They were greeted with a draft of chilly air as they stepped into the spring room. It was, in fact, a different pool than the one she and Erik frequented. It was much larger and the water was bright blue. It lay beyond a long stone walkway that wound between a maze of stalactites and stalagmites. She wondered if the other spring was Erik’s private bath and this one was more of a communal one.
“Aren’t you glad there may be a chance for you to become a mother?” Sabine asked.
Astrid averted her gaze, feigning interest in a patch of ice on the floor. “Are you kidding? That would be awful. Even if I put aside my reservations about raising a child in a cave, Erik would be dead last on the list of men that I’d want to father my children. Raising a child takes patience and compassion and…”
Her voice caught, and she stopped mid-rant. Sabine placed a hand on her shoulder.
“What is it?”
Astrid couldn’t bring herself to look up from the floor. “That’s what I keep telling myself over and over—how bad it would be to have a baby with Erik. And it would be, I know it would be because it’s so illogical. But…” She swiped at her eyes, leaving wet streaks on the back of her hand. “But even if it’s illogical, even if Erik would make a terrible father, and even if it means I’d be stuck here for good, I really, really want to be pregnant. How selfish is that?”
“My mother used to say that bringing a child into the world is always a selfish act,” Sabine said, her voice distant. “We condemn them to a life of pain and suffering, all so that we can lessen our own emptiness.”
“Your mom sounds like a hoot,” she said as she blinked away the rest of her tears. “It’s scary how badly I want Erik to be right. I thought I’d reconciled myself to not having kids a long time ago, and now here I am, clinging to this highly improbable possibility. I’ve been through this before and I know that when it doesn’t happen, I’m going to be crushed. And once Erik… He keeps saying I’m his mate and that I belong to him, but that’s not going to last, not if he really does want to be a father.”
She took a deep, cleansing breath. It felt good to get it all out. Most of what she was saying was things she hadn’t even realized she’d been feeling until she spoke them aloud.
Astrid grinned sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I’m blabbering away here and you probably just want to take a bath.”
Her smile faded as she looked up at Sabine. The she-wolf was staring at Astrid through humorless eyes. Her expression was blank enough to rival Erik’s at his worst.
“Are you in love with him?” Sabine asked.
Astrid’s mouth hung open as she recalled what Ila had told her during their first encounter.
“Sabine is in love with Erik.”
It had seemed like idle gossip at the time, and she hadn’t been inclined to believe anything Ila had said. But the look Sabine was giving her set off a cacophony of alarms in Astrid’s head.
“No, of course not,” Astrid said, keeping her voice even. “And it wouldn’t matter if I did. It’s like everyone keeps saying, he’ll get tired of me and—”
“He cares about you,” Sabine interjected. She took a step forward, prompting Astrid to step back. “You’ve only been here a month and somehow you are more important to him than I ever was.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Astrid said firmly. “You’re his friend, he respects you. He treats me like I’m beneath him and is constantly disregarding me.”
Sabine continued to advance on Astrid. “You talk back to him and you make demands of him and he capitulates to you right and left.”
Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? I have to beg him just to feed me half the time.”
“I’ve watched the two of you together, listened to how he lets you get away with questioning him and arguing with him. I’ve listened to the sounds he makes when he fucks you.”
Up until that point, Astrid had held out hope that this was all some sort of power play on Sabine’s part. She thought that if she humbled herself enough, Sabine would be satisfied and back down. But as her heel seesawed on the edge of the pool, her blood ran cold.
“You’ve been spying on us?”
Sabine had already told her as much, but she needed to stall for as long as possible.
“I liked you, Astrid. I really did. If I hadn’t, I would have killed you the night you came here.” She shook her head and sighed. “He wouldn’t have cared then.”
“He’ll care now,” Astrid countered.
She gave a diffident shrug. “Perhaps.”
“If he finds out that—”
Sabine didn’t wait for her to finish. With a hard kick to the gut, she sent Astrid careening backwards into the pool. The second she hit the water, she knew that this had all been calculated. The water was so cold that it almost seemed to burn. Sabine hadn’t brought her down here to bathe, she’d been planning on doing this from the start.
How had she not been able to see through Sabine’s façade? Had she been so desperate for friendship that she had overlooked obvious red flags?
Most definitely.
Astrid shot up to the surface and gasped for breath. She managed to grab onto the edge of the pool, but Sabine brought her booted heel down onto her head. Astrid plunged back into the water, crimson blood blossoming from her head. The world spun, and for a moment she was unsure which way was up or down. Water entered her lungs and it felt like they’d been set aflame.
