Page 162

A dric’s stomach dropped. He sprang to his feet. “You—no.” He paced away, then back again. “You could be wrong. Everyone knows the Sight is unpredictable.”

Rosana spread her hands. “I’m not sure,” she admitted, “but my Gift is strong, and I’ve touched you over and over in the last few days without even a glimmer—except for this gut feeling that if you came here alone, you’d die.”

He stared down at her, lungs jerking. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. If he died, Rosana was supposed to be safely back at Rock Run, free to mate with some other male.

My fate is tangled up in yours now.

He’d learned control in a hard school. But for the first time in a long time, rage got the upper hand. Rage at his uncle. Rage at Langdon and his thrice-damned son, Tyrus. Rage at the river fada who’d raped his sister, and at the members of Adric’s own clan who’d set the whole thing up.

But most of all, rage at the world that wouldn’t let him have the woman he wanted more than life itself.

He turned, slammed the side of his fist against the stone wall. Rosana flinched.

He exhaled, forced himself to speak calmly. “We can’t bond. Not yet. I—you know why.”

She jumped up as well. “I’m not asking you to choose me over Marjani,” she said in a subvocal voice.

“I’d never ask that. But what if you’re wrong?

What if the mate bond is the only thing that can save you?

And don’t forget what I Saw—you could set off another Darktime.

” She quoted her own words: “ The prince will destroy your clan from the inside out. ”

“Not if I kill the motherfucker first,” he snarled.

“Don’t you see?” She grabbed his arms. “It could mean you , not him. That you dying is what sets it off. You’re the glue holding your clan together. If they lose you, the Darktime will rise again.”

He stared at her, arrested. Could she be right? But if she was, where did that leave his sister?

He shook her off and backed away. “Marjani could lead in my place.”

“Could she? Or would there be another series of challenges? Your clan is finally getting its shit together. Do you want to risk that? All I’m asking is that you stop fighting the mate bond. Maybe this is meant to be. Together, the two of us are stronger than either of us alone.”

“Damn it, Rosana. This isn’t your fight, it’s mine.”

“It’s mine now.”

He growled and dropped onto the bench. He leaned forward, head clutched in his hands.

She sat beside him. Her hand came to his nape, stroking in that way that made his cat want to lay its head on her lap and purr. He stiffened his spine against the temptation.

“I love you for so many reasons,” she murmured.

“But?” There was always a but .

“No but . That you love your sister so much…” She rested her cheek against his. “It just makes me love you even more. I want you to know that.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Inside, the mate bond battered invisible fists against the barrier he’d erected.

He slid down the bench, away from her and that petting hand. “He came to me, you know. Your brother.”

“Dion?”

“Yeah.”

Her brows snapped down. “When?”

“The other night. After we went to Lewes.”

He distinctly heard her teeth grind together. “What did he say?”

“That you and me just wouldn’t work—and not only because you’re his sister and my clan would never accept you. But because you’re a river fada. You need water. Clean, fresh water to swim in as your dolphin.”

A slash of her hand. “You think I don’t know that? We could figure it out.”

“You’d move to Baltimore? Leave your family, your clan? Because I sure as hell can’t move to Rock Run.”

She raised her chin. “Yes.”

He shook his head.

“It could work,” she insisted. “If we both want it to. Baltimore has fresh water—Herring Run, Jones Falls.”

“They’re filled with trash. And when it rains, there’s run-off from the pavement. Raw sewage, when it rains hard.”

“Then I’ll go north every few days. I wouldn’t have to go all the way up to Grace Harbor. I can swim in the Chesapeake north of Baltimore.”

He ran some options in his mind. If he survived the next few days—and that was a big if—maybe they could work it out. There was still his clan, of course, although Marjani seemed to think they’d fall in line.

He wrapped his fingers around his quartz. It had warmed, the crystals humming an eager, yearning song.

Inside, the cougar snarled and scratched.

Mate. Our mate.

He released the quartz. “Tell you what. We’ll talk, okay? When all this is over.”

Her smile was wide. “Okay. Sure.”

He could’ve left it at that. She was happy. He’d all but agreed to mate-claim her. At least if he died, she’d know he’d really wanted her. But somehow his mouth was moving again.

“You wanted to know why I didn’t challenge my uncle for alpha.”

“No.” She squeezed his hand. “I know you, Adric. If you didn’t challenge him, then you had a good reason.”

He glanced at her. Tempted to agree, and then drop it. He didn’t explain himself to anyone, even Marjani. But he wanted Rosana to know the truth.

“Yeah,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I had a good reason.”

He stared out at the shadowed room, his fingers intertwined in hers. The silence thickened. When he spoke, it was with a low rasp.

“My dad was the first. After Leron killed him, he sent my mom to fight in South America in some stupid war between two fae. And then he took me and Marjani in, and we were supposed to obey him. Like we didn’t know what the fuck was going on. When I fought back, he beat me.”

She sucked in a breath. “Marjani?”

“He never touched her—which is why he lived as long as he did. But he treated her like shit. Both of us. By then, I think he’d realized I was alpha material.

” His jaw set. “We never had enough food. We had to stay out all night spying on his so-called enemies. No schooling except what we picked up on our own. He even went after my friends. Fuck, I was counting the days until I was strong enough to challenge him. Then”—he swallowed hard—“he came to Jani, ordered her to whore for his second.”

“Holy mother,” she breathed.

“Yeah. His own niece.”

“Did—?”

He shook his head. “She’d have killed herself first.”

“Thank Deus she had you.”

He grunted. “It was the only thing that kept us going—that we had each other. You know what that S.O.B. did? Invited the night fae into Baltimore. He let them feed on us so he could stay in power. What kind of monster does that?”

He was gripping her fingers too tightly, but he couldn’t let go. He stared at their two hands, unseeing, caught in the nightmare of the Darktime.

His throat closed up. He pushed the words past it. “I was the only one strong enough to take him down.”

Her swallow was audible.

“I live with it every single fucking day. The Darktime. The friends I lost. My mom and dad. But killing my uncle Leron?” His lips twisted. “I haven’t lost a single minute of sleep over it.”

She didn’t speak, didn’t try to tell him he’d done the right thing. Just opened her arms.

His breath shuddered out. Then his hands clamped on her. He dragged her onto his lap and buried his face in her hair.

“I love you, all right? I fucking love you. May the Goddess help us both.”