When a moth loved a bee, p.9
When a Moth loved a Bee, page 9
She shivered a little as her gaze went to the crescent-moon on my thigh. “Where did you get the mark?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“I told you. I don’t remember anything.”
She made a small noise, inhaling sharply. For the first time, she walked toward me.
I held my ground even as my heart soared all over again.
“How long have you not remembered?” Her question was as quiet as a breath.
I dared to step nearer, shivering as the spark between us magnified. “Since I woke and wandered, trying to find who and what I’d lost.”
She choked on a swallow. Her eyes widened, clouding with so many amber-tinted things. She acted as if she wanted to ask a thousand questions. Instead, she repeated, “Why can I suddenly understand you?”
My pulse surged, sensing her opening to me, tasting the same desperation that drove me. “The same reason I can understand you.”
“Which is?”
“We’ve remembered something we’ve forgotten.”
She shivered with a gasp. “I-I don’t know how this is possible.”
I reached for her, desperate to feel the sense of rightness and connection again. “It doesn’t matter. I was summoned by the smoke. I came because I couldn’t ignore the unbearable urge to—”
“The flames summoned you?” Her forehead furrowed as another flash of fear filled her wary stare. “Are you like Solin? A Fire Reader?”
“Solin? What’s a Solin?”
She pointed toward the silver smoke not too far away. “The Nhil have a Spirit Master. He claims he can speak directly to the fire.”
“Wait.” A chill soaked into my back. “There are others? More like us?” My eyes shot toward the lazy curl of danger staining the horizon.
“I was surprised too.” She gave me the tiniest smile. “But…they found me.”
“Found you?”
“By the river. I was dying and wolves were stalking me and—”
“Wolves?” I went deadly still. “Wolves helped you too?”
“No. I meant, the Nhil saved me from wolves. The wolves knew I didn’t have much longer and every night they hunted closer.” She shuddered. “They would’ve eaten me if the Nhil hadn’t—”
“They wouldn’t have eaten you,” I said, stalking forward and grabbing her hand. “They chose you. Just like they chose me.”
She flinched as my fingers twined with hers.
I groaned as the sharpest sting whipped through my blood. Touching her was as painful as falling into a patch of nettles.
She trembled in my hold, but she didn’t try to pull away this time. She looked down at where we were linked, her lips tight and body tense.
The sting between us grew hotter, arching with sensitivity.
I’d never felt this way before.
Never felt this level of awareness when sleeping beneath a tangle of wolfen limbs or running on a sun-etched day.
But with this girl?
I burned.
I had every answer I needed.
Salak and his pack had followed her, just as they’d followed me. We both had no memories. We both had a mark. And I’d dreamed of her. That was enough—more than enough—to say we had history.
Until I knew what that history was, I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight. Threading our fingers tighter together, I tugged. “Come.”
“Come?” Her eyes snapped to mine. “Come where?”
“Salak’s cave.”
“Cave?” She dug her heels into the earth as I dragged her toward the hilltops on the horizon. “I can’t go to a cave. I’m expected back at camp.” She looked over her shoulder again with a different fear in her eyes. “I’m so far from them. I didn’t see how far I walked. I need to get back. They’ll worry.”
The thought of her being with others filled me with hot possession. “You said they found you. They are not your kin.” I pulled again, firmer this time. “But I am. We were together, in a life we can’t remember. We just need time to—”
“Let me go.” Her hand squirmed in mine. “I can’t just leave.” She tripped as I kept pulling, wanting to break into a run but unable to with her dragging her heels. “I said let me go. I can’t leave with you.”
I slammed to a stop. “But I found you. I told you I know you—”
“You said you don’t recognise me. That isn’t knowing someone. That’s just blind delusion!”
“I’d rather live in a delusion than survive another day alone.” Temper flared as she tried to use her other hand to pry my fingers off her. “Until we know for sure, you’ll be safer with me. We can remember together.”
“Just because you think we’re the same doesn’t mean I’m yours.”
“It does. And even if it didn’t, I’ve already made my choice.”
“What choice?”
“I’ve chosen you as my mate.”
“What?”
“Salak has many. I only need one. I choose you.”
Her squirming turned into outright struggling. “I’m not anyone’s mate. Especially someone as dream-touched as you. Let. Me. Go.”
