by Alex Lidell
Unlike me.
I shut my eyes, trying to strategize a means of moving that will not make me scream. With last night’s intense connection to Coal broken, the last of his magic has drained from my veins overnight, the preternatural strength and resilience I echoed now completely gone. I go to slide out from under the male’s arm and hiss as the motion jostles my shoulder.
Coal wakes in an instant, his blue eyes clear and surveying the world for danger before finding it beneath his own hand. He pulls back from me quickly, as if drawing back from a hornet’s nest.
Right. Fine. No matter. At least with him awake, I need not be subtle about moving. Wishing the door were much closer to the bed, I try to gather my legs beneath me.
Coal’s heavy palms still my torso before I can move. His nostrils flare delicately as he takes in my scent. Then he curses colorfully. “How bad is it, mortal?” he demands.
“Good morning to you too,” I mutter.
Coal pulls the blanket off me, ignoring my indignant squeak as he rips his shirt off my body as well. His calloused and impossibly gentle hands probe along my skin. “I think I cracked several ribs,” he whispers, the color gone from his face. “As for your shoulder . . .” He flexes the joint, drawing another gasp from my throat. “Stars, mortal. It’s a hair away from dislocation.”
Broken ribs? Dislocated shoulder? I blink. “How—”
“How? Do you truly require a recap?” Coal runs his hands through his loose hair then turns tightly to sink his fist into the already cracked bedpost. His body trembles, his hands clenched as his gaze brushes my body again. “I don’t know what to say,” he says softly. “You can exact whatever retribution you wish, but we both know it won’t be enough. I’ve hurt—I’ve injured you, mortal. There isn’t a way to make it right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I wince, shifting myself into a sitting position. “First, there were two of us playing yesterday. And second, how come you aren’t ever this upset about walloping me in training?”
Coal blinks at the question, his crystal-blue eyes opening and closing like an owl’s. “Because when we train, I hit what I’m aiming for.” He lowers his head, his shoulders dropping. “That was not the case last night. I wasn’t in control.”
No. Neither of us was. “I thought that was the whole point,” I mutter. I reach toward Coal but my hand finds empty air as the male vaults off the bed and strides to the door, from which I now hear low lupine whines intercepted with displeased growls.
“That’s Shade,” Coal says, confirming my suspicions. “He cannot hear us, but his wolf smells his mate hurt. And that I hurt her.”
Before I can point out that this seems like a very good reason to keep the door shut, Coal pulls it open.
Two hundred pounds of angry predator rushes through the opening and crosses the room in two large leaps, knocking Coal flat on his back. The door slamming closed in his wake, Shade lands on the bed beside me, regaining his fae form in a flash of furious light. His nostrils flare, his yellow gaze fevered as he brushes my cheek. His masculine face turns deadly as he spins on Coal, eyes flashing with bloodthirst.
A shiver runs down my spine. My heart pounds as the air between the males crackles. I try and fail to rise, my chest clenching around lungs that suddenly have trouble drawing air. “Stop it, you idiots!”
Still on the floor, Coal’s tortured gaze lifts to Shade’s, who advances with predatory slowness.
Coal picks himself up from the stone. For a horrifying heartbeat, the certainty that the two will truly try to kill each other echoes like thunder through my bones. Then lightning strikes with a reality that’s more chilling still.
Instead of getting to his feet, Coal rises only as far as his knees. Shoulders spread, head down, hands locked in the small of his back.
Shade draws back a fist, taking aim at Coal’s jaw. My breath catches. Shade’s knuckles crack against Coal’s face, the kneeling male grunting from the blow but never taking his hands from behind him, not even as blood runs from his split lip onto the floor.
“Don’t you dare hit him again!” I call, though neither male gives any sign of having heard me.
Showing his teeth, Shade kicks Coal’s unprotected abdomen, doubling the male over.
When Shade pulls back for the next blow, I grit my teeth, wrap the sheet around me, and sprint to the door. My body screams, my muscles giving out just as I crack it open enough to break Coal’s soundproofing wards and bellow for River with all the breath I have left.
