames in her control, and used her fire to light the fuse.

  She made the ordinary firework stretch across the sky, filling it with vivid green and blue. The flames burned longer, more vividly, the dots and stripes of color moving in circles around each other until she released the fire, letting it die out.

  Sophia played for hours, her hands moving like a conductor’s, creating images of falling snowflakes, turning Ferris wheels and even a gold fleur-de-lis. Her creations became more intricate with each firework as she learned she could change the colors of the flames.

  Across the city, Heath knew humans and creatures alike were looking up at the sky, in awe of the beauty before them.

  Finally, they reached the last firework. The timing was perfect, as the sun had been dropping rapidly in the sky, bringing them closer to their moment of truth.

  Rather than flipping open the Zippo Sophia had laid claim to, she leaned in and kissed Heath sweetly, leisurely. “Watch,” she whispered.

  With a boom! the words thank you lit up the sky, the dark green letters growing until they changed colors, rearranging into two wolves. One was larger and gray, with white fur across his stomach and legs, and the other the same dark red as Sophia’s hair. The red wolf walked over to nuzzle the gray, curling herself into a ball next to his side.

  The gray wolf licked the female’s head and sank down next to her, wrapping his larger body around hers. When he rested his head on his paws and closed his eyes contentedly, the image faded.

  Exhaustion was etched into the lines of strain on Sophia’s face, causing her slight shoulders to slump, but her smile was wide, her eyes shining from unshed tears.

  “That was amazing,” she whispered wondrously, letting Heath gently guide her to sit down. He had planned to let her rest, but she was already on her feet again, taking his hand and leading him back to his bedroom.

  One look at the heat in her gaze and Heath shredded her borrowed clothes, too impatient to undo the knot she’d used to tie the shorts around her waist. She didn’t waste any time either, ripping his shirt off over his head, his pants pooled on the carpeted floor moments later.

  One touch to her center revealed how ready she was. Her lips flitted across the pulse of his neck, her body acquiescent when he pushed her back onto his desk. She wrapped her legs around his waist when he plunged into her, kissing her deeply as he moved.

  Small nails scored his shoulders and back, Sophia’s voice high and uncontrolled surrounding him, her body tremoring around his. That moment, Heath knew he was in love with this woman…whether she had her fire abilities or not.

  She was his to take care of—he’d always find a way to do just that, no matter what was to come this night.

  His mate met him halfway, moving her hips, taking his mouth in a hard kiss, and Heath fell apart, his body another flame his Sophia could burst into a million blazing pieces.

  Sated, he carried her to his bed. Constantly touching each other, discussing how she knew what he looked like as a wolf, and what they thought Briony meant to Sebastian, they were still in bed when the sun finished its descent.

  The full moon brought the transition upon them.

  The second he began to change, Heath was certain they were both going to die.

  * * * *

  Air tore into Sophia, raging through her insides roughly while her fire burned all the while, dancing on the wind. She had her full sensibilities, her wolf instincts tampered down by her human knowledge.

  She was in control, unlike every other transition she’d had, yet…she wasn’t.

  Her body twisted impossibly in the air as she burned, both from fire and air scraping within her. The pain too much for her to bear, she had no say in how her physical body moved. All she could do was grit her teeth and wait this out.

  What’s happening to me?

  She knew she was mated to Heath, and had expected the pain, the changes in powers.

  She’d anticipated water, rushing through her, taking away her fire.

  There was none, only fire and air playing off each other, mingling together in excitement despite the damage it was doing to her body. They were growing within her, filling every cell until she thought she would burst in a macabre display of flames and gore.

  Next to her, Heath didn’t seem to fare any better. He gasped for air, as she’d expected for herself, and his fur-covered form had been raised from the bed, turning unnaturally in the air in ways she was sure were breaking his strong bones.

  Through his agony he watched her, the same determined glint in his golden-green eyes as she’d seen so many times when he was in human form. He was trying to be strong for her, hardly whimpering at all even when his body jerked painfully, or his sucking for breath was obviously failing him.

  Her torture dissipated before his, allowing her to almost feel his suffering. Balancing on her hind legs, her front paws touching his floating form, she knew it was more than severe even though there was a barrier between her and his torment.

  Stubborn werewolf.

  He was protecting her, refusing to allow her to feel the truth of what was happening within him.

  It could have been hours or minutes—after standing, touching and nuzzling Heath as much as she could without falling, she’d lost any sense of time—before a silent Heath lowered to the bed, the gray wolf still shaking.

  Still tremoring, he curled himself around her exactly as she’d illustrated with her fire earlier, resting his head on her back. They fell into sleep together as one last thought formed in Sophia’s spent mind.

  Our powers aren’t gone.

  Chapter 15

  SOPHIA woke when her body jerked back, wind rushing through her hair. She landed ungracefully on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor, naked. A few feet away, Heath lay in a heap from which he swiftly rose, eyes wild.