“I can’t.” I pulled her until she stumbled. “I can’t lose you now that I’ve found you.”
She stilled and took a deep breath, fighting her own rising temper. She used words that sounded kind but in a tone that couldn’t hide her frustration. “Then come back with me. Meet the Nhil. Request Solin to ask the flames where you belong. If there’s anyone qualified to help you, it’s him.”
“I don’t want him. I want you.”
“You’re not listening to me!” She locked her legs, leaning all her weight backward. “I’m not going with you!”
“You have to,” I growled, slipping into the tongue the wolves had taught me. My teeth itched as if my canines lengthened into fangs like Salak’s. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“Then we have a problem because I’m not going with you!”
“But—” I swallowed, unable to understand. “We were alone. We’ve found each other. Why wouldn’t you want to come with me when we finally have each other?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not alone anymore. I was found by others…like I told you. I cannot just abandon them.”
I froze. Darkness descended over my thoughts. “Are there other males?”
“What?”
I drew her into me, locking my eyes onto hers. “Is that why you don’t want to go with me? Because you’ve already been claimed by another?”
I felt sick.
Salak would never allow another male access to his females. He protected them, bed them, and kept their pups safe.
“No, I haven’t been claimed,” she spluttered. “But that’s beside the point.” She scratched at where our palms were joined. “Just let me go and return with me. They’ll welcome you. They took me in, even though I have no memory, just like you. They’ll give you a place to stay while you remember—”
“I remember you. That’s all I need to know.”
“But you said you don’t recognise me!” she repeated, her cheeks turning red.
“Not your face but I recognise your heart.” I pressed my free hand over the swell of her breast, seeking the rhythm of her spirit. “I recognise this. I know I do. Your heartbeat calls to mine. Tell me you don’t feel that. Tell me that you don’t suffer the same sting that I do.”
She went instantly, shockingly still.
I froze too.
Beneath the fur, the thundering of her heart kissed my fingertips. The crackling awareness between us flowed with thicker heat.
She sucked in a thin breath, forcing more of her feminine flesh into my palm. “Whoever you are…please…let me go.”
Whoever I was?
She couldn’t have wounded me worse if she tried.
She watched me as if I’d force myself upon her. As if I’d ignore every protective instinct, every honour-bond worship I held for her, and hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” I bit through gritted teeth, dropping my hand from her breast.
“For touching me?” She shivered, still trying to escape.
“No.” I looked down at where I held her, committing to what had to be done.
“For what then?”
“For this.” Without warning, I jerked her forward and caught her as she tripped into my arms. She made a small sound of surprise as I ducked, plucked her effortlessly from the ground, and threw her unceremoniously over my shoulder.
She grunted as the air in her lungs vanished.
Not giving her time to settle or fight, I locked my arm over the back of her thighs and ran.
“Stop!” She pounded on my lower back. “Put me down!”
I didn’t speak.
I decided I didn’t like words. They were flimsy and pointless. The language of wolves was so much more efficient. She was mine. I’d claimed her. That was all she needed to understand.
Growling, I forced more power into my legs, bounding through the grass with speed.
The girl screamed.
Her cry echoed over the plains, but I didn’t care.
She’d be safe with me and Salak and the wolves who’d kept her alive in the dark.
“Stop! I have to go back. You can’t do this!” She punched my back with raining fists.
I didn’t stop. I didn’t slow.
I wouldn’t stop until we were—
Something crashed into my side, sending me tumbling to the ground. Grass flattened as I landed heavily. The girl kicked me, crawling out of my hold as I struggled to catch a breath.
Wincing at the pain in my hip, I struggled to climb to my feet, only for a blur of something golden and spotty to leap on my back.
The warm weight of it pinned my belly to the earth, claws pierced my skin, and the steady pant and warning growl of a predator sent chills down my spine.
I stiffened as the beast lowered its head, its stiff whiskers tickling my nape. Its hot breath gusted over me as it snarled right in my ear.
“Syn…don’t.” The girl came closer, limping a little from our tumble, her bare legs coming into my sight as she bent and touched the creature atop me. “Let him stand.”
The beast snarled again, its claws sinking deeper into my back.
