Hunted By Firelight by Krista Street

Chapter 14

~ WYATT ~

I woke to the feel of my mate’s warm body pressed against mine, my body naturally rising after another deep slumber. Lifting my head, I searched for a clock and found one on the desk. According to the ticking apparatus, it was mid-afternoon, which meant Avery and I had slept nearly six hours.

Damn. Ten hours of napping today. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done any napping at all.

But even though I still wasn’t one hundred percent recovered from the exhausting past month, I was quickly getting there. My mind buzzed, my body becoming more alert. That and I was itching to know what was going on with Nicholas’s findings and Bavar’s defense plan, so I slipped quietly from the bed, careful not to wake my mate.

I gazed down at her as I tugged my pants back on, which I’d pulled off before our slumber as my wolf purred in pleasure. Because Avery had let me touch her, hold her, sleep beside her. My courtship with her was progressing well. Who knew, perhaps the next time we woke up beside one another, maybe just maybe, she’d be ready for me to pleasure her again. Only this time, perhaps she’d be open to that pleasure coming from my cock instead of my mouth.

Damn. So much for going slow with her, but fucking hell, I hadn’t been able to resist her.

A groan escaped me when a rush of blood went south of my waistband. Ignoring the surge of lust, I silently slipped from the room and headed toward the stairs, but the thought of Avery sinking onto my shaft as she rode me with her tits bouncing in my face . . .

I groaned again. So much for trying to keep my erections under control.

Readjusting myself, I followed the sound of voices and approached a set of double doors just off the main entrance where the five wings converged.

Bavar and his squad sat in a drawing room, which appeared exclusively designed for entertaining. The room was large with a domed ceiling. At least a dozen couches and chairs were set up in three separate seating clusters.

The furniture in each cluster was arranged in a circle so everyone faced one another. That of course allowed for maximum discussion, which Bavar and his squad were in the midst of doing, so much so that they didn’t notice my prowling presence at the door.

The colors of the room were done in rich purple, gray, pale green, and accents of cream. Velvet and thick brocades upholstered all of the furniture.

I treaded silently toward the group. The heavy, sweet scent of fairy magic filled the air—a scent that often accompanied magical cleaning. If not for that, I might have guessed the furniture had been newly purchased, even though given the ornate cut of the wood and elegant curve of the wingbacks, it was most likely bought when the estate was built. With fairy cleaning magic, items could look brand new for years.

Tall windows lined one wall of the room, allowing natural sunlight that penetrated the trees’ canopy to fill the area. The leaves fluttering in the woods shimmered in the sunlight, but the Shroud Forest was so dense that even my superior eyesight didn’t allow me to see more than a hundred yards into it.

That left me feeling uneasy, since it would be harder to see an attack coming, if an attack was to come.

“Ah,” Bavar said when I rounded the back of his chair and took a seat on the opposite couch by Lex. “Looks like someone’s decided to join us on his rest day.”

Lex clapped me on the back, Charlotte snickered, and an amused and knowing smile came from Heidi.

I frowned. “Is there something going on that I’m unaware of?”

Bishop gave me a wink “Did you enjoy getting settled in? It, um . . . how do I put it? It sounded like you enjoyed it this morning.”

Terry rolled her eyes. “I think we all know he and Ms. Meyers enjoyed it.”

Charlotte snorted a laugh.

Fucking hell. They heard me pleasuring my mate. I shook my head when Charlotte gave me the thumbs up, but I couldn’t stop my chuckle. Damn, when did I become the butt of a joke from a newly graduated recruit?

I grinned and shook my head again, then reminded myself to ask Heidi to cast a cloaking spell around the chamber Avery and I shared. The pleasure my mate had screamed this morning was only the first of many screams I planned to give her.

Yet that wasn’t something Squad Three needed to hear.

Still, if nothing else, now everyone knew that Avery was mine.

That was something I figured Charlotte had already guessed given her knowing smirk and the fact that she and Avery had apparently been discussing werewolf mating.

I bit back another chuckle when Lex clapped me on the back again.

However, the jokes and elbow nudges weren’t coming from everyone. Marnee sat near Terry, the siren’s cobalt-blue eyes so sharp they could have cut glass. She wasn’t even trying to hide her scowl.