  Sophia barely considered the flames of the stove and they grew, spreading toward her like she was a homing beacon, singing the counter.

  She stopped the fire, extinguishing it swiftly when the flames nearly hit Mary where she was standing, wide-eyed, in front of the coffee maker.

  Mary dropped her mug, and then Sophia felt Heath’s hand over hers. They were back in his room before she could hear the crash of shattering clay.

  “Did you just—”

  She didn’t know what word to use. Apparate, Harry Potter-style? It was such a rare gift she’d hardly had reason to think about a name for it. She was about to ask when he interrupted her musings.

  “Yes, I did that.”

  “You can travel through the air!” Thrilled, she kissed his still-bemused face before they threw on clothes as quickly as they could.

  His new power was a surprise, given his water abilities prior to his exile, but he could do what only a percentage of a percentage of weres could accomplish: he had so much control over air, h
e could slip through its particles to go anywhere in the world in less than a second.

  It brought her to wonder, What can I do?

  She rushed across the room and grabbed her Zippo, wanting to make certain she had the same will over fire as she did before.

  “You must have been hungry,” she said, smiling, “bringing us to the kitchen like that.”

  “Starving,” he muttered, feigning a frown. He rubbed his stomach. “As soon as we’ve worked out what we can do, we’ll feast.”

  Sophia absently wondered what Heath would do when he realized the refrigerator was full of the vegetables and tofu Briony had brought over. Stifling a laugh, she lit up the Zippo.

  And almost set Heath’s room on fire.

  Before, stretching and growing flames was akin to pulling particularly tough taffy. It took strength and determination, but it would give. As the years went by, fire had become easier to manipulate, and she could grow or diminish it more and more quickly, straining herself less.

  Now the fire didn’t fight back at all, complying to her every demand startlingly fast and with a rigor she would’ve never expected. Exerting virtually no effort, she tied strings of flame into braids that circled around the room without burning a single object.

  She whipped a thin rope of fire around Heath’s ankles, careful for the heat to come close to contact without burning him. Her trick, one she wouldn’t have dared try even yesterday, worked seamlessly. She snuffed out the flames before they could burn her mate, her happiness—her relief—a song in her heart.

  “My fire is stronger now! Did you see that?”

  Heath shifted from where he’d been standing stock-still, joy lighting up his features. If Sophia hadn’t been watching him closely, she wouldn’t have caught the shadows in his eyes.

  She knew that look, that yearning—she’d seen it on Sebastian’s face every time she brought up or used her elemental powers around him

  Heath misses his water abilities.

  She went over to him, intending to pull him to his bathroom to see what he could do with water, but as soon as she’d touched his hand, they were there.

  “That wasn’t me.” Heath said, bewildered.

  “I did that?” She decided that was certainly something she would have to explore later—right then it was Heath’s time to see what he could do.

  Sophia stepped into the shower and turned the faucet, surprised to see a line coming from the wall instead of a showerhead.

  When the water poured, it was reminiscent of a waterfall. He gets full bathroom-designing privileges. She’d only seen showers like this on television shows.

  Instead of stepping under the spray, she avoided it, cocked her hip and pointed. “Can you turn it into ice?” she asked, knowing that was one of the more important aspects of water powers because ice could so easily be turned into a weapon.

  Heath hesitated for only a moment before he raised his hand.

  The water froze in a beautiful arc that spread to the floor underneath Sophia’s feet. Freezing, she tried to walk away but slid, only for Heath to catch her with his air abilities. It felt as if his hands were steadying her, guiding her though she knew he couldn’t have reached her in time.

  Those hands helped her stand by Heath, who pulled her to him, looking down at her with utter delight. “I have everything,” he told her, bending to kiss her sweetly. “My woman, my powers…”

  “…apparation,” she finished for him, snuggling into his body heat. It was cold from all the water he’d frozen.

  He laughed, lifted her up and released a loud whoop. “You know Vale can move through the air, and Mom used to be able to. I wonder if—no, there’s no way.”

  “What?” Most weres would say this, their mating and resulting powers were impossible. With all the things Sophia had seen, living in a world full of creatures most thought didn’t exist, there typically was a way.

  “Maybe I got her powers,” Heath murmured. “She lost them when she stopped using them to appease her mate, and the laws of physics state that energy can’t be created or destroyed. Instead of her powers disappearing, they went to me.”

  Sophia cocked her head. “If that logic works, then why didn’t your water powers go to someone else when you didn’t use them for the centuries you’ve been exiled?”

  “I think,” Heath said, his eyes gleaming, “it’s different when powers are magically bound, versus when a were simply doesn’t use them. We want to access our abilities so badly, but we can’t, whereas my mother lost the will to work with air anymore, almost becoming ashamed of her powers because of how much it upset Ranulf.”

