Page 27 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 27

Kit

If the ancient concept of the hells had been real, I would have certainly ended up there.

Being a duelist? Terrible. Deflowering the baby Duskbringer? Also not good. Encouraging him somehow, to play into my personal power kinks? Straight to the hells, for sure.

One of those hells had been for sexual deviants, I was pretty sure, because our ancestors had been weirdly prudish. Though people didn’t much believe in hells anymore. They’d been a construct we’d invented in the days when we thought some agency outside of ourselves would enforce morality, instead of us having to do it ourselves.

Admittedly, we’d done a pretty poor job of it sometimes both before and after the invention and then deinvention of hells, but that was normal human fallibility at work.

Next to me, Aubrey gave a soft snore as he slid onto his side, and something in my chest trembled strangely.

It’s called your heart, Nikka said . I know, hard to remember because you’ve been so determined to pretend it didn’t exist .

I scoffed, then froze, waiting to see if the movement had woken Aubrey. It had not.

Little wonder, really. He had to be exhausted, bonding a whole fucking mountain. Volcano. It served me well to remember always that Slate wasn’t only a mountain.

Aubrey was full of energy from bonding and burning through it at a rate his body was unfamiliar with.

That last moment, when he’d loomed over me, so fucking big and hot and dominant, his eyes had glowed molten gold. I hadn’t been worried for a moment that it wasn’t Aubrey anymore, but it was definitely Aubrey with a huge power boost.

I had no idea what ability a bond with Slate might give him, but I could definitely imagine it being a lot to handle. Speeding myself up was enough for me to contend with; I didn’t want to imagine having to figure out what to do with literal world-shaking powers.

Possibly world-ending powers.

We barely know each other , I said to Nikka, going back to her previous comment.

But he said it , she countered, and it felt a little like a game of “I know you are but what am I?”

I shook my head, trying to clear it of lust at the reminder. He didn’t, though. It was...it was possessiveness. Ownership. He didn’t say what you’re saying.

Nikka was, as ever, unimpressed with my determination to see things from a clinical, uninvolved point of view. Oh please. You think someone like Aubrey Sagara is into no-strings kinky sex? He was a virgin. “Mine” doesn’t mean kinky sex games. Mine means mine. It means he wants you to stay. Expects you to stay. And you want to stay, anyway, so what’s the problem, other than your allergy to feelings? Hells, he even said it in a way that didn’t involve emotions, so you don’t have to run away and shower to stop worrying about someone getting their gross sticky feelings all over you.

She wasn’t . . . entirely wrong.

But me? I was. I was entirely wrong for someone soft and sweet like Aubrey.

I wasn’t a long-haul kind of guy. I was a one-and-done kind of guy, and I’d rarely slept with a single person more than once.

The Plan was a long-haul plan , Nikka pointed out.

I scoffed. Sex is different than The Plan. Relationships are different .

She didn’t say I was wrong, but I could feel her doubt. Why did she expect the way I’d handled all my previous relationships to change after all of five minutes of civility with Aubrey? We’d hated each other on sight, and?—

No you didn’t. You had decided to hate him before you ever met because I told you that you’d like him, and he got the wrong impression of you and jumped to conclusions. Conclusions he’s since reevaluated .

She wasn’t wrong, and it just annoyed me to admit it, so I went quiet, watching the rain outside the tiny alcove we were in.

Slate had led him here when they’d decided it was going to rain. Or maybe Slate had known it would rain. It made sense that Slate would be able to accurately predict that, as long as he had been around. He knew what incoming rain looked like.

I pressed a hand into the warm soil beside the sleeping bags, wondering what it might be like to be bonded to the whole mountain. I could feel Nikka against my skin, feel the way she vibrated when she spoke to me. Could Aubrey feel the whole mountain vibrate when it spoke to him?

Could he see what was going on all over Slate’s surface?

Could they both see our families?

I groped around until I found where my pants had been tossed, pulling my phone out of them. Unsurprisingly, it had no connection all the way out there. It was also running out of battery. I had a power pack in my backpack, but there didn’t seem to be a point to it, since I doubted we’d come back into range of a cell tower before we got close to the chalet, and by then we might as well just walk the rest of the way.

It wasn’t like I desperately needed the tiny farming simulator or the calculator app out here in the middle of nowhere.

What I wanted was to talk to Frost. To see him, safe and sound. And my father, and my other brother, and my sister, and Fawn Dawnchaser, and...and the others as well, I supposed.

I doubted I’d stop worrying until the moment I saw them all, alive and well and unconsumed by an exploding volcano.

I sighed, and as I did, the ground beneath me started to tremble.

Shit shit shit.

What now?

I turned to look at Aubrey, to see if he was having another seizure in his sleep. Or worse, if he was...if all this had been for nothing, and I’d failed, and?—

Aubrey rolled onto his back, somehow managing to wrap an arm under me and pull me close to him even in his sleep. With the other hand, he reached out and patted the ground, past the edge of the sleeping bag, like one might pet a cat that was sitting in their lap.

A moment later, the ground stilled, and a strange calm filled me. Or maybe the air around me. Contentedness.

Huh.

Carefully, I managed to pull one of the sleeping bags from the stack, unzipping it and throwing it over the top of both of us like a blanket, since Nikka had told me it was going to get cold the last day, and snuggled back up against Aubrey.

Sure, I was a one-and-done guy, but...we weren’t done yet, were we? He’d fallen asleep, and I was pretty sure we deserved another round before I went fleeing to Verisa to hide and avoid my feelings.

Knight would let me stay at his place if I asked, and...

Fuck me, but for the first time in my life, that sounded absolutely terrible. Running away and staying with my best frenemy, drinking vodka that tasted more like turpentine and trading thinly veiled insults, when Aubrey was right here, warm and open and smiling in his sleep, petting the fucking mountain like it was a puppy?

What kind of ridiculous person would I have to be, to do that?