“Like you enjoy camping so much,” Chloe muttered, currently huddled under a hoodie, a knit hat, gloves, and wrapped in a blanket.
“It’s a nice night.” The day had been unseasonably warm and she took advantage of a campground near the Canadian border crossing. After two days of driving, Juniper was glad to the fresh air and the silence. Nighttime temperatures would dip down, but it wasn’t dangerously cold.
They planned to cross into Canada in the morning. The whole premise of flashing her ID in a not-exactly-stolen SUV with a minor made her nervous. Tas would fly over the border before dawn and they’d meet on the other side. He assured her that he’d be able to follow the pull of the sigil if she removed the lid on the container.
“I just don’t understand why we can’t stay at that Motel 6 we passed,” Chloe muttered, her voice rising to whine.
“Because I have spent eighty years staring at concrete and steel,” Tas said. “I want to feel the moon and stars, the wind and rain, the sun and sky.”
That quieted Chloe’s complaining.
“We’ll stay in a motel tomorrow,” Juniper said. She couldn’t go too long without a shower and washing her hair before her skin crawled and she felt gross. The further north they went, the more they might have no choice but to camp. Looking at the map she picked up at a gas station didn’t fill her with hope.
She made a note to buy winter coats and gear, and those pocket warmer thingies. Tons of those. Then again, if they couldn’t get past the border, it didn’t matter. She’d never been to Canada. Hell, she’d never left Pennsylvania until a few days ago.
“You are worried. Share your burden with me.” Tas rotated the marshmallow over the fire, roasting it. Once satisfied at the golden-brown perfection, he passed the stick to Chloe, who sandwiched a toasty marshmallow between chocolate and graham crackers. They had an alliance regarding candy and moved like old partners, not needing to speak while assembling the s’mores. She was glad they got along. She had never brought a boyfriend home before and didn’t know how Chloe would react.
Not that Tas was her boyfriend. He was going home. Without her.
She hated thinking about the inevitable end of their relationship but saw no way to avoid it.
“About tomorrow,” she said. She knew that if she kept her calm, just acted like she was on a road trip to visit family, the border guards would wave her through. Acting nervous would be the fastest way to draw attention to herself. “What if they run the registration or plates on the SUV? What if it was reported stolen?”
So many things were beyond her control. Were the police looking for her? Would using her ID at the crossing flag something in the computer system, alerting the Rose Syndicate? The thoughts kept tumbling around in her head.
“You need more chocolate,” Chloe said, shoving a warm s’more into her hand. When she hesitated, Chloe flapped her hands and said, “Eat. Chocolate good. Adulting hard.”
“That’s not exactly a healthy attitude.” Juniper couldn’t disagree, though she felt better the moment that chocolate hit her tongue. She rolled her eyes and hummed happily. Adulting was hard and chocolate eased the burden. Too bad broccoli never made her swoon this way.
Tas joined her on the sleeping bag. She twisted in place to put her back to the fire and leaned into the solid warmth of him. Looking out at the night sky, she asked, “Which one is your planet?”
“Hmm. I do not think Duras is visible from here,” he said. After some consideration, he pointed to the east. “I always looked in that direction, though, when I think of home.”
“You don’t talk much about your home.”
He grunted. “I did not see the point. Duras is far, and I believed I would never return.”
“But now—”
“Now it is crowding my thoughts.” Tas shifted and positioned himself behind her, letting her back rest against his chest. His wings descended, wrapping around more securely than a blanket. With his arms and legs around her, she settled into his comfortable warmth.
She could stargaze and cuddle with him forever.
“Time advances differently on Duras,” he said. “My parents, brother, and sister have only aged a few years.”
“How is that possible? Some fancy science reason?”
“Time dilation and faster-than-light travel.”
She had no clue what he meant but would take his word for it. “What are their names?”
“My parents are Aris and Yilan. My brother is Anic. Kala is my sister,” he said.
“Younger than you?”