My jaw tightened as the scent of bitter jealousy mixed with Marnee’s salty tang—a scent that accompanied all sirens. It floated to me on a cloud of anger.

Ignoring her heated glare, I got down to business and turned to Bavar. “So what have we learned?”

“Well, as I was just telling the squad”—Bavar tilted forward in his seat—“We know that nearly all of the robed group at the inn were purebred sorcerers. The SF witches were able to unlock their cloaking spells, and then we called Squad Fourteen in.”

I grunted in approval. Squad Fourteen was composed of all male werewolves. Their advanced sense of smell when they worked together made identifying criminals easier.

“They identified each sorcerer’s scent so then we turned to the database. The latest database report from headquarters has found six sorcerers in the supernatural community capable of creating hexes that can penetrate an SF suit. Four have already been ruled out given their solid alibis and the fact that their scents don’t match. The other two are being interviewed, but neither has ever had a run-in with the SF before, nor are they members of any anti-SF organizations. And if their scents also don’t match—”

“Then they couldn’t have been involved.”

“Correct. As you know, we’ll complete the investigation—on the off chance that either of them was able to mask their scent or change it—but neither fits the profile of a sorcerer gone rogue, nor has a motive been found for why they would have done it in the first place.”

“What are their profiles?”

“The first is fifty-three. He’s married, has two daughters—each half fae—who are attending university here. He lives with his wife, a full fae, in Culasberee, a medium-sized city three hours north of the capital. Stable employment. Pays his taxes. No previous criminal record.”

I frowned. “And the other?”

“An elderly sorcerer who lives in Rostov, Russia. He lives with his wife who’s his full-time caretaker. At his prime, he was the most powerful sorcerer in his region, but in the past decade he’s mentally declined. Our latest report shows that he’s no longer oriented to time or place. Given his advanced dementia, and the most recent update from his local community sorcerer chapter, he’s been unable to wield spells for over five years.”

“Because he can’t remember them?”

“Exactly.”

I grumbled. “So the conclusion we’re reaching is that whoever attacked us at the inn isn’t in our database.”

“Precisely.”

“How is that possible?”

Bavar’s lips turned down. “That I don’t know, but there’s something else we’ve discovered that could be the key to this all. Avery said that the tallest one told her that he’s been looking for her for thousands of years. If the sorcerers working with him are of equal age and have remained clever at hiding, that could explain why they’ve never been added to the database since they would have been born before it existed. But quite frankly, that doesn’t add up, not unless they’re vampiric sorcerers, which didn’t match their scents. Their scents were that of pureblood sorcerers.”

“Unless they had a cloaking spell over a cloaking spell, and the witches haven’t unlocked that yet.”

Bavar raised an eyebrow. “Possible, but not likely.” He leaned forward more, his face a mask of concern. “What we’ve discovered about the tall one is what has me worried. His scent doesn’t fit any species that we can identify.”

My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Meaning that despite Squad Fourteen being called in, they weren’t able to scent what species that man is. They easily identified him as male, and they were able to rule out his species as sorcerer, fairy, werewolf, demon, half-demon, or vampire.”

“And if he’s male then he can’t be a siren, psychic, or witch.”

“Correct.”

My wolf growled, pacing in my belly, not liking where this conversation was going. “Is it possible he’s a mixed breed and that’s why they couldn’t scent his species?”

Bavar cocked his head as the rest of Squad Three continued to listen raptly. “Again, possible, but not likely. Each wolf in that squad came to the same conclusion. The male smelled pure, not of mixed descent, and his scent was stronger than the sorcerers, which means he’s probably the most powerful. And that leaves us with an interesting conclusion—perhaps he’s a species we’re not familiar with.”

I stilled. “That hasn’t happened in years, not since we added angels to the database.”

“Correct. And as you know, angels never leave their heavenly realm, so it does beg the question—is this man from a realm we’re unfamiliar with, or is he a new species we haven’t previously identified in the explored realms?”

I leaned back on the couch, unease slithering through me. To have someone out there hunting my mate who was of a species we weren’t familiar with made my blood run cold. Unknown species carried unknown strengths and gifts.

And a species we didn’t understand was also a species we didn’t know how to fight.