Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Saffy!” Eleri yelled out.
Saffron’s head snapped toward her, her pale skin splotchy and sweaty. “Lies! You’re not here! You’re dead and they hid you!”
Bram looked out from behind Eleri. “No, Saff, we’re both fine.”
Saffron went silent at that, but the paranoid suspicion remained in her eyes. Until Adam crossed the doorway into Mirage. At which point she sucked in a gasp of air and said, “It’s so quiet here,” and Eleri belatedly recognized that the shock of their vanishing from Saffron’s life had thinned out the other woman’s shields until she’d begun to feel the same inexorable mental pressure as she and Bram had.
Yúzé walked in under his own steam with a blond leopard male Eleri recognized from Sascha Duncan’s visit. He was dressed in black, had eyes that saw everything. She couldn’t remember his name but knew he was like Jacques and Dahlia for the leopards. A second to his alpha.
As Bram went to Saffron—he’d always been able to calm her down—Eleri took Yúzé’s hand and leaned her body against his. “Yúzé, it’s Eleri.”
No reaction.
It would take time. Yúzé always withdrew when he was hurt.
But she had that time now, thanks to the man who’d fought for her family when she couldn’t.
Who’d understood that they were her family from the first.
Turning, she met Adam’s gaze, her heart reaching out to him. Something reached back, a winged creature huge and extraordinary and powerful that swept into her in a storm of wings and passion and possessiveness.
Generous heart. Grieving boy. Loyal wing leader.
He was all of that, and he was so much more.
A brother who laughed. An uncle who cherished. A lover who adored.
Playful raptor. Deadly hunter.
Protector to the core.
She saw the love in his heart for all those who were his, and all those he had lost. Saw, too, glimpses of Cormac and Taazbaa’ as they laughed with their boy, then his grandparents walking with him hand in hand as they spoke the language of the Diné, complex and lyrical.
Anger, too, he’d felt. Brutal and cold. But it wasn’t his natural state.
He was warmth, humor, love, a heart that could embrace every member of his clan…but that had a hole she alone could fill.
He filled her in turn, and she felt as if her parched cells were opening up, becoming what they had always been meant to be.
His.
Her being overflowed with emotion, her legs staggering on the earth. Then he was there, inside her mind even as his hands helped her stay stable on this plane. “I love you,” she said, and she knew what that meant, understood the glory of it. “I love you, Adam.”
The falcon flew higher, deeper, until it was part of her, her arms feathered on the inside and her eyes those of a raptor. They were one so completely that when the forces of mating finally retreated, they took pieces of each other with them.
Dazed, she leaned into him for a heartbeat before her mind caught up to where they were and what they’d been doing before the most extraordinary moment of her life. “Where’s Saffy? And Yúzé. I had his hand.”
“Bram has her. I managed to hand her over before I lost myself in the mating. I think he’s taken them both into the tent.”
At ease now that she knew the two were safe, she just sank against Adam, her body boneless. “I know I should be sorry for trapping you with me when such a huge question hangs over my head, but I’m not. I feel like this is where I’ve been meant to be all my life.”
“You have,” Adam said in a stern tone. “And, my beautiful wild bird, there’s never any trapping when it comes to mates. Don’t think that if we didn’t mate, I’d find someone else. I wouldn’t. Not after I met you, knew you.”
Everything in her was warm and deeply…happy. “I want to tug you into our tent so we can lie there together and just be, but I need to help Saffy and Yúzé.” She tilted up her head.
Adam’s kiss was open-mouthed, a sensual promise. “We’ll make up for it later.” He stepped back, said, “Whoa,” then grinned. “Hello, mate.”
Feeling silly and young, she said, “Hello, mate,” in return, and they both stood there smiling foolishly at each other while the bats got bored of the sight and decided to take off en masse—but not leave.
Giving a loud “Eek!” Eleri ran off deeper into the cave, where the bats didn’t like to circle as much, while Adam ducked and dived while trying to stop laughing. She threatened him from her hiding spot…and that was when Saffron looked out of the tent and said, “This is the weirdest reaction I’ve ever had to meds, and I’ve had some weird reactions.”
• • •
Saffron snapped back faster than Yúzé.
None of them took that as a sign that she was “cured.” The fractures in Saffy ran too deep for that, but it was a start. As for Yúzé, he began to emerge the fourth day after his arrival at the cave, and Eleri knew he was back with them when he looked around while they were pacing the cave like contained tigers and said, “This cannot be real.”