“Yes.”
“Anic would beg me to play games, but I felt I had no time.” He lifted his face to the stars. “I regret not finding the time them and thinking myself so important and busy. We did not part on the best of terms.”
“You argue with family, but you still love them. Chloe and I bicker all the time.”
“Anic did not want me to serve in the military. He opposed the war. Many people were growing weary of the constant struggle.”
“Were you one of them?” she asked.
“I am a thousand years removed from the war. Even at that distance, I find I no longer have a taste for politics or intrigue,” he said.
“Aren’t you an intelligence officer?” Seemed like career suicide to not care for politics.
“I think I’ve earned retirement. A male of my years should focus on his family.”
His family. His tone implied a relationship other than siblings and parents. She dreaded to ask, but she had to know. “Wife and kids waiting for you?”
He tilted his head in a quizzical look. “No.”
“Good—I mean, okay. It would suck if you had kids missing you.” It would suck, but her jealous heart loved that she had him all to herself.
“I worry that I have changed and that my family will not recognize me,” he said.
“I don’t believe that. You always know the people you love.” She’d always recognize Chloe, no matter how much time had passed, just as she’d know her parents if they miraculously walked in through the front door. Metaphorically speaking, of course. She wasn’t interested in having a pair of zombie parents.
That wasn’t true. If her parents came back to life, she’d be ecstatic, zombies or not.
“Is that how you recognized my human form?” he asked, rousing her from her silly train of thought.
“Yeah,” she replied, then tensed when she realized that her answer implied that she loved him.
He dropped his head to murmur in her ear. “You love me.”
He made a happy crooning noise that sent a jittery jolt of anticipation through her. She squeezed her thighs together, sighing heavily.
“Good, because I find myself loving you with each passing moment,” he said, voice low.
This gargoyle.
She shifted, keenly aware that she sat on his lap and could feel his hard cock. He released her from his arms and wings, allowing her to straddle his lap and face him. She drew his head down to hers, focused on his lips that said such sweet words—
“I’ll sleep in the car tonight if you’re going to be gross,” Chloe announced. In a dramatic teenage huff, she dragged her blanket and sleeping bag to the SUV. “With my earbuds in, listening to music.”
“Don’t use all my data,” Juniper said.
“Don’t be making kissy faces and stuff.”
She snickered, knowing that laughing only encouraged Chloe’s sassmouth. How would she ever be a well-behaved young lady when Juniper kept laughing at her bad behavior? Then again, being well-behaved was overrated.
“So,” Tas said, drawing her attention back to him.
The campfire at his back cast a shadow over his face, obscuring his features except for his gorgeous amethyst eyes. With his horns rising from the wild tangle of his hair, and his wings partially extended, he could be mistaken for a demon—but she only saw the tenderness in his eyes.
Fuck it. No pain, no gain.
“Don’t go,” she said.
/>
“Juniper—”
“Don’t go alone,” she amended.
For a long moment, he said nothing, just held her gaze with those eyes. She swallowed, nervous at his lack of a response.
His arms tightened around her and his wings descended, cocooning them together against the night. “I never intended to go alone,” he said, lips pressed to her ear.
“No?”
“These last few days, I have been searching for the right words to convince you to abandon your home and everything you know so this one male will not spend the rest of his days alone.”
Her heart swelled. “All you have to do is ask.”
“Juniper, my pebble, return to Duras with me. You are my Hondassa, my mate and my heart. I would be a male with clipped wings without you.”
“And Chloe, too?” She wouldn’t leave her sister.
“Of course. I would not insult you by suggesting otherwise.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes!” She pressed eager kisses to his mouth while he grinned. Her bottom lip caught on his fang, nicking her and forcing her to pull away. The pain focused her thoughts. “I’ll have to discuss this with Chloe. We’re a team, after all.”
His wings ruffled. “Ah. She may have informed me that I was to make an honorable female of you.”