“Please…” The girl lowered her voice. “Just let him go. We need to return to Niya and Hyath.” With a sharp breath, the girl switched back to the language she’d used when we first met. The one I hadn’t been able to understand.
The first sentence was just a tangle of sounds, but the second…something happened.
The tones slipped and slided, changing shape and reforming. Slowly, they settled into something comprehensible.
How, I didn’t know.
Why, I didn’t care.
All that mattered was I understood her in all ways, and the rest of her sentences weren’t foreign. “He’s like me, Syn. He can’t remember who he is or where he’s from. Let him go, so he can return to his own family. We’ll go back to ours.”
She was wrong that I had my own family.
I had wolves who’d prevented me from dying.
I had a pack that gave me comfort when I was so ready for death.
But they didn’t erase the longing within me. The hollowness that’d carved its way through me, only ceasing the moment I found her.
Inhaling against the agony of claws in my back, I grunted in the tongue she’d used, “My family is you. No matter how much you try to deny it.” I daren’t turn my head to look at her, staying on my belly with the beast hovering over my nape.
The girl sucked in a breath. “Y-You speak Firenese now? I thought you couldn’t understand—”
“I couldn’t.”
“Then how…?”
“Just like you suddenly knew my tongue, I suddenly knew yours.” I clenched as the beast gave a vicious growl. “The more you talked, the more it unravelled in my ears. It’s as familiar to me now as the other language we used.”
Silence fell before she whispered, “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Nothing had made sense since I’d awoken with nothing and spent an eternity trying to find what I’d lost.
She was what I’d lost.
I was sure of it.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I said. “You’re meant to be with me.”
My ribs cracked with hope when she didn’t say anything. She paced a little, her bare feet the only thing I could see. Finally, she backed out of my vision. Her voice filled with command. “Syn. Let him go.”
The beast grumbled but retracted its claws. With a wicked hiss, it leapt nimbly off my back, giving me room to suck in a proper breath without being stabbed with its talons.
I waited for a few heartbeats before shifting to my hands and knees.
Glancing at the white-haired girl, I tensed at the creature sitting beside her. Its two tails lashed angrily, golden spots decorated its hide, and two stubby antlers crowned its feline head.
A lynx.
I’d seen them in my wanderings.
I’d heard them snarl as they hunted in the night.
The girl rested her hand on the lynx’s head. “Come back with me. I’ll introduce you to the Nhil. I think it’s important that you speak to Solin.”
I sat on my haunches, twisting to check the pinprick wounds on my back. “I have to return to Salak. He’ll be wondering where I am.”
“Salak is your family?”
I nodded and stood.
Holding out my hand, inviting another hiss from the lynx, I said, “Come with me. You have to come with me.”
The girl shook her head sadly. “I can’t. The Nhil people are the reason I’m alive. I can’t just leave without telling them.”
“So tell them,” I growled, slipping back into an easier language. “Tell them that we’ve found each other after too much time apart and you no longer need them.”
She ran her hands over the lynx’s head. “But I do need them.”
Her confession struck me in the chest.
She still didn’t feel it.
Didn’t feel the fiery bond or the absolute rightness.
To her, I was just a stray. And unlike Salak, who’d taken me into his pack, she wanted to cast me out of it.
Anger slipped through me again.
Rejection dripped like ice down my spine.
I tried one last time.
“I can’t be the only one feeling this way.” Stalking into her, I grabbed her wrist. “Touch me, taste me. Let your heart guide you instead of your—”
The lynx moved too fast.
In a golden-spotted blur, it leapt on me, sinking its fangs into my forearm, biting down.
Hard.
Teeth crunched against bone. I bellowed. I scrambled for its muzzle, blazing agony ripping through me.
“Syn!” the girl yelled, trying to grab the lynx as I tripped backward, yanking my arm, tearing flesh, unable to get it out of the beast’s jaws.
“Syn, let him go!”
The deeper the cat bit me, the more words and mortality flew from my mind. I sank into the darkness where Salak and his hunters dwelled. I embraced their furiousness. I bared my teeth. I let hot, black heat unfurl through me.
Shadows seeped and thickened around my legs.
The girl gasped.
The lynx hissed and bit me deeper, its fangs tearing tendons and other important things.
I roared and tore its teeth out of my arm, knocking the beast away.
I growled as loud and as deep as any alpha, and the ground rumbled.
