Page 53

Bounding forward, she wrapped her arms around his lowered muzzle, hugging as much of him as she could reach.

“Thank you, Xira. This was exactly what I needed.”

Pulling back, she caught Kaiden’s gaze. He didn’t try to hide how pleased he was to see her so happy—an expression that only deepened when she grinned widely back. Her grin, however, was mostly because he looked ridiculous, and she could only imagine she appeared worse.

“Have your fun, but then you and I need to get to work,” Xira said, settling down onto the squishy grass underfoot. It, too, held a bioluminescent shimmer, glittering all the way across the valley and past a silver lake up to the snow-capped mountains in the distance.

“Work?” Alex asked, waving her hands in the air like a manic conductor and watching as more starbursts exploded onto her skin.

“You’re going to practise your climbing skills,” he explained. “It won’t do if we need a quick getaway and you can hardly make it up my wings.”

Still mesmerised by the splattering colours, she said, “It’s not my fault you’re so big now. I certainly haven’t changed in size.”

Regardless of that, she understood his point. And so, after running amok with the floating sparkles until she was shamelessly covered enough to resemble a multi-coloured, glow-in-the-dark freak of nature, she turned her attention to Xira.

Even with Kaiden reclined on the ground and watching with clear amusement, Alex was too light in spirit to feel self-conscious when Xira stretched out his wing and tried to explain yet again the best way for her to run up it. Over and over she attempted to smoothly execute the action, but over and over she failed to scale his monstrous height with ease. It wasn’t just that he was so large and his wing was on such an incline, but the glossy sinew made gripping difficult, causing her to try and pick her way along with caution rather than blazing a path up as per his repeated instructions.

When she slipped and fell for what felt like the hundredth time, Kaiden was unable to keep his silence.

“For someone with immortal blood, it’s amazing how uncoordinated you are.”

Technically, she only hadaccessto immortal blood, meaning she was able to glean from a limited selection of the benefits itafforded, and supernatural grace was sadly not one of them. It wasn’t like she was immortal herself—she was still as human as he was, at least in all the ways that mattered. But since Kaiden already knew that, Alex simply sent him a warning look from where she remained sprawled on the soft grass after her most recent tumble; a look that narrowed further upon seeing the laughter in his eyes.

“I’d like to see you try and do any better,” she grumbled.

She straightened to standing when Kaiden rose to his feet, apparently willing to take her up on the challenge.

“Xira, do you mind?” he asked.

Xira’s eyes shifted to Alex for a second, a look she couldn’t read but didn’t think boded well for her, before he responded, “Show her how it’s done, Kaiden.”

Curious as to the solidarity they’d formed in such a short acquaintance—though not thrilled to already be the butt of a joke between them—Alex watched with crossed arms as Kaiden made his way to where she stood near the tip of Xira’s outstretched wing. He ran a hand along the tough but unbelievably soft muscle, testing the texture, before he nodded and then turned to stride away from them.

“What—” Alex didn’t get to finish asking where he was going before he spun around and, with a running start, sprint-jumped all the way up Xira’s wing onto his back without so much as a stumble.

Gaping at him as he tauntingly weaved his way between the spikes along the length of Xira’s backbone, all Alex could do was stammer out, “How the hell did you do that?”

Using the fleshy membrane of Xira’s wing like it was little more than a slippery slide, Kaiden dropped gracefully back down to the ground until he was standing right in front of her.

His eyes were bright with mirth and something else entirely as he used a finger to smear some of the coloured splatter acrossher cheek, quietly answering, “Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith, Alex.”

It was impossible to miss the double meaning in his words. Just as it was impossible to miss the way he was moving closer to her.

And the way she was moving closer to him.

Suddenly, there was no room between them, his arms slowly circling her, with one wrapping around her waist and the other moving from her cheek to curl around her neck.

When his face was so close that he was all she could see, he held her gaze and whispered, “I once told you that a first kiss should be memorable. Do you remember?”

Fearing any words she offered would come out in a croak, she only nodded in reply.

Kaiden’s mouth curled into a smile, his eyes flicking towards their glowing surrounds before returning to hers. “I’d say this is pretty memorable.”

Alex didn’t say anything. Shecouldn’tsay anything. Not over the wild rhythm of her pounding heart.

Lowering his head until he was barely a breath from her, his gaze travelled over her features. She wasn’t sure what he saw there, but whatever it was, he misinterpreted it. Because instead of closing the space between them like she expected—like shewanted—he pulled away slightly and said, “I promised I’d give you as much time as you need. It’s okay if you’re not read—”

She didn’t give him a chance to finish before she rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.