Read Online Guardian by Shannon Mayer - Free Book Online

want to help them.” It wasn’t a question, yet I knew what he meant. The things they’d done were hardly things one could easily forgive and forget. But I also believed that people could change.
    “Look at Milly. She tried to destroy us both. And now she is with us and even you see that, you can feel it. People can change.”
    He grunted and I smiled to myself. They had a short, if extremely bad, history. Yet even Liam saw how much she had changed. How much she wanted to make right the things she’d broken in the past.
    “Redemption is possible for anyone?” That was a question.
    I’d never put it into those terms before, but it followed suit with the core of who I was. “Yes, I believe so. Otherwise, you never would have had a shot with me.”
    Laughter spilled out of him. “Well, I suppose I should be glad. I would have hated to miss out on you.”
    “Me too.” I smiled at him and then put on a burst of speed, feeling his energy flood through me, the power of his wolf floating under my skin. We sprinted through the snow, scaring up rabbits and small creatures that barely managed to scamper out of our way.
    As we ran, I thought about the missing child, Catya. I sent out a thread, tried to locate her. Still nothing. Shit, I wished that Fedya had had a better picture. I touched the spot where it sat inside my coat. With missing children like Catya, there wasn’t much I could do. Not when I got nothing back from Tracking her. For no other reason than the fact I could, I left open the threads I sent out looking for her. My talents with Tracking were shifting and strengthening, and this dual thread of following Dimitri and trying to track Catya didn’t tire me out like it would have even a few months past.
    We ran like that for hours, and it took far shorter than I’d thought to reach the home ground of the hunters. What we stumbled on surprised me, though it shouldn’t have. At that point in my life, surprise should no longer have had a home in my head, yet it still happened from time to time.
    Well before the sun set, the forest opened into a wide, barren field. No snow lay on the ground. Instead, it looked as though someone had burned all the plant life away and somehow made it so the ground wouldn’t accept the snow. In the center of the field was a building that was seriously old school. In fact, it reminded me of the castle we used for jumping the veil. Made of stone, it was three stories high with turrets and everything. Hell, there was even a drawbridge and a fucking moat that was at least twenty feet wide. Getting into that castle was going to be interesting.
    Dimitri’s threads hummed to me; they were on the other side of that moat. Boy was he about to get a shock.
    Liam put out a hand, stopping me as I crouched down to get a better look at the burned dirt.
    “I know you won’t be affected by a perimeter spell, if there is one. But it would tell the hunters we are here.”
    Shit, I hadn’t thought about that. I had to satisfy myself with leaning as close as I could without touching the charred land. I didn’t see anything that made me think there was a spell on the land.
    Still. I didn’t test the theory. The ground had been burned, heavily, and with my hand hovering over the dirt (with Liam scowling away) the heat from the burn warmed my skin.
    “This is recent.”
    “Then why isn’t there smoke or the scent of burnt wood and plants?”
    I shook my head. “Must have been a magic burn. Something that doesn’t leave traces of itself.”
    “Is there such a thing?”
    “There are a lot of things I don’t know about when it comes to magic. The evidence is here. This was no natural fire, which leaves only one option.” I stood and put my hands on my hips as I stared at the small castle. Those fucking hunters were in there, prepping themselves to go after the pack again. The cold and calculating part of my brain pointed out that perhaps the pack deserved it. They weren’t exactly model