  “It’s becoming very clear why no one likes him.” Her statement was dry, but her curiosity was burgeoning, all the rules she thought she knew about the elemental powers of the weres disappearing like the flames she’d extinguished minutes ago.

  Sophia didn’t waste a moment contemplating the despicable man who tried to have Heath killed—from her display two days ago, Elizabeth seemed perfectly capable of making sure Ranulf was sufficiently handled.

  She was going to like Heath’s Alpha mother.

  One hand on her waist, the other lifted up by his shoulders, Heath allowed the water to flow, once again in liquid form. A flick of his wrist later, steam filled the bathroom, thick and hot, bringing beads of sweat across Sophia’s brow. She moved to wipe away the condensation about to land in her eyes when Heath squeezed her, a wordless command not to move.

  The steam turned to snow, floating in the air around them, catching in her hair, drifting lazily to caress their skin.

  “Baby,” Sophia said proudly, leaning up to lick a particularly large snowflake from Heath’s nose. “I think you’re free.”

  “Go to Leila’s room and borrow some warm clothes,” Heath told her as he went to dress himself, pulling out a flannel shirt and coat to button over the tee he’d thrown on. He tossed them on the bed after putting something small in the coat pocket.

  She nodded, wondering what Heath had in store, but willing to be surprised, and tried to take herself to the room she’d been sleeping in the same way she took herself to the bathroom.

  It didn’t work.

  She huffed out a breath, grabbed a handful of Heath’s shirt and tried again.

  They stood in Leila’s room, next to her beanbag. “I can only do that when I touch you,” she groused.

  Heath mock-snarled at her, and she laughed, batting away at his hands. “I’ll get ready if you get ready.” She raised her eyebrows at his sleep pants and Eric Cartman shirt that read, Screw you guys, I’m going home.

  A moment later he was gone. She quickly showered and dried her hair before sifting through Leila’s drawers until she found a soft turtleneck sweater and a pair of corduroys. The dancer’s feet were larger than hers, but the boots she borrowed from the bottom the other woman’s closet fit fine once Sophia wore them with thick wool socks.

  She’d just palmed a beanie, a scarf, and a pair of fingerless gloves when Heath appeared, bundled up with a heavy jacket over his arm. Without a word he placed it over her shoulders as she wrapped the scarf around her neck.

  Masculine satisfaction curved his lips when he looked at her, covered in his scent. Sophia let it slide, fully intending to demand he add her name to his collection of tattoos.

  Maybe we can charm it so he can handle small amounts of fire. She grinned—the way she saw it, the possibilities were endless.

  They were untouchable.

  She put on the gloves while Heath, having grabbed the beanie, pulled it down over her head, covering her eyes.

  She cursed, felt a whoosh of air, and heard the familiar crunch of snow beneath their feet. Pulling her hat up so it still covered her ears, she glanced around to get her bearings.

  They stood at the edge of a forest that bordered on a small lake, its water so smooth it looked like glass. Snow fell lightly, blanketing the ground, sprinkling the trees. Sophia could hardly smell
or hear anything, only the rustling of a few small animals and the scent of earth and water.

  “This is right outside Inverness.” Heath walked closer to the lake. Now Sophia could see the top layer was frozen, with cold liquid underneath. “Growing up I used to come here, away from the pack to practice with water.”

  “Why didn’t you work with them?” Even as a woman, she could have found people in her pack to exercise her ability with other than Sebastian. She’d chosen her brother because he showed her how to be a soldier, not because she had no other options to train her gift.

  “I inherited my father’s powers, and everyone except my mom was disappointed.” His breath came out in white puffs of air. His words were sad, but he only gazed at the water before them with fondness. “My clan wanted more weres like her, and I didn’t fit that bill. I was normal, with an ability almost a third of the pack had too.”

  “So what?” Sophia picked up a smooth stone and threw it across the water, smiling as it bounced. “As close as I’ll ever get to skipping a rock,” she murmured lightly, unconcerned by Heath’s words. “You love your water.” The difference between his reaction to inheriting his mother’s ability and gaining his water powers back was stark: one he was grateful for and wouldn’t waste, the other he needed because it was such a huge part of his identity.

  Just like her fire was to her.

  “I’ve always loved it.” Heath split the lake down the middle, then melted the ice into the water below. “I could sit here all day, even as an adult, and change the water as quickly as I could.”

  “Show me,” Sophia challenged with a grin.

  Smiling widely, Heath did, huge amounts of water lifting, morphing before her eyes. It’s beautiful. He froze a whirlpool into the middle of the lake, and made steam come straight from ice.

  Eyes trained toward the sun, he brought a large sheet of water over the horizon and turned it to dew, like a cloud. Colors bloomed, and she understood what Heath was doing: creating a rainbow.