Firewalker

“Yeah. I remember seeing your face,” Lily said apologetically.

“We’ll get to that in a second,” he replied. “I wake up ten minutes later next to my Tristan, who wakes up just after me. The thing is, we’re here with horses tied up right next to us.” Caleb made another X on the outside of the circle of Alaric’s camp. “Even if your Tristan had beaten Rowan in two or three punches, how the hell could he have carried us out here by himself in ten minutes? You were unconscious. You couldn’t have fueled him, so he would have had to pick me up, carry me, then go back for the other Tristan and carry him.”

“Can someone do that in ten minutes?” Lily asked.

“Not alone,” Caleb said. “And another thing? Your Tristan didn’t have a scratch on him.”

“Yeah, I figured he didn’t fight at all,” Lily said, grimacing. “He obviously doesn’t want to say what happened, so I didn’t want to ask him in case it’s embarrassing.”

Caleb frowned and leaned back. “Maybe you’re right.” He swiped his foot across his crude drawing, erasing it. “Maybe it’s best if we just let it go. He got you out. I guess it doesn’t matter how.”

Caleb left Lily sitting next to the fire. She still felt shaky and strangely elated from crying.

“Hey, Lily? Sorry I blew up like that,” her Tristan said, coming up behind her. Lily turned to face him, still wiping her nose, and he saw her tear-streaked face. “What happened?” he asked, his expression darkening. “What did Caleb say to you?”

“Nothing upsetting. I had a good cry, not a bad one,” Lily said, giving him a teary smile. She took Tristan’s hand and pulled herself up by it. “There were some things I needed to let go of.”

He kept her hand in his. “What? What did you let go of?” he asked hopefully.

“That I’m not like Lillian,” she said. “I may agree with her, but I’m not going to do things the way she did.”

“Good,” Tristan said quietly. He looked disappointed, and Lily knew why. He was hoping she’d let go of Rowan.

Lily stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. The smell of him was so familiar and comforting. His hands on the small of her back eased her closer until she could feel the solid shape of him on the other side of her clothes. For the first time in months she remembered what it was like to kiss him, and how once, long ago and a universe away, it had felt when he’d moved against her and said her name. Lily let her lips rest against his skin longer than a friend would, and then spun around and left him.

But Lily didn’t get the chance to decide how she felt about him. Just days later, her tribe left Pack territory and encountered the Hive.





CHAPTER

15

Lily heard the Hive long before she saw them.

It started as an anxious static in the air. The remaining braves slowed their horses and shared puzzled looks. Although still faint, the vastness of the sound was almost like a waterfall in the distance—low, steady, and enormously powerful. Then the sound grew until the buzzing shook the little bones in Lily’s head. The horses shied and stamped their feet as Lily and her braves craned their necks in all directions across the rippling grass of the plains, trying to find the source of the buzz. It seemed to come from everywhere.

“Look!” Caleb shouted, pointing at a smudge of pewter-colored fog on the horizon.

“That can’t be,” Una mumbled. She tugged on her spooked horse’s reins and squinted. The darkness grew, creeping across the blue dome of the wide sky in a line. No lightning touched down. No funnel cloud announced a tornado. The unnatural fog flew against the wind. “It is the Hive,” she breathed, awe and fear immobilizing her face.

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