Drink of Me Read Free Page A

booted out of Reule’s mind with perfunctory force. Reule quickly reached up to grasp his friend’s shoulder, giving it an apologetic squeeze.
    “Your advice is always valued, Darcio. Remember that. But I will act in accord with my instincts on this.” The gesture of camaraderie seemed to ease the other male’s bruised feelings, and Darcio reached to help haul Reule to his feet. No easy task that, Reule weighing several stones more than the leaner man. Within moments, though, he felt Rye under his other arm helping to steady him.
    “Chayne?” he asked.
    “We won’t know until we get him back home. The apothecary will tell us the whole of it,” Rye said softly.
    “Go, help Delano with Chayne. I’m well enough,” he instructed Rye. To prove the point, he took his weight onto his own two feet and pushed Rye away with a guiding hand. Rye hesitated only a moment before nodding and moving away to do as his Packleader commanded.
    Feeling increasingly steady, Reule directed his focus away from the fearful, paralyzed Jakals that yet remained alive, and the noisy thoughts of his Packmates. It wasn’t hard to home in on the sorrow. Adjusting his vision once more to detect heated shapes, he scanned the house more slowly. He was in the center of the structure, one floor above him and one below. Wherever she was, she was close. He might have mistaken her for a Jakal in his first scan, but it was clear from the depth of her emotion that she couldn’t be.
    Yet nothing stood upright in the house save his Pack. He looked up once more and realized there was another floor above the third. And there, up in the farthest corner, he spied a small ball of the dimmest heat.
    “Darcio, did you encounter anyone upstairs?”
    “No, My Prime. I only sought the one stray you noted.”
    “Then this is the female I’m sensing. Lord and Lady, but she has strong emotions,” he marveled as he stepped over an incapacitated Jakal.
    “One emotion, My Prime. One bound to attract a man of good conscience,” Darcio said suspiciously. “It’s magnified just as you magnified death to the Jakals. What manner of creature can do that besides yourself?” And even Reule shouldn’t be able to do such a thing , he thought. No man should hold death in the power of his thoughts. Reule had always been fair and just with his power, but things like this had a way of changing a man. Even a Prime.
    “You’re mistaken,” Reule said as he moved with increasing sureness out of the room. “There is no magnification. It’s…pure.” The word kept springing to his mind. He decided it suited and left it at that. Darcio didn’t say anything, but Reule could feel him repressing arguments because he didn’t want to contradict his Prime again. Darcio was a good man, ever his voice of caution and conscience, always advising him to consider carefully. Reule valued him beyond measure, and he made certain the thought made it through to Darcio before they took off up the stairs together.
    They made it to the third floor of the ramshackle building, clearly abandoned long ago. The roof had leaked and the ceiling was rotted through, as was the wooden floor they now negotiated. Reule and Darcio took care with every step as they edged toward another stairwell, this one narrow and stinking of must and mildew. Gypsy Jakals were always roaming the lands, scavenging and causing trouble, squatting wherever they could. This band had been around long enough to make this hovel a home. Homey enough to bolt a chair in a central parlor for the purpose of torture. It meant they’d been there for some time. Reule would never have known it if Chayne hadn’t accidentally stumbled into capture during their hunting trip.
    Reule tested the narrow little attic stairs and wondered how anyone could be up in the garret. Getting there seemed a dangerous task. Then again, it was its own sort of prison.
    He made his way to the head of the small stairs, Darcio his ever-present Shadow as he