When she broke through the surface again, she began hacking up water and bile. Sabine still stood over her, and Astrid had the presence of mind to propel herself away from her before Sabine’s foot came down on her again.
Sabine lost her balance, only for a split-second, but as she was righting herself a blur of white slammed into her side. Astrid couldn’t afford to stop and watch what was happening. She rushed back to the edge and pulled herself up from the water.
The fur clothes she’d been wearing felt leaden as she tried and failed to stand. Noona rushed to her side, licking her face and whimpering. Astrid threw her arms around the dog and looked to where Sabine had fallen.
Sabine’s body was still twitching, though her eyes appeared lifeless. A thick stalagmite had impaled her back and jutted up through her chest.
Astrid’s first impulse was to thank Noona, but then she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see a lithe, platinum wolf staring at her coyly through its midnight eyes.
“I-Ila?” Astrid’s body was shaking uncontrollably.
After licking her paw a few times, Ila shifted into her human form. Steam rolled off her nude body and she wore a Cheshire grin on her dainty face.
“I told you,” she said in her singsong voice. “That one, she doesn’t make friends. Or rather, she didn’t.”
“You s-saved me,” Astrid stuttered. She wondered if she hadn’t drowned and this was all a vivid pre-death hallucination.
Ila had walked over to Sabine and was leaning over her corpse, still grinning. “I know, aren’t you surprised?”
Astrid began stripping off her clothes. As cold as the room was, she knew she’d be better off naked than coated in layers of drenched garments. Ila tossed a pelt at Astrid. It fell over her head, and when she pulled it off she could see that it was the pelt Sabine had been wearing around her waist. There was a small patch of dark blood on it, but it was otherwise pristine. She wrapped it around herself.
“How did you find me?”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Oh, I’ve been watching you since Erik left. I knew she was going to try to kill you.”
“She told you?” Astrid asked incredulously.
Ila snorted. “Of course not. I just figured that if I were going to kill you, now would be the perfect time. Erik is away and Sten would be too nervous to watch over you himself, what with you smelling so come-hither. So I waited outside your room. I knew she wouldn’t make her move there. I figured she’d lead you out of the back exit and bury you alive in the snow, but this was
pretty clever, too. There’s a pretty strong current under that pool, and even if it didn’t carry your body away, the water would wash away her scent long before—”
“Stop, stop, stop.” Astrid put her hands over her ears. She’d managed to survive by the skin of her teeth and the last thing she wanted to think about was her bloated corpse floating in the pool.
Astrid asked, “Why did you save me? Yesterday you practically said you wanted me dead.”
Ila’s cheery demeanor vanished. “I do want you dead. That’s why I had to stop her. Everyone knows I hate you. I’m the first person they’ll suspect.”
She offered Astrid a hand up. Astrid reluctantly accepted it. “Thanks, I guess?”
“You’re welcome,” Ila said.
They stood side by side, staring at Sabine’s corpse. Astrid felt oddly numb to the sight. She considered that she might be in shock, but decided it was more likely that she just didn’t care enough. She was alive, and that was all that mattered to her.
“How did you know she was going to kill me?” Astrid asked.
As stupid as she felt for not recognizing Sabine’s true nature, she had to remind herself that no one else had either, not even Erik.
“I told you before,” Ila said demurely. “I could see right through her.” She pointed at the stalagmite that had torn through Sabine’s chest and laughed. “Now we both can!”
They left Sabine’s body where it was and left to find Sten. Before they reached the main room, Astrid excused herself, saying that she needed to go to her room and put on warm clothes. Ila didn’t question her.
Astrid bypassed her room, deftly navigating the winding tunnels until she reached her destination. She pulled off Sabine’s pelt and tossed it onto the floor, then she slipped through the crevice and into Erik’s room. She crawled under the pelts.
She didn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep. She lay awake, in his bed, cocooned in his scent, and willed time to go by faster and bring him back to her.
PART SIX
With the thrall over and ominous findings at the southern border, Erik’s focus should be on securing his pack. Instead, he finds himself more distracted by his mate than ever before.
Astrid isn’t sure what she’s more in denial about: that fact that she’s falling for Erik, or the possibility that she’s pregnant.
Coming December 1st
***
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Enslaved by the Alpha: Part Five Page 4
