Free Chasing Faete (Beyond the Veil Book 1) by Sarah Marsh, Elena Kincaid, Maia Dylan Page A

into her eyes until she keened out again and threw her head back as she came in a glorious display. Leo ground himself into her as deep as he could go and groaned as he found his release deep inside his mate.
    ****
    Erica awoke almost silently, fighting the urge to run. She forced herself to breathe through the hysteria that swelled within her until she could think clearly. After such a wonderfully orgasmic end to the evening, waking in the early hours of the next day from a nightmare as hellish as the one she’d just experienced was more than just a rude awakening. It was downright cruel.
    She had been standing alone in a darkened field. The sun had set, the air felt cool, and nothing looked familiar. She spun in a slow circle, desperate for a hint of her location, but there was nothing but for the ever-lengthening shadows of the forest that surrounded the field. Her heart began to pound hard within her chest, and her breathing sounded harsh to her own ears.
    “Eyrica.”
    Erica spun in the direction of the whispered voice, almost tumbling to the ground in her haste, but there had been no one there.
    “Eyrica.”
    She spun again. The voice was louder this time, and it came from a different direction. Her fear and anxiety kept building within her. Despite the years since she had heard it, she knew the voice belonged to her mother.
    “Eyrica.”
    For the third time Erica spun, looking for her mother, and finding nothing and no one there. Tears streamed down her face as she turned in tight circles, desperately trying to find her mother, knowing that she was there with her, but somehow out of reach. From the corner of her eye, a small movement had her whirling to her right. A dove flew directly at her, a message in its claws, and although it was too high to make out the markings on the paper, the red of the blood used to pen the message was clear to see.
    It had been the dove’s high-pitched cries, loud and consistent as it flew, that caused Erica to wake up from her dream. She resisted the urge to clamber from the bed and run, but barely. Erica had never been gifted with such a vision, and she knew that what she saw mirrored that which Corrine had witnessed earlier. She also knew the sound could mean only one thing. Death was coming, and it would not be denied.
    But who? Corrine had been shown more than she had told them, of that Erica was certain. Corinne had been shaken when she had come out of the vision, but it was the panic with a strong edge of fear in her eyes that told Erica that her former nanny had been rocked by what she had seen. Whomever death was coming for, their passing would be significant, and it left her stumped as to why the vision had been revealed to her when she did not possess the seer gift.
    Erica began to think about the possibilities. If it were Corrine that was to die, the aftermath of that could potentially be quite catastrophic. It was hard to miss the connection between her Quenya and the Alpha wolf, not to mention how greatly the loss would affect Erica.
    Gabe would lead his pack to war, Erica standing right beside him, urging those still loyal to her and her family to stand with her. The effects and reach of the battle to come would no doubt be felt in both realms for a long time. If Gabe is the one meant to die, the repercussions of his death would also be felt on both sides of the Veil.
    Then, of course, what if she was the one meant to die? Alefric’s rule might never be overthrown, and innocents of the entire Elven realm and beyond the Veil would continue to suffer or be killed under his unjust reign. On this side of the Veil, her mates would mourn her death, but they and the pack might yet survive the war although continuous wars between the two factions seemed inevitable
    The outcome that Erica feared the most was that Corrine had foreseen the death of one or both of her mates. If Leo or Ben were killed by Alefric and his men, Erica would be unstoppable in her grief. She was a healer