Page 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Shock, heartbreak, fear—it all ripped through me in a guttural cry. The oak tree erupted, incensed by this betrayal, but I wouldn’t let us react. I wouldn’t hurt Arthur back, and the Green Mother knew I could. With a sob, I blinked my eyes against the burning tears and forced myself to sit up.

I had to try again. I had to reach him.

The lumberjack shifter stood over me, fist raised for another punishing blow. His chest heaved, his breath blasting through clenched teeth, and his eyes were wild. “Y-you—” Gulping, he looked at the redness left behind on his hand. Blood from where his fingers had caught on the thorns pooled under his fingernails. The amber light vanished from his eyes.

“We should away,” the wight urged. The setter slunk forward, angling to take my sleeve in its teeth.

Cowering, I ducked my head and reached for the fallen rose. A swirl of green magic had its petals reattached and looking like new. I offered it again, half in parlay and half to ward off another of the bear shifter’s strikes. As if a rose could do such a thing. “Please, Arthur. Don’t.”

When another strike did not come, I chanced a look at the lumberjack. With the movement, the chains I wore around my neck slipped free from the fox-fur coat. The amazonite pendant was as luscious a blue-green as ever, but the Celtic shield . . ..

It shone like a small white star.

There could be no more doubt now I was the real Meadow Hawthorne, not when the amulet that was coded to both of us declared otherwise.

“Meadow,” Arthur gasped. He glanced down to the wounds—now sealed—left behind by the rose thorns. “It’s . . . really you, isn’t it? Oh, sweetheart—”

The ground shook as he dropped to his knees and cradled my face, gingerly sweeping away the hair torn loose from my braid by his slap. He sucked in a ragged breath, his hazel eyes glassy and miserable. “The illusions always break like smoke when I strike them,” he rambled, voice cracking. “Nothing physical exists here, but you, the rose— Spirits above, I’m so sorry. I’d never hurt you. Oh, Meadow—”

“Thistle thorns.” My groan turned into a watery chuckle. “You hit like a freight train.”

Arthur gave a violent shake of his head. Three tears winked like choice crystal before splattering against the stones. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

“I’m already healed, bear claw.” There wasn’t even a phantom sting tingling my cheek.

His warm, trembling hands moved from my face to my shoulders, down my arms to my waist. With seemingly no effort at all, the lumberjack shifter hauled me into his lap for a fierce embrace. The rose dropped, forgotten, from my grip.

“How are you here?” he whispered. He couldn’t stop touching me. His hands roamed from my back to my legs around his waist then repeated. Over and over, squeezing, caressing, kneading, convincing himself that I wasn’t a dream. “Spirits above, I can touch you. Curse this coat. ”

There was a frantic moment where we attacked the buttons on my coat, then only a thinner layer of wool separated his hands from my skin, my breasts from the paw print tattoo on his chest.

It took all my concentration to answer him, for my body was doing the same thing his was—reassuring itself I was indeed in my true mate’s arms. My hands traced the familiar landscape of his shoulders, the broad plains of his back, the softness of his hair. A deep inhale brought the comforting aromas of old-growth forest, honey, sunlight, and him. I’d never need air again, just his scent.

“I made friends with a wight,” I finally managed to reply. “Can’t you see it?”

“Only you see me, Daughter of Violet. I didn’t want to agitate him further,” the wight told me.

“I see only you,” Arthur said. “You’re all I want to see.”

Then his arms banded around my ribs and he buried his face against my neck. His shoulders trembled, his breath shuddered, and he simply clung to me. Overwhelmed, I melted against him, my grief at our separation and my relief at our reunion leaking into his shoulder. His fingers splayed, touching as much of me as he could, fingertips digging almost painfully into my back. I layered my arms around his strong neck and dug my hands into his thick brown hair, cradling him close.

“I can’t feel you like I once could,” he moaned. “There’s this hole in my heart that won’t go away.” Arthur lifted his head, revealing damp cheeks and sorrowful eyes. “Even now, so close, there is something dividing us.”

The stolen fated mate bond.

Cupping his face, I lifted his gaze to meet mine. “I’ll make this right, bear claw. I will get us back.”