The cat sprang for me again—its pounce messy and mouth bloody.
I struck it in the chest, sending it sprawling to the crushed grass below.
My forearm was shredded. Muscle gleamed rich red while white bone vanished beneath pulses of spilling blood.
My fingers didn’t feel normal.
Pain flushed my body as sweat broke out over my chest.
My eyes turned hazy as more shades curled around me.
Shades I didn’t summon yet seemed to cloak me, waiting for my decree.
I looked at the white-haired girl.
At the way she clasped both hands over her mouth and stayed rooted to the spot. I drank in her face, her figure, and the faint golden glow that’d appeared over her skin.
“You always glow when I kiss you.” I brushed my lips on hers.
“Only because you make my heart spill with light.” She kissed me back. “Now stop talking and—”
My spine cracked as the vision ripped through my mind. “Please…” I gasped around the scalding torture in my arm. “See what I see. That’s all I ask. See me.”
Her eyes flared, and for a fragile, wonderful moment, there was something. A warmth, a spark, the barest crack in her memories.
It sent me tripping into her, bleeding all over the grass, not caring that my feet moved in shadow. “You remembered something. What? What did you—”
The lynx caterwauled and launched at me again, going for my ankle, its savage teeth ready to rip out my calf. My shadows hissed around it, coiling around its two tails, smothering it in sudden darkness.
The lynx howled, snapping at each shade before pouncing at me, its teeth grazing my thigh.
I stumbled backward, my eyes never leaving hers.
I waited for her to choose me like I’d chosen her.
I begged her to call off the beast and let me touch her. Remind her. Give us a chance at being happy after such misery.
But…she didn’t.
She hung her head and whispered, “You need a healer. Go. Before she hurts you again.”
I had no healer.
But at least I had a wolf pack that’d treated me far better than she had.
My heart shattered as the choice was made for me.
I wasn’t welcome.
I’d found her only to lose her all over again.
With sorrow burning and pain drenching my system, I looked at the female who was supposed to be mine, the girl I’d kissed and worshiped in my dreams, then summoned the shadow’s swift darkness.
Without another word, I bolted into the grass.
The lynx gave chase but couldn’t match me….
…
I didn’t look back.
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“I told you. I don’t remember anything.”
She made a small noise, inhaling sharply. For the first time, she walked toward me.
I held my ground even as my heart soared all over again.
“How long have you not remembered?” Her question was as quiet as a breath.
I dared to step nearer, shivering as the spark between us magnified. “Since I woke and wandered, trying to find who and what I’d lost.”
She choked on a swallow. Her eyes widened, clouding with so many amber-tinted things. She acted as if she wanted to ask a thousand questions. Instead, she repeated, “Why can I suddenly understand you?”
My pulse surged, sensing her opening to me, tasting the same desperation that drove me. “The same reason I can understand you.”
“Which is?”
“We’ve remembered something we’ve forgotten.”
She shivered with a gasp. “I-I don’t know how this is possible.”
I reached for her, desperate to feel the sense of rightness and connection again. “It doesn’t matter. I was summoned by the smoke. I came because I couldn’t ignore the unbearable urge to—”
“The flames summoned you?” Her forehead furrowed as another flash of fear filled her wary stare. “Are you like Solin? A Fire Reader?”
“Solin? What’s a Solin?”
She pointed toward the silver smoke not too far away. “The Nhil have a Spirit Master. He claims he can speak directly to the fire.”
“Wait.” A chill soaked into my back. “There are others? More like us?” My eyes shot toward the lazy curl of danger staining the horizon.
“I was surprised too.” She gave me the tiniest smile. “But…they found me.”
“Found you?”
“By the river. I was dying and wolves were stalking me and—”
“Wolves?” I went deadly still. “Wolves helped you too?”
“No. I meant, the Nhil saved me from wolves. The wolves knew I didn’t have much longer and every night they hunted closer.” She shuddered. “They would’ve eaten me if the Nhil hadn’t—”
“They wouldn’t have eaten you,” I said, stalking forward and grabbing her hand. “They chose you. Just like they chose me.”
She flinched as my fingers twined with hers.
I groaned as the sharpest sting whipped through my blood. Touching her was as painful as falling into a patch of nettles.