12
Lera
“What’s happened?” River demands, crouching with Autumn beside me in the hallway while Tye sprints past us into the room, catches Shade’s wrist mid-blow, and throws the male into the closest wall. I cringe at the sound of a body hitting stone and then again as the last of Coal’s drawers topples from the overturned dresser. River’s gray eyes narrow and his nostrils flare, the scents of injury and sex no doubt filling his nose like perfume. “We’ve a trial we can’t fail in less than a week’s time, and one of my quint members can barely stand up. I want to know what exactly happened.”
“I’m hardly what Autumn would call intelligent,” Tye calls, standing his ground between the still-kneeling Coal and furiously panting Shade, “but it seems that Coal not only bedded Shade’s mate but had a really good time doing it.”
Coal growls. “I did not have a good time.”
“What?” I rise onto my elbow, my face hot.
Tye cuts his eyes down toward the male. “Please keep talking Coal. You’re making the rest of us look great in comparison.”
Shade rises, his bare chest heaving as he shows his teeth to both Tye and Coal then stalks to me. River holds his ground, but Shade’s golden eyes focus on mine to the exclusion of the world. He crouches beside me, black hair falling around his worried face, and my breath stills, my heart pounding against hurt ribs.
Shade’s earthy scent caresses me as his fingers touch my face, too gentle for the large warrior. A tingle touches my skin and I jerk back from the wolf shifter’s hand, a hiss escaping my lips.
Shade flinches. “I won’t hurt you, cub,” he whispers. “Not you. Not ever.”
“I know.” I swallow, longing to rest my aching head in the hollow of his shoulder, right between the bulging muscles of his arm and hard squares of his chest. I want to be in Shade’s arms. Want to be in all of their arms. But this isn’t the time. Putting on what I hope is a stern voice, despite the indignity of cowering on the floor dressed in nothing but a bedsheet, I gently push his hand away. “You are going to hurt yourself. I felt you reach for your magic.”
Shade’s jaw tightens and he reaches forward again, the strain of calling upon his power enough to make beads of sweat rise on his brow. “I will make my own decisions about my magic.”
I grab his wrist. “Like hell you will.”
“Welcome to my world,” River mutters darkly behind me.
I release Shade’s wrist, blinking at the commander. He looks as terrible as I feel, the weight he carries on his broad shoulders echoing in his eyes as he takes in the space around him. Shade, dark with fury over being denied killing himself. Coal, kneeling and bloody. Me, unable to sit up. Tye, standing in the middle of it all, struggling to grin over the concern clouding his face. Autumn, looking on with a tension that tells me Kora’s quint has yet to return.
River’s world. The one that he’s been desperately trying to keep from collapsing around our ears. Except . . . I raise my chin, meeting River’s eyes. “Not yours, River,” I say quietly. “Ours. I’m just as responsible for the quint as you are.”
“That’s—”
Autumn puts a hand on her brother’s arm to stop him. “Lera is a weaver,” she says softly. “There are some things only she can do.”
River says nothing, running his hands along my body in the way Coal did earlier. Checking for injuries and coming up with a list that turns his gray eyes dark. “Can you make it to the infirmary?” he asks with a
detachment that promises a less pleasant conversation to come. “Or do we need to fetch a healer here?”
Shade growls. “No one is healing Lera but me.”
“Oh, be quiet, all of you,” Autumn huffs, striding past us into Coal’s room. Bracing her hands on the hips of her coral silk pants, she studies both the wreckage and the wrecked with an academic’s curious gaze. In the bright light of morning, I see it suddenly through her sharp eyes—a literal war zone. “When did this happen?” she asks finally, waving a slender hand between Coal and me.
“Last night,” Coal says. “Around two.”
“Two.” Hands back on her hips, Autumn turns to meet each of the males’ gazes in turn. “And which amongst you imagine that Coal actually injured a helpless female and then kept her locked up for five hours in his bedchamber?”
My spine straightens, the motion making me wince. “I’m not a helpless female.”
