Darkness Bound

45

The word was unspoken, but Leander saw it in her eyes. In the way her chin lifted, the way her back straightened, the way her gaze, always so soft when she looked at him, turned steely.

Yes, she would die for them. For her beloved, beautiful husband and her two new babies and this clan of magical, mystical beings who’d accepted her as their own, even though she was only half their world. Only half their Blood.

“It’s my responsibility. More than anyone, you understand responsibility. If the roles were reversed, you’d be doing the exact same thing.”

He closed his eyes. Jenna knew he knew she spoke the truth, and she also knew he hated to admit it.

“If anything happens to you, it will end me. You do realize that, don’t you?” he whispered. He opened his eyes, and they blazed. “I won’t go on without you. I can’t.”

She stepped into the circle of his outstretched arms and rested her cheek against his chest. He buried his face in her hair and they clung to each other, hearts pounding, the dark, uncertain future rushing toward them at the speed of a runaway train. Jenna gently kissed her love on the cheek. “You’ll never be without me. Even when I’m far away, my heart is always with you. My heart will always only be with you.”

Then, without waiting for a response, without giving him the opportunity to try to argue her out of what she needed to do, she Shifted to Vapor.

It rose to a burning bright peak within her, effortless as breathing, smooth as silk. From one heartbeat to the next her body transformed from cumbersome flesh and blood and bone to cool, lovely mist, weightless and wonderful. As it always did when she left her physical self behind, a song of joy pierced straight through her, thrilling and impossibly sweet.

Goodbye, my love. Wish me luck; I’m going to need it.

As she surged in a glittering gray plume toward the window that stood ajar at the end of the room, Leander was left holding up her empty dress in the stillness and splendor of the East Library, watching her go with haunted, anguished eyes.

Like an arrow sure of its mark, the half-Blood Queen of the Ikati shot out into the morning sky.

“Before we do this, Red,” Hawk said, his voice low and serious, his face a mask of stone, “there are three things you need to remember if you’re going to get back to New York in one piece.”

That sounded ominous enough to Jack, but his manner made her even more anxious. She’d never seen him this . . . wired.

After her emotional admission a day and a half ago, before she’d gone to bathe in the pool beneath the waterfall, they’d settled again into silence. He’d politely requested that she let him stand nearby—back turned—to make sure nothing snuck up on her during her swim, and he’d kept his word. Crouched on an outcropping of rock just above the warm, clear waters, he’d never once looked her way . . . and she’d checked repeatedly.

But his gaze had never strayed from some fixed point in the distance, far overhead.

Following her blurted admission about her brother, she found both Hawk’s request to stand guard and his respect for her privacy deeply touching.

Even after more than thirty-six hours, she was still raw and bleeding in places inside of her that had been scabbed over for years. He must have sensed it, because he allowed her to retreat into the snug, safe corner of her mind she’d created long ago to cope when things went sideways. He only spoke to her in gentle tones to warn her of some obstacle in their path as they walked, or instruct her on the finer points of forest living, like how to use a handful of foaming berries and a macerated twig to brush her teeth, or how to funnel rainwater from the curved leaves of trees when she was thirsty. Last night, when she’d awoken screaming from another nightmare, he’d only squeezed her into the hard warmth of his chest until she stopped trembling, then released her and stared silently out into the vast emerald darkness, never speaking a word at all.

Now, after a week of sailing the ocean and trudging through wilderness and forging a kind of bizarre, backward alliance based on blurted honesties, silences that should have been uncomfortable but were companionable instead, and the knowledge they’d already forced one another to re-examine some of their sacrosanct beliefs, they stood together in the soft sapphire aftermath of twilight, looking down into the wide, misted bowl of an emerald valley wherein Hawk said his colony lay.

“What are the three things?” Jack’s voice was as low and solemn as his.

He was examining the landscape below the hill they were about to descend with eyes so focused and predatory she thought briefly his nickname was exactly apropos. A raptor’s gaze held just that kind of piercing, hungry keenness. “First and most important, the Alpha is always right. No matter what, no questions asked.”

“The Alpha,” she repeated, unsure. “How will I know which one is the Alpha?”

His lips quirked. “Trust me, you’ll know.”

Adrenaline threaded along her nerve endings like a barbed, creeping vine, lifting all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. “Second?”