She trembled in my hold, but she didn’t try to pull away this time. She looked down at where we were linked, her lips tight and body tense.
The sting between us grew hotter, arching with sensitivity.
I’d never felt this way before.
Never felt this level of awareness when sleeping beneath a tangle of wolfen limbs or running on a sun-etched day.
But with this girl?
I burned.
I had every answer I needed.
Salak and his pack had followed her, just as they’d followed me. We both had no memories. We both had a mark. And I’d dreamed of her. That was enough—more than enough—to say we had history.
Until I knew what that history was, I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight. Threading our fingers tighter together, I tugged. “Come.”
“Come?” Her eyes snapped to mine. “Come where?”
“Salak’s cave.”
“Cave?” She dug her heels into the earth as I dragged her toward the hilltops on the horizon. “I can’t go to a cave. I’m expected back at camp.” She looked over her shoulder again with a different fear in her eyes. “I’m so far from them. I didn’t see how far I walked. I need to get back. They’ll worry.”
The thought of her being with others filled me with hot possession. “You said they found you. They are not your kin.” I pulled again, firmer this time. “But I am. We were together, in a life we can’t remember. We just need time to—”
“Let me go.” Her hand squirmed in mine. “I can’t just leave.” She tripped as I kept pulling, wanting to break into a run but unable to with her dragging her heels. “I said let me go. I can’t leave with you.”
I slammed to a stop. “But I found you. I told you I know you—”
“You said you don’t recognise me. That isn’t knowing someone. That’s just blind delusion!”
“I’d rather live in a delusion than survive another day alone.” Temper flared as she tried to use her other hand to pry my fingers off her. “Until we know for sure, you’ll be safer with me. We can remember together.”
“Just because you think we’re the same doesn’t mean I’m yours.”
“It does. And even if it didn’t, I’ve already made my choice.”
“What choice?”
“I’ve chosen you as my mate.”
“What?”
“Salak has many. I only need one. I choose you.”
Her squirming turned into outright struggling. “I’m not anyone’s mate. Especially someone as dream-touched as you. Let. Me. Go.”
“I can’t.” I pulled her until she stumbled. “I can’t lose you now that I’ve found you.”
She stilled and took a deep breath, fighting her own rising temper. She used words that sounded kind but in a tone that couldn’t hide her frustration. “Then come back with me. Meet the Nhil. Request Solin to ask the flames where you belong. If there’s anyone qualified to help you, it’s him.”
“I don’t want him. I want you.”
“You’re not listening to me!” She locked her legs, leaning all her weight backward. “I’m not going with you!”
“You have to,” I growled, slipping into the tongue the wolves had taught me. My teeth itched as if my canines lengthened into fangs like Salak’s. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“Then we have a problem because I’m not going with you!”
“But—” I swallowed, unable to understand. “We were alone. We’ve found each other. Why wouldn’t you want to come with me when we finally have each other?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not alone anymore. I was found by others…like I told you. I cannot just abandon them.”
I froze. Darkness descended over my thoughts. “Are there other males?”
“What?”
I drew her into me, locking my eyes onto hers. “Is that why you don’t want to go with me? Because you’ve already been claimed by another?”
I felt sick.
Salak would never allow another male access to his females. He protected them, bed them, and kept their pups safe.
“No, I haven’t been claimed,” she spluttered. “But that’s beside the point.” She scratched at where our palms were joined. “Just let me go and return with me. They’ll welcome you. They took me in, even though I have no memory, just like you. They’ll give you a place to stay while you remember—”
“I remember you. That’s all I need to know.”
“But you said you don’t recognise me!” she repeated, her cheeks turning red.
“Not your face but I recognise your heart.” I pressed my free hand over the swell of her breast, seeking the rhythm of her spirit. “I recognise this. I know I do. Your heartbeat calls to mine. Tell me you don’t feel that. Tell me that you don’t suffer the same sting that I do.”
She went instantly, shockingly still.
I froze too.
Beneath the fur, the thundering of her heart kissed my fingertips. The crackling awareness between us flowed with thicker heat.
She sucked in a thin breath, forcing more of her feminine flesh into my palm. “Whoever you are…please…let me go.”
Whoever I was?
She couldn’t have wounded me worse if she tried.
