Page 33

—Saffron Bianca to Eleri Dias (today)

It was the most emotion Adam had seen from Eleri since she’d come to Raintree, and even then, it was a muted thing that told a story of destruction he refused to accept. But that she was fighting through it to help Jacques, it meant something.

“Naia scans you the entire time,” he said. “Jacques won’t thank me if we kill you getting him out.” His best friend was a protector, and he’d expect Adam to make sure no one hurt themselves in an effort to save him.

“Fine.”

When Adam wove his fingers through Eleri’s again, he was struck by how fine her bones were when he’d gotten used to seeing her as tough and unflinching.

“You start bleeding too much and I’m hauling you out.

” No room for negotiation. “As for the other thing”—the guilt that drove her, the need for absolution—“forget it.”

He hadn’t thought he’d ever get to that point, but seeing her bleeding out and still trying to help Jacques?

It shattered the wall of anger that had kept him sane since the day he’d met her…

only to realize that was it, the only relationship they’d ever have.

It had been easier to be angry with her than to grieve her loss on top of his grief over his parents.

Eleri didn’t ask him what he meant. She just said, “I can’t.”

The quiet words destroyed him.

Then she turned and put her hand on Jacques once more.

The next hour was one of the most excruciating Adam had ever endured. His best friend was locked in his body, while the woman who had haunted him for ten years kept bleeding but would not allow him to pull her away.

“Each time you break the connection,” she said the first time he attempted it, “I have to start again.”

It took everything he had to let her see this through.

Eleri was crying tears of a red so dark that Naia was clearly about to tell him to intervene when he felt it—a tug on his blood bond with Jacques.

Too light, too weak, Eleri’s tears increasing in volume.

“Her vitals are dropping.” Naia’s voice was healer-firm. “We have to stop her.”

“No,” Eleri whispered, her voice coming as if from a vast distance.

He gritted his teeth and allowed her to have another minute, even as the scent of iron suffused the room. The tug on the blood bond grew stronger in tandem with the thickening scent of Eleri’s blood.

Making a deep sound in his throat, he put every ounce of the power of Clan WindHaven in his voice as he said, “Jacques, you need to get the fuck out here now .”

His friend shifted into a million particles of light in front of them.

Eleri jerked her hand away with a startled sound, and he held her trembling body against him, one hand on the back of her head, his gut tight, and anguish a knot in his chest as he waited to see if his best friend would come back to them.

The light coalesced…and there was Jacques in his full human form.

No amputated limbs.

No arm that was a wing.

No fingers turned into talons.

Naia rushed to the other man’s side, reattaching all the medical lines that had become detached due to his shift. A few embedded elements had disintegrated in the shift, but changeling medical tech was designed for such eventualities and Naia was able to quickly swap out the damaged parts.

“He’s with us.” Sascha’s smile was warm with relief as she helped Naia by wrapping a monitoring cuff around Jacques’s biceps. “I can feel him.”

“So can I.” Naia’s voice was thick, but she moved at speed to give Jacques everything he needed. “I’ll do a full body scan to check parts of him haven’t semi-shifted in ways we can’t see, but my healing abilities say we have him in one piece—and one form.”

Adam had no time to celebrate.

Eleri’s body went limp in his arms, blood trickling out of her ears and the corners of her eyes. And his fucking heart, it twisted in agony. “Naia,” he said, tone rough.

Naia’s head jerked up, her excitement wiped out by worry. “Pulse, respiration?”

“Slow but steady. Shallow.” He grabbed the scanner she threw over and read the results back to her after he ran it over Eleri.

“She’ll be okay”—relief in Naia’s tone—“but needs a transfusion. Put her in the next room—I’ll grab the supplies and get the blood into her.”

Sascha spoke as he scooped Eleri’s too-light body into his arms. “I sensed a massive psychic burst toward the end. I’m fairly certain she’s flamed out and, given her condition, will probably sleep for a good chunk of time.”

Cradling Eleri close, he carried her to the spare patient room and laid her down on the bed. Even unconscious, her face held its strict lines, as if she’d learned to never lower her guard, not even in rest.

His Eleri had never found safe harbor.

The first thing he did was wipe the blood off her.

He’d driven her to this with his unending fury at her, even knowing that she’d never been in charge.

She sought penance because she carried a guilt that had never been her weight to bear…

and she did it for the same reason he’d been so angry with her all this time.

Eleri might not be changeling, but she’d felt the same thing he had. She might not have understood what it was…but it hadn’t mattered. It had altered her. As it had forever altered him.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly as he removed her shoes so she’d be more comfortable. “I was a complete asshole. You know why, don’t you?” His breath hitched in his chest as he spoke the truth for the first time. “It wasn’t just grief at the loss of my parents. It was grief at losing you.”

Trauma upon trauma at the worst point of his existence.

“I can forgive the kid I was—he was messed up, angry, and grieving before he ever met you. But the way I’ve been since you walked back into my life?

I hope you kick the hell out of me in return.

I’m pretty sure Jacques will do it for you once you tell him what a shit I’ve been to you. ”

He wanted his best friend and his mate to meet, to like each other, to gang up against him when he was an ass.

He wanted to introduce Eleri to his sister, to Amir and Malia and Tahir.

He wanted to tell her all about his parents and grandparents.

And he wanted her embedded in his clan, surrounded by people who’d die for her and whose loyalty she never, ever had to question.

“No matter what happens from this point on”—he cradled her face—“I’m yours. And I will fight for you. For us. I will be your safe harbor as I should’ve always been.”

Because he wasn’t fucking ready to just accept that his mate’s death had been preordained by the psychic butchers who’d gone in and eviscerated the heart and soul of the girl who’d wanted to bandage his hurts so many years ago.

His falcon released a battle cry.