(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 46; requisite

Tisper laid awake, watching the waxing moon. Three more nights. That was all they had.

It felt like a waste of time, the handful of them, curled around a dying fire, biding out the night. They'd been searching all day, around the area in the woods where they'd found Dylan. The exact place where the wolves didn't want them. Twice now, Tisper had seen beady eyes leering from the dark, but the wolves had kept their distance and eventually left them be.

Six hours spent hiking through the backwoods for a sign of the other sentinels. Any clue of them would be better than nothing. But nothing was all they had to go by and nothing was all they found. Nothing but abandoned campsite they had taken claim of for the night.

She shifted from the makeshift pad where she slept beside Izzy and Elizaveta. The men had taken to only the leaves and dirt. Maybe that was suitable for a wolf, but Matt was curled up like a cocooned caterpillar in his red flannel sweat-shirt. Huddled into himself with the drawstrings of his hood tightened around his face. Leo had no qualms—his snoring possessed this place like a banshee.

Quentin and Bailey, though—they were missing from the circle.

She tiptoed over bodies, crept along the dirt ground, soft footsteps cracking over dead leaves. She could hear their voices, not far off. Quiet enough that it had her interest piqued.

"You're the one who needs me," Bailey was saying as Tisper tiptoed closer into the thicket. "Not the other way around." She stuck behind the trees, and in the darkness, she could see their faces, and the cherry that glowed between Quentin's fingers. He exhaled his smoke, illuminated in the moonlight.

"I never argued that. You're my hound. Irreplaceable."

"I'm sick of being your hound," Bailey snarled. "This is my last fox hunt, do you get that? You told me I wouldn't be a slave anymore and that's all I am now. I'm done, find another bitch to drag around."

"Just help me find him," Quentin returned, releasing his smoke to the heavens. "It's the thing I'll ever ask of you."

"You said I wouldn't owe you. You said—"

"You don't owe me. I'm asking a favor of you."

"What the fuck is so special about him?" Aggression swelled in Bailey's voice, and Tisper jumped as she heard a thud followed by the crack of broken bark. She peeped around her cover to find Quentin shoved back against the trunk of a hemlock, Bailey leering in close. "Don't give me that lichund shit, because he wasn't the first of them. He won't be the last."

"I made a promise to him."

"Did you?" said Bailey, with a flash of teeth. The moon glinted in his black eyes. "What did you promise him, huh?"

"That I wouldn't let anyone hurt him."

Bailey shoved him again, hard in the chest. There was a rush of breath from Quentin's lungs. "You promised me that too!" Bailey shouted, the echo of his ire lift into the night sky. When she looked around the tree again, he had the collar of Quentin's shirt twisted in his fists, pressing so roughly to his lips, there wasn't a sound escaped between them. And Quentin was reaching into his hair, fingers locking into a fist.

Tisper felt her stomach drop. She cupped her mouth to keep from gasping. You asshole, she wanted to shout. Stop kissing him, you asshole!

But then Quentin reigned him back by the grip on his locks, tore him away like a feeding leech. It was like taking a dog by the scruff of its neck, the way he held Bailey at a distance. "Enough," he growled, in a voice that didn't sound like Quentin at all. Deep, and cold with chilly indifference. "You of all people know better."