She watched me as if I’d force myself upon her. As if I’d ignore every protective instinct, every honour-bond worship I held for her, and hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” I bit through gritted teeth, dropping my hand from her breast.
“For touching me?” She shivered, still trying to escape.
“No.” I looked down at where I held her, committing to what had to be done.
“For what then?”
“For this.” Without warning, I jerked her forward and caught her as she tripped into my arms. She made a small sound of surprise as I ducked, plucked her effortlessly from the ground, and threw her unceremoniously over my shoulder.
She grunted as the air in her lungs vanished.
Not giving her time to settle or fight, I locked my arm over the back of her thighs and ran.
“Stop!” She pounded on my lower back. “Put me down!”
I didn’t speak.
I decided I didn’t like words. They were flimsy and pointless. The language of wolves was so much more efficient. She was mine. I’d claimed her. That was all she needed to understand.
Growling, I forced more power into my legs, bounding through the grass with speed.
The girl screamed.
Her cry echoed over the plains, but I didn’t care.
She’d be safe with me and Salak and the wolves who’d kept her alive in the dark.
“Stop! I have to go back. You can’t do this!” She punched my back with raining fists.
I didn’t stop. I didn’t slow.
I wouldn’t stop until we were—
Something crashed into my side, sending me tumbling to the ground. Grass flattened as I landed heavily. The girl kicked me, crawling out of my hold as I struggled to catch a breath.
Wincing at the pain in my hip, I struggled to climb to my feet, only for a blur of something golden and spotty to leap on my back.
The warm weight of it pinned my belly to the earth, claws pierced my skin, and the steady pant and warning growl of a predator sent chills down my spine.
I stiffened as the beast lowered its head, its stiff whiskers tickling my nape. Its hot breath gusted over me as it snarled right in my ear.
“Syn…don’t.” The girl came closer, limping a little from our tumble, her bare legs coming into my sight as she bent and touched the creature atop me. “Let him stand.”
The beast snarled again, its claws sinking deeper into my back.
“Please…” The girl lowered her voice. “Just let him go. We need to return to Niya and Hyath.” With a sharp breath, the girl switched back to the language she’d used when we first met. The one I hadn’t been able to understand.
The first sentence was just a tangle of sounds, but the second…something happened.
The tones slipped and slided, changing shape and reforming. Slowly, they settled into something comprehensible.
How, I didn’t know.
Why, I didn’t care.
All that mattered was I understood her in all ways, and the rest of her sentences weren’t foreign. “He’s like me, Syn. He can’t remember who he is or where he’s from. Let him go, so he can return to his own family. We’ll go back to ours.”
She was wrong that I had my own family.
I had wolves who’d prevented me from dying.
I had a pack that gave me comfort when I was so ready for death.
But they didn’t erase the longing within me. The hollowness that’d carved its way through me, only ceasing the moment I found her.
Inhaling against the agony of claws in my back, I grunted in the tongue she’d used, “My family is you. No matter how much you try to deny it.” I daren’t turn my head to look at her, staying on my belly with the beast hovering over my nape.
The girl sucked in a breath. “Y-You speak Firenese now? I thought you couldn’t understand—”
“I couldn’t.”
“Then how…?”
“Just like you suddenly knew my tongue, I suddenly knew yours.” I clenched as the beast gave a vicious growl. “The more you talked, the more it unravelled in my ears. It’s as familiar to me now as the other language we used.”
Silence fell before she whispered, “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Nothing had made sense since I’d awoken with nothing and spent an eternity trying to find what I’d lost.
She was what I’d lost.
I was sure of it.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I said. “You’re meant to be with me.”
My ribs cracked with hope when she didn’t say anything. She paced a little, her bare feet the only thing I could see. Finally, she backed out of my vision. Her voice filled with command. “Syn. Let him go.”
The beast grumbled but retracted its claws. With a wicked hiss, it leapt nimbly off my back, giving me room to suck in a proper breath without being stabbed with its talons.
I waited for a few heartbeats before shifting to my hands and knees.
Glancing at the white-haired girl, I tensed at the creature sitting beside her. Its two tails lashed angrily, golden spots decorated its hide, and two stubby antlers crowned its feline head.
A lynx.
I’d seen them in my wanderings.
I’d heard them snarl as they hunted in the night.