My fingers slipped once again into his hair and grazed against his scalp. His arms tightened, crushing his chest against my breasts. I wanted to kiss him, to drink in all the gentle sweetness of his mouth, but I wouldn’t waste this rare opportunity for a moment of carnal pleasure. It would only grant a fragment of bliss without the mate bond connecting us anyway.

In a low, hushed tone, I said, “There’s so much happening, but I don’t know how much I can risk telling you.”

“You don’t become a Coalition enforcer without some mental conditioning,” was his reply. Still, he shook his head. “I wouldn’t risk it, sweetheart. I am not so proud to rule out the chance he might still break me.”

I couldn’t tell him about Brandi and the sabotaged Caer powder. Nor that the Crafting Circle ladies were awake and that Grandmother had voluntarily surrendered herself to Ossian’s dungeon. I couldn’t even mention Sawyer. That brave cat who’d helped me keep my sanity when everything seemed lost.

Pinching the side of my bottom lip between my teeth, I rapidly sought a way to salvage this. I had to tell him about the summoning mirror, how it would be Ossian’s first target after I went into Elfame without him.

“You said Ossian’s seen all your memories?” I ventured. “Including a certain shiny reflective thing in the woods next to my apple orchard?”

Recognition flickered in his hazel eyes. Then he shook his head vehemently. “Yes, but any new thoughts—”

“It must be protected,” I said in a rush. “He’ll want to destroy it when I—”

Arthur smooshed his hand over my mouth, silencing me. “No,” he said firmly.

I sucked in a frustrated breath through my nose, then I stuck my tongue out and smeared it against his palm. Immature, certainly, but I was desperate to see his eyes light up with even the faintest whisper of mirth.

Unflinching, he cocked an eyebrow at me .

“O-aaay,” I promised in a muffled voice.

He removed his hand, wiped my saliva off on the white fox-fur coat, and held me close. Leaning forward, Arthur touched his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“Never. I got what I really wanted.” I caressed a hand down his beard. “You, knowing you’re not abandoned.” His beard was coarser than I remembered. More fur-like. “Can you understand me when you’re a bear?”

“Your emotions and intent, yes, but your words . . . only some,” he admitted, pained. “I used to, but it’s been so long now. This collar—” He shook his head. “What man is left in me must be here, in these dreams, to protect the Coalition secrets that Criminal cannot know. And now, this one too.”

His humanity is slipping. My heart shivered like a sluagh had just stolen away all my warmth with its icy caress.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked, that tightness in my chest spreading everywhere else like a blight. “For everything. I never thought coming to Redbud would lead to this.” I dissolved under the immense weight I’d been carrying for so long. Guilt and shame and no small amount of remorse tore through me. “None of this was supposed to happen, least of all you. I only wanted—”

“I don’t regret anything,” he interrupted gently. “And you were right, you know, about it being the rodeo. I knew then, without a doubt, that I would do anything for you. Be anyone for you, so long as it keeps you safe and happy.”

His large hands were reverent as he placed them on either side of my neck, his thumbs stroking away the moist tracks left behind on my cheeks. “This man will always love you, Meadow Lavender Hawthorne. And even when he is long gone, the bear will love you still.”

I shook my head, caged as it was in his tender but firm embrace. “Don’t say that.”

His lips pressed against mine, so firm and cherishing and —

A wind ripped me from his grasp. It was so violent it smothered my scream. Eddies of mist shrouded me in white and whisked me away. I shouted for Arthur, reached for him. Deaf to my pleas, he only lifted the rambler rose from where I’d dropped it and held it to his chest. A heartbeat later, my essence stood within the vaporous environs of the wight’s prison.

“He ejected us,” the setter said quietly.

I could only nod and touch my lips where his kiss lingered. I hadn’t even told him I loved him.

“I trust I’ve proven my good will sufficiently.”

Again, only a nod. Then I choked back the knot in my throat to say, “I don’t know your name to thank you properly.”

“That is because I have none. We wights know who we are without one. You can thank me by releasing me, as you have promised.”

“I will. On the eve of Elfame.”

“Don’t forget.”

The wight’s form flashed between the white setter and the shadowy wolfhound in more warning than farewell, and I took my leave.