“She did what?” Juniper asked, unsure if she should be mortified or amused.
“She wanted to convince me to bring you home, but my mind had already turned that way. I have been waiting for the right moment to ask.”
tas
She loved him.
He soared on the knowledge as surely as he did on the wind.
Tas realized at that moment that he had always been planning to bring Juniper with him. Life on Duras would be difficult for her, but he would carve out a place for them. His parents were traditional and held narrow-minded ideas about aliens. If they rejected his Hondassa, he would reject them.
He wanted to bring her to his family’s aerie, though. He wanted to stand at the highest perch with her after a storm and enjoy the peace of a clear violet sky. He wanted to hold their younglings in his arms and take them on their first flight. All her laughter, her grinning moments of joy, her frustrations and to share her worries, he wanted every moment and cursed himself for being a blind fool to believing that he could go without.
No matter what stars they sat under, no matter what sun warmed their faces, he was home with her. Juniper would always be his home.
21
Juniper
Things going her way made Juniper nervous. Call it conditioning. Luck never broke her way and life never gave her lemons, it tried to crush her under huge freaking boulders. So when the plan to reach the pick-up location actually worked, she worried.
Cross the border? Why had she even been worried? Exchanging US dollars for Canadian? A breeze. The drive to Calgary? Totally relaxing. Then on to Edmonton, Fort Nelson, and finally Watson Lake? The most beautiful scenery Juniper had ever seen in her life. The mountains appeared as a purple smudge against the horizon, growing larger until they crowded out the sky. If she hadn’t been planning on leaving the planet soon, she’d come back for a nice long vacation.
The only thing throwing shade on her optimism was the cranky teenager in the passenger seat. The morning they left the motel in Watson Lake was the start of the sixth day stuck in the car, which was one day too many without a break. Juniper could hear the hum of the engine and feel the vibrations of the tires on the road in her sleep. She saw pavement when she closed her eyes and felt thoroughly sick of driving.
“It’s only six hours to Tungsten,” she said. Using paper road maps and topographic maps for hikers, they determined the pick-up location to be Mount Nirvana, in the Northwest Territories. Amazingly, it sat just to the east of Gargoyle Ridge, another mountain peak.
“How about we check out the Northern Lights Center?” Juniper said, folding away the maps.
Chloe made a face. “I guess. Sounds kinda lame. Doesn’t it have to be dark to see the northern lights?”
“I’m sure it’s not lame.” Juniper pulled out her phone and pulled up the attraction’s website. The pay-as-you-go plan did not extend to Canada, but the motel had wi-fi. “It has a state-of-the-art panoramic video and surround-sound systems,” she read. “How can anything panoramic be lame? It’s umpossible,” she said with a grin, purposefully botching the word.
Chloe appealed to Tas. Usually, it worked. He seemed inclined to spoil, which could be a problem down the road but for the moment Juniper was glad they got along. “Tas, don’t let her make us do that. Tell her gargoyles are too cool to be seen in a tourist trap.”
“It seems like a fine opportunity to expand our education about your planet,” he replied.
“Fine. We’ll be lame together as a family,” Chloe said, flopping onto the bed in a fit of teen drama.
“It is the Bouvet way.”
Out of habit, she scrolled through the notifications on the phone. She paused at a text message, dread sliding down her spine like icy water. “Chloe? Did you text Amelia?”
“Relax. I used the hotel’s wi-fi.”
“No. No, there’s nothing to relax about,” Juniper said, stumbling over her words. This was bad. So, so bad.
“I just told her I was moving and wanted to say goodbye. It seemed like a dick move to just vanish on my bestie,” Chloe said. “Besides, they don’t know Amelia. How could they?”
Juniper ran a hand through her hair in frustration, unable to believe that such a smart kid could make such a dumb move. “They have your phone. They have your contacts. Fuck.”
Chloe’s eyes went big. “Holy shitsnacks. I didn’t think of that.”
