by Неизвестный
Codie sucked in a breath. He had called her falcon Horus. She so very much wanted it to be the truth. She held her breath as the falcon’s image wavered. Then, in a matter of seconds, the Horus from her dreams stood in the falcon’s place. He stood with his back to her as he faced down the other man.
“I won’t allow you to harm her, Seth. She is mine.”
Codie’s mind was reeling. Horus was real? Even though her mind had a hard time accepting that he was real, she couldn’t discount the fact that he stood in front of her, or the fact that his uncle, Seth, stood there as well. But then again, it could all be a hallucination.
“You’ve claimed a mortal as your mate? Hmm, that changes a few of the plans I had for the woman. I think now instead of ending her pathetic life, I’ll take her from you instead.”
“That, I will never allow.” Out of thin air, a sword appeared in Horus’ hand. “You won’t win this time.”
Seth smiled as a sword similar to the one Horus held, appeared in his hand. “We shall see who the victor is, Horus.”
Codie scooted away from the two men as their swords clanged together. They both moved with lethal grace, both intent on doing the most damage to the other. Forgotten, she could only watch silently and hope Horus ended up the winner. If she ended up being in Seth’s clutches, she had a feeling things would be far worse for her than what she had been dealing with for the last few days.
The men parried and thrust. The sounds of their clashing swords filled the air. They seemed to be equally matched in strength and skill. When it seemed neither one would gain the upper hand, Horus blocked Seth’s sword and rammed his body into his uncle. Horus grappled Seth to the ground, pinning him there as he held the tip of his sword against Seth’s throat.
“Surrender. It’s over, Seth. Remove the spell you placed around Codie that has kept her trapped here,” Horus growled at his uncle. “Now this can work either of two ways. You can remove the spell now or I can take your head, ensuring Codie’s safety.” Horus moved the tip of his sword to one of Seth’s eyes. “Or better yet, I can return the favor and take your eye as you took mine.”
Codie held her breath. She knew exactly what Horus meant by returning the favor. According to ancient Egyptian myth, Seth had killed and dismembered Horus’ father, Osiris, wanting to claim the Egyptian throne for his own. Wanting revenge, Horus challenged his uncle to a fight. During the ensuing battle, Seth tore out one of Horus’ eyes. After the fight, Thot, the moon god, returned and healed Horus’ eye. The symbol of the Eye of Horus came to be after Horus had lost his eye.
Seth snarled up at his nephew. “You win this time. I’ve removed the spell, but let’s see if you can still save your mate.”
Seth waved a hand in Codie’s direction. Pain tore through her body. The chills that wracked her body increased tenfold. Dizziness assailed her. No longer able to remain upright, she sank down onto her sleeping bag. Before darkness rose up to claim her, Codie reached out to Horus and whispered his name.
* * * *
Horus quickly spun around to look at Codie. The moment he removed his attention from his uncle, Seth disappeared. Horus quickly checked to make sure Seth had indeed removed his spell as he rushed to Codie’s side. Thankfully, he could no longer detect it.
Lifting Codie up in his arms, Horus felt her shake uncontrollably. He could also feel her life slipping away. Sending his senses out, he searched until he found the rescue party that had been looking for Codie since she’d become separated from her tour group. He sent them a mental push to come as quickly as they could.
When the rescuers were almost upon them, Horus laid Codie back down onto the sleeping bag. He didn’t want to leave her there, but he wanted her to return to her old life before he took the final step that would well and truly make her his mate. He had to allow her to make the final decision of her own freewill.
Placing a kiss on Codie’s fevered brow, Horus quietly promised her he would return to her very soon. He disappeared as the rescue party came into sight in the distance.
Chapter 6
Codie woke up a day later in a hospital bed. She didn’t feel completely like her old self, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before she did now that she had been taken out of the desert. The doctor had told her she’d been lucky. If the search party hadn’t found her when they had, she would have been dead in a matter of hours.
She really didn’t remember much about being found by the search party. Her memory of it blurred together. They had barely managed to rouse her enough to get some much needed water into her before they headed out of the desert. That was about all she could recall.
Now awake and hooked up to an IV, she slowly felt her strength returning. And with it came uncertainties. Her dreams had seemed so real, as had seeing Horus coming to defend her that last day she had been lost. She so much wanted to believe it hadn’t all been a product of her imagination. She didn’t want to think she had fallen in love with a man her brain had made up. But she had to admit that near the end there, with her body failing and wracked with fever, she could have been hallucinating when the battle between Horus and Seth took place.
She didn’t want to face reality, to discover Horus did not exist. Codie debated whether or not to try using her pendant to call him as she had supposedly done when she’d first seen him. But in the end, she couldn’t take the not knowing. Waiting until she was alone in her hospital room, Codie clutched her turquoise Eye of Horus pendant in her hand and closed her eyes. She focused her mind on the image of the Horus who had walked into her dreams as she called out to him. Nothing happened. The turquoise stone in the middle of the eye remained cool. That was it then. It hadn’t been real. Feeling as if she had just lost the only man she would ever love, Codie swiped at the lone tear that slid down her cheek.
Two days later, the doctor informed her she had fully recovered and could go home. Codie felt happy to be released from the hospital, but she knew she couldn’t return to the national park. One of the staff there had kindly packed up her belongings and had brought them to her, so she really had no reason to return there.
Before she left the hospital, Codie phoned the airport. She still had one more day left before she had to catch her flight back home to Canada, but she wanted to go home now. Surprisingly, she found it an easy task to have her flight changed to one that left later that very day. She had been prepared to give the whole sob story of her being lost in the desert for days if the airline had refused to change her flight. But that hadn’t been necessary. Once she told the woman on the