Read Online Maiden's Wolf (In Deception's Shadow Book 3) by Lisa Blackwood - Free Book Online Page A

and he wondered which
direction her thoughts flowed in.
    “I know. I never
sensed deceit in you. It’s why I trusted you when you still pretended to be a
trapper—why I still trust you.” She began unlacing her shirt’s ties, peeled
back the fabric to expose a portion of her breasts, and tapped the mage mark
emblazoned upon her flesh. “What is this? You have one, so you must know what
it is.”
    Silverblade loved
her sensibility. With her, there was never any time wasted on worries or
foolish debates. No, she always saw situations clearly, dealing with immediate
threats first and shoving aside all else.
    “Oh, yes,” she
said as if reading his thoughts. “A foreign mark suddenly appearing on my
breast is something of greater concern than a trusted friend who has hidden a
secret because he was under orders.”
    Hmmm, just how
deep had her healing power allowed her to ‘read’ him? He didn’t give voice to
his question, afraid she’d think him ungrateful for all she’d done.
    In fact, he was
humbled that she still trusted him in spite of his own not-so-mild deception.
And the friendship she spoke of did come as a bit of a surprise. While he’d
struck up a friendship with her family, most of his attention had been focused
on teaching the boy, Roan, a few hunting tricks and the like. Some evenings
after a successful hunt, he and the boy would return to the hut where Old
Mother and Beatrice already had a cooking fire going.
    Those evenings of
a shared meal were far enough apart, he hadn’t actually thought much of them.
One simply helped one’s pack.
    But seeing the
sincere trust in Beatrice’s pale grey-blue eyes, he realized she, who had never
had proper pack interaction, might place greater importance on even the
smallest encounters. Whatever the cause, he was glad the young healer did not
fear him.
    Unfortunately,
while he knew the symbol on her breast was a mage mark of some kind, he didn’t
know who or what had put it there. Although he had a few unsettling ideas. In
his youth, he’d studied in Grey Spires and his mentors had drilled in many
history lessons.
    But there was a
darker possibility as well. His history lesson had not mentioned anyone or
anything with powers like the acolytes could summon. He could not rule out that
these marks were not something placed there by the acolytes.
    One thing he did
know was that the acolytes could conscript new, unwilling hosts. It was
possible she was one and didn’t even know it.
    He glanced down
at his own chest. And if that was the case, wouldn’t that then mean he himself
was also a new host for whatever dark magic controlled the acolytes? Shuddering
at that thought, he didn’t want it to be true. And while he didn’t feel evil,
that didn’t mean there wasn’t some dark spark already growing within.
    As much as he
didn’t want to drag Beatrice into this mess, now that she was clearly hip-deep
in it, he felt a kinship growing between them. It was fast, and would be
unnatural for any species outside of a lupwyn’s heritage. But lupwyns were pack
animals and once they were in the company of another for long enough to grow to
trust them, they swiftly began the process of assimilating them into the pack.
    And he’d been
away from his pack for long enough that his biology was looking to form pack
bonds with any trustworthy creature. His scout’s discipline, honed through
centuries of training, in combination with his far more skeptical phoenix side
was likely the only reason his lupwyn magic hadn’t already managed to form the
bonds with Beatrice and her family.
    Despite this
natural skepticism, it was his phoenix bloodline which urged him to tell her
what he knew of mage marks in general and where he suspected these ones in
particular may have originated. That way he could see how she reacted and study
her more.
    “Throughout
history, there have been occurrences where the gods, ancient Larnkins, and
oracles marked those with power as their chosen.” He