“Language,” Juniper said reflexively. “Can wi-fi be traced?”
“It uses an IP address, so yes,” Chloe said.
Tas watched the exchange, saying nothing until that moment. “We gain nothing with panic now. Let us make haste and depart.”
Despite sounding extraordinarily old-fashioned, he had a point. Flapping their hands and pulling their hair wouldn’t help. They needed to put as many miles between them and the motel as possible before the Rose people arrived.
“Let’s go. There’s a general store on the way out of town. We’ll stock up on supplies there,” Juniper said. They’d reach Tungsten by nightfall—fingers crossed—but it was a ghost town. She didn’t expect to find a roadside Travelodge but hoped that at least one of the empty buildings could provide shelter for the night.
Tas stayed on alert. Even though he was in his human form, he did not wear a shirt and gave no indication that the chill in the morning air affected him. No one commented on the shirtless man on an autumn day in the Yukon.
Chloe sat in the backseat of the SUV. She had her nose buried in a paperback historical romance they picked up that morning, but the pages didn’t turn.
“I’m not upset,” Juniper said. She hated seeing her sister sulk. They made it out of Watson Lake without a shadowy organization showing up to capture her boyfriend, so yeah. Gold stars all around.
“You are. I can tell. I fucked up,” Chloe said.
“I’m not, not really, and we all make little mistakes.”
Chloe snorted. She looked at Juniper and grinned. Juniper tried her best to keep a straight face, but her sister’s silent laughter made her snort. Soon they were both giggling like mad.
Tas looked between the sisters. “I do not understand what is funny.”
“Little. Mistakes,” Chloe gasped.
“I never said I was perfect,” Juniper said.
“Remember when you forgot I was allergic to penicillin?”
“It was just a rash.”
“You’re allergic to penicillin too. How could you forget? I could have died, Junie. Anaphylactic shock.”
“Honestly, I don’t think Mom ever told me I was allergic. It’s something I sort of figured out later,” Juniper said. Antibiotics had always given her a stomach ache and hives, which she assu
med was part of being sick.
“Or that time it snowed, and you forgot to check if the schools were closed and made me go to school?”
“It was only a few inches!”
Chloe snorted. “That’s what she said.”
“You are way too young to laugh about that, missy,” Juniper said, alarmed at the potential dick joke.
“Or how about the time you borrowed way too much money from Mickey? And then you had to steal a gargoyle and then we had to flee the country? Yeah, good times.”
Smartass.
“That one is my favorite mistake,” Tas said. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Juniper’s cheek.
Juniper glanced at Chloe in the rearview mirror. Her sister playfully stuck her tongue out. Juniper returned the sentiment and all was well between the Bouvet sisters.
“Hey,” Chloe started in a conspiratorial whisper, “remember that time Mom hid the Easter eggs in a patch of poison ivy?”
Spending the night in an abandoned house smack in the center of a ghost town in the Yukon? Spooky. Super spooky. Still, sleeping on the dusty floor was better than sleeping in a tent when the temperature dipped below freezing. The old house had four walls, a roof, and all the windows intact.
Gargoyles were great for sleepovers in spooky houses, though. Tas kept watch while Juniper and Chloe snuggled up in their sleeping bags. Periodically he checked the coordinates on his sigil. His blue dot was now nearly upon the red location marker, and new white dots appeared on the map.
He examined the map when she woke. The alien device bathed the empty room in red light, which wasn’t murdery at all.
“What are those?” she asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. What she wouldn’t give for a cup of hot coffee and a stack of pancakes. It was her last day on Earth. Pancakes seemed appropriate.
“Other Khargals,” he said, answering her question. “I cannot tell who from this distance, but the sigils sense each other.”
She dug into her pack and used the wet wipes to scrub down the most odorous parts of herself. It wasn’t ideal, but a birdbath would keep her skin from itching. They had a serious hike ahead of them that day. No one would smell their best at the end of it. “Nervous?”
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