“My point exactly,” Autumn says primly. “But it will take these oafs a few more minutes to work that out. If you rush them, they’ll sprain their brains. An organ that some of them”—she looks pointedly at Coal and Shade—“have not used in some time.”
Coal shuts his eyes, his pale skin turning a shade of red that would be amusing if he weren’t also bleeding. “Our coupling opened my magic for Lera’s echo.” He rubs his face. “She was strong. Stronger than . . . She did not appear injured at the time we—”
“Jumped all over each other like a pair of bizzerked rabbits?” Tye supplies helpfully.
I grab the closest thing to me—which happens to be Coal’s boot, right across the room’s threshold—and chuck it at Tye’s chest. An exercise that makes me grunt in more pain than he does.
Coal turns away from Tye, his eyes fully on Autumn. “Lera appeared sore when we were done, but not injured—though perhaps my own senses were muddled by then. By morning, whatever magic she’d been echoing faded, and with it, the true extent of her injuries surfaced. Her body now shows the effects of our activity as a mortal’s would.”
Before the last words are out of Coal’s mouth, Tye kneels beside me and presses his lips against mine, his delicious pine-and-citrus scent surrounding me. I’m startled enough to kiss him back before coming to my senses.
“What the hell are you doing?” River demands.
“If coupling with Coal made Lilac Girl a temporary fae, it seems prudent to check whether kissing me might do the same,” Tye says over his shoulder, holding my face in both hands as he speaks.
“I don’t think it works that way,” I tell the male. “We have kissed before, you know.”
“Stop interfering with the scientific method,” Tye declares, his attention now fully on my face. Before I can protest, he clamps his mouth over mine, sliding his hands down to pin my arms against my sides. His tongue fills my mouth, decisive and deft as it explores. As it brushes everything, marking it as its own.
Behind me, River clears his throat, and Tye pulls away with a sigh, his emerald eyes flashing with feline self-content.
“Did it work?” River asks dryly. “Is Leralynn healed?”
“She certainly is,” Tye says. “Can you imagine waking up with the memory of Coal’s kiss and no one to improve upon it?”
“No,” says River. “I neither can nor wish to.” He turns to Autumn. “I presume you are about to say that Leralynn needs Coal’s magic, specifically, to heal?”
The female nods, her silver-blond braids swinging. “Like the rest of you, when Coal and Lera connect, she is able to echo his power. Unlike the rest of you, Coal’s magic is turned inward—making him stronger, faster, a quicker healer than other fae—and thus can affect Lera’s body similarly. Make her stronger, help her heal faster. That said—” Autumn pauses, her gray eyes getting that glazed, excited look that I’ve learned heralds a new theory. “That said, while the link between Coal and Lera is unique, I would think that coupling with any of you should strengthen Lera’s ability to control your individual magic stream. Strengthening your physical bond in turn strengthens your magical bond.”
I feel my eyes widen.
Autumn grins, her voice quickening. “The connection between body and magic is well known—it’s the reason you use physical gestures to help guide your magic and why you train for physical endurance to enhance your magical reserves. In that light, it makes simple sense that Lera could control Shade’s healing magic more effectively than Tye’s fire or River’s earth affinity. She and Shade had already coupled by that point.”
Silence.
Utter, face-burning silence.
“If the next words out of your mouth, Autumn, include ‘schedule,’ ‘evaluation,’ or ‘comparable variable,’” River says finally, “I will smother you with a pillow in your sleep. Understand?”
Autumn’s pointed ears turn a pretty shade of pink.
Rubbing my hands over my face, I push Autumn’s words to arm’s length, their implications too overwhelming to deal with just now. One problem at a time. For the moment, the active-problem slot is firmly reserved for a hurt shoulder and cracked ribs.
“Can all of you leave, please?” I say, using the wall to climb to my feet and ignoring the five immediate sounds of protest. Six, if I count my own body’s reaction. “Correction, can all of you but Coal please leave?”
No one does.
Fine.