The girl rested her hand on the lynx’s head. “Come back with me. I’ll introduce you to the Nhil. I think it’s important that you speak to Solin.”
I sat on my haunches, twisting to check the pinprick wounds on my back. “I have to return to Salak. He’ll be wondering where I am.”
“Salak is your family?”
I nodded and stood.
Holding out my hand, inviting another hiss from the lynx, I said, “Come with me. You have to come with me.”
The girl shook her head sadly. “I can’t. The Nhil people are the reason I’m alive. I can’t just leave without telling them.”
“So tell them,” I growled, slipping back into an easier language. “Tell them that we’ve found each other after too much time apart and you no longer need them.”
She ran her hands over the lynx’s head. “But I do need them.”
Her confession struck me in the chest.
She still didn’t feel it.
Didn’t feel the fiery bond or the absolute rightness.
To her, I was just a stray. And unlike Salak, who’d taken me into his pack, she wanted to cast me out of it.
Anger slipped through me again.
Rejection dripped like ice down my spine.
I tried one last time.
“I can’t be the only one feeling this way.” Stalking into her, I grabbed her wrist. “Touch me, taste me. Let your heart guide you instead of your—”
The lynx moved too fast.
In a golden-spotted blur, it leapt on me, sinking its fangs into my forearm, biting down.
Hard.
Teeth crunched against bone. I bellowed. I scrambled for its muzzle, blazing agony ripping through me.
“Syn!” the girl yelled, trying to grab the lynx as I tripped backward, yanking my arm, tearing flesh, unable to get it out of the beast’s jaws.
“Syn, let him go!”
The deeper the cat bit me, the more words and mortality flew from my mind. I sank into the darkness where Salak and his hunters dwelled. I embraced their furiousness. I bared my teeth. I let hot, black heat unfurl through me.
Shadows seeped and thickened around my legs.
The girl gasped.
The lynx hissed and bit me deeper, its fangs tearing tendons and other important things.
I roared and tore its teeth out of my arm, knocking the beast away.
I growled as loud and as deep as any alpha, and the ground rumbled.
The cat sprang for me again—its pounce messy and mouth bloody.
I struck it in the chest, sending it sprawling to the crushed grass below.
My forearm was shredded. Muscle gleamed rich red while white bone vanished beneath pulses of spilling blood.
My fingers didn’t feel normal.
Pain flushed my body as sweat broke out over my chest.
My eyes turned hazy as more shades curled around me.
Shades I didn’t summon yet seemed to cloak me, waiting for my decree.
I looked at the white-haired girl.
At the way she clasped both hands over her mouth and stayed rooted to the spot. I drank in her face, her figure, and the faint golden glow that’d appeared over her skin.
“You always glow when I kiss you.” I brushed my lips on hers.
“Only because you make my heart spill with light.” She kissed me back. “Now stop talking and—”
My spine cracked as the vision ripped through my mind. “Please…” I gasped around the scalding torture in my arm. “See what I see. That’s all I ask. See me.”
Her eyes flared, and for a fragile, wonderful moment, there was something. A warmth, a spark, the barest crack in her memories.
It sent me tripping into her, bleeding all over the grass, not caring that my feet moved in shadow. “You remembered something. What? What did you—”
The lynx caterwauled and launched at me again, going for my ankle, its savage teeth ready to rip out my calf. My shadows hissed around it, coiling around its two tails, smothering it in sudden darkness.
The lynx howled, snapping at each shade before pouncing at me, its teeth grazing my thigh.
I stumbled backward, my eyes never leaving hers.
I waited for her to choose me like I’d chosen her.
I begged her to call off the beast and let me touch her. Remind her. Give us a chance at being happy after such misery.
But…she didn’t.
She hung her head and whispered, “You need a healer. Go. Before she hurts you again.”
I had no healer.
But at least I had a wolf pack that’d treated me far better than she had.
My heart shattered as the choice was made for me.
I wasn’t welcome.
I’d found her only to lose her all over again.
With sorrow burning and pain drenching my system, I looked at the female who was supposed to be mine, the girl I’d kissed and worshiped in my dreams, then summoned the shadow’s swift darkness.
Without another word, I bolted into the grass.
The lynx gave chase but couldn’t match me….
…
I didn’t look back.
