It hurt, like my skin was on fire, but only for a second before it was gone. ‘What the fuck was that?’ I asked my wolf.
‘Her wolf fought me for a second before relenting,’ she told me.
Sage panted, holding her chest and looking over at me with wide eyes. “This is the weirdest feeling of my life and I want it to stop as soon as possible.”
I winced, feeling Sage’s discomfort through our bond. It was bad for me too, but not as much as her.
“Sorry. Let’s do this quickly then.” I called her over to the edge of the river. We walked around the shimmering transparent bubble that was Pearl’s cloak and I knelt down at the edge of the water. Reaching into the thick wet mud, I picked up two handfuls and moved to rub them in Sage’s hair.
She stepped away from me. “What the heck?”
I rolled my eyes. “You have to look insane. Right now you look like a sexy, redheaded Lara Croft Tomb Raider.”
Sage frowned. “Who?”
I shook my head. “We are overdue for a movie night, my friend.”
She closed her eyes, relenting, and stepped closer to me as I rubbed the mud onto her face, then in her hair and on her clothes.
“I actually hate you right now, and Sawyer owes me so big. I want a red Range Rover with white leather seats when I get home,” Sage growled.
I grinned as I started to tease her hair into knots and clumps, making it look wild. “You got it, babe. And a house with a view. Whatever you want.”
We both knew we were half kidding. Who knew when that type of life would come back into normalcy. But if it didn’t, I’d get her a white horse and cottage on Paladin land, whatever she wanted that I was capable of giving.
“Alright, let’s do a practice. You have to seem mentally unstable and non-threatening.”
She popped her eyes open, widening them, then peeled her lips back to bare her teeth at me. “I heard you drink wolf blood here.” She hissed in my face. “I need a unicorn horn to produce miracles.”
I bit down on my lips to keep from bursting into laughter. “That’s perfect. Go cause a scene but be harmless, you don’t want them to magically cuff you before my wolf can get out.”
She nodded, looking at the water. Across the river, about a hundred-foot swim away, was the giant prison, all glass but tinted so dark I couldn’t see anything. A huge thirty-foot fence dotted the perimeter with glowing blue barbwire. It was definitely magic.
I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.
“Be safe, okay? I want Sawyer back, but not at the expense of losing you. If shit goes sideways, get out,” I told her.
She nodded, but we both knew that was easier said than done.
She moved to jump into the water and I rushed forward, pulling her into a hug. “I love you, Sage Hudson. Like big huge love. You’re my sister no matter that our DNA says different.” My voice cracked and I wanted to kick myself for getting all emotional, but if anything happened to this woman, I needed her to know how much she meant to me.
Pulling back, she wiped her teary eyes, smearing mud deeper into her cheeks. “I love you too. That’s why I’ll go to the grave with the knowledge that when you delivered Creek, you pooped all over my hand.” She grinned.
My mouth popped open at that declaration. “Shut the fuck up. That’s not true.”
She just raised one eyebrow and then waltzed into the water.
What the hell?
“Sage!” I whisper-screamed. “Is that true?” Because that was mortifying.
My bestie just chuckled before dropping into the water, taking a big breath and kicking off the rocks.
There was no way I pooped on her hand. Totally no way … right?
Pushing that revelation from my mind, I slunk into the bushes and watched as Sage waded across the river, her muddy red hair flowing around her like a messy mermaid. Anxiety ramped up inside of me as she inched her way across, going farther and farther away from me. As she neared the shore on the other side, she stood up out of the water and … started to walk like a chicken.
What the…? Okay, the acting had begun.
She tucked her arms into her chest and flapped her elbows, cranking her neck back and forth.
I shifted my perspective to my wolf and immediately wanted to recoil. It was … a tight fit being inside of Sage. Her wolf kept pushing against mine and it made it feel claustrophobic in a way that was hard to describe. Sage reached the sandbank and started to scratch at her arms.
“Baby killers!” she shouted up at a guard tower that sat high above the giant fence. “Marshmallow for breakfast is what you think!” she screamed nonsensically.
We were both totally going to hell for using mental illness as a cover to get inside this building. I silently sent up a prayer for forgiveness to anyone who actually suffered from such delusions.
“Stop right there!” someone bellowed, and a red laser beam from the scope of a gun appeared on Sage’s chest. She looked up at the giant fence and the fey now standing on top of it. He peered down at her with scrutiny, rifle raised.
“I know what you’re doing here!” Sage screamed. “Eating lemons and killing werewolf babies to make sunblock appear on silver gold leaf!”
Holy shit, she really was going to deserve an Oscar for this.
The fey man frowned, lowering his scope. “You’re trespassing. Violators are shot on sight.”
Sage reached up and clawed at her face, dragging her nails down her cheeks. “The bugs made me!”
“Shit.” The dude looked over his shoulder and spoke to a second dude, barely visible from this angle. “Some crazy chick is losing her mind out here. Call medical and have them transport her back to the mainland.”
Sage screamed then and ran full speed at the brick fence, arms out as if she expected to walk right through it.
What the hell was she doing? The second her hands touched the fence, the male fey yelled, “Don’t!” But it was too late. Blue magic burst from the fence, knocking into Sage, and she crumpled to the ground, completely unconscious, knocking my wolf out with her.
The male fey screamed something I couldn’t hear from my hiding spot in the trees across the river, but I could see him and he looked alarmed.
My wolf stirred inside of Sage, becoming conscious before she did, and I could see from my spot across the river that the wall above her started to move. A stone gate was hidden in the wall so that you couldn’t see it until it was retracting to gain entry. The brick pattern was a cream speckled barrage of muted colors so that even the gate’s hinges were camouflaged.
Two guards waltzed out, guns raised at Sage as she lay huffing on the ground. I felt her consciousness stir, and immediately spoke into her mind. ‘Stay down. I think they are going to bring you inside the gates. The fence was spelled and electrocuted you.’
‘Everything hurts,’ she replied, but said nothing more as she just lay there unmoving.
The two guards looked down at her with pity, their pointy fey ears peeking out from the sides of their black baseball caps, and I moved closer inside of the bushes where I was hiding to get a better look. A hundred feet was far when you had to swim that length, but so close when you were hiding in a bush trying to avoid being seen.
One of them inhaled. “She’s a wolf? What the hell is a wolf doing all the way out here?” I was seeing through my human eyes but hearing what they were saying through my wolf who was conscious in Sage. It was a weird out-of-body sensation.