Squinting into the light coming through Coal’s open window, I knot the sheet around me in a makeshift dress and start my way across the room. Shade steps toward me but I shake my head, the movement nearly splitting my skull. For a moment, the tanned male looks like he’ll protest, but Tye puts a hand on his shoulder, keeping the shifter at bay.
Coal kneels still. His gaze is on the floor when I stop beside him, the blood from his split lip dripping onto the stone. He looks more wounded than he did after the whipping, every line of muscle in his body rigid. Stiff with self-reproach. A condemnation heavier than any words, any swing of Shade’s fist.
The silence of the room grows heavier with each heartbeat.
Taking a fortifying breath, I lower to my knees, unable to hold back a whimper as the movement jostles cracked ribs. Behind me, I hear Shade’s sharp intake of breath. Coal, on the other hand, remains still as stone.
“Coal.”
Vulnerable blue eyes turn up to meet mine. “Whatever retribution you wish to—”
“I don’t need retribution.” Putting a hand on Coal’s cheek, I capture the warrior’s gaze. “I need you.” I search for words that Coal will hear, respect. “I need your help to heal.”
He blinks for a moment, digesting my words, glancing at Autumn for confirmation. His throat bobs. “If you believe my magic can help, then it is yours,” he says softly. “But use my memories to bridge into it. It’s more controlled—it’s safer that way.”
“Safer for me, maybe, but not for you. I don’t need safer,” I whisper back, aware of the many eyes watching our every move. “We did this. We’ll fix it.” Despite the kiss Tye just took, this moment still feels frighteningly raw. Naked. Raising my other hand, I cup the back of Coal’s head and press my mouth over his.
Coal’s eyes jerk up, and for an instant I taste nothing but surprise and blood. His arms, still clasped behind his back, twitch but stay locked. Beneath his bare, muscled chest, the warrior’s heart beats so hard that I can feel it pumping as vividly as the heat coming off his flesh and the metallic scent that wraps around him like armor.
I press harder and Coal’s mouth responds on instinct, his lips claiming mine with a harsh power that sparks a firefly of magic inside my chest.
The male pulls back with a gasp, his blue eyes wide, and I nod my confirmation. Yes. I felt it. Just as he did.
I reach for him again to continue, wincing as I bend too far and shooting pain pierces my ribs. The room tilts.
Coal’s arms shoot out from behind his back at once, bracing my shoulder blades. Steadying me. Coal’s steel support anchors me to him while he grips my eyes and slips on
e hand to the back of my head. His fingers wrap possessively in my hair, taking charge with the same singular purpose that he carries into a sparring ring. Giving me no time to breathe, Coal’s mouth descends upon mine. A hard, visceral assault that is perfectly Coal. Perfectly us.
I respond in kind, my own tongue plunging into his bruised mouth. My scalp tingles where Coal’s hand pulls my hair, his other hand both supporting my weight and preventing escape. My hands dig into his shoulders, my nails raking along his skin as I feel his magic echoing inside me.
Pulsing power, frighteningly strong and familiar, blossoms in my chest before spreading through my body, the energy more potent than any wine. A door thrown open. A dam lifted. My heart quickens as I feel yet another sensation.
Coal’s essence challenging mine, daring me to yield. Our magic’s brewing battle for dominance sings sweetly through my veins. Waking my nerves. Making me strong. Alive.
Tye whistles. Grunts in pain. Shuts up.
An audience. I’d forgotten about them. I shudder, my magic tripping over itself, pulling back from its tangle with Coal’s. Even in front of our own quint, the intimacy of the connection strips me naked. Exposed.
Coal’s grip on me tightens, his tongue raking possessively through my mouth. Fighting for my focus. Fighting for me and the magic simmering in my veins.
My chest heaves as we finally pull away, my hands braced on my knees. Coal wipes the back of his hand over his lip, the gash in it smaller than it was before. My own body is battered still, but with vines of magic reinforcing the joints and bones, it no longer feels frail. Coal extends his hand and we rise together, our bodies helping each other come erect in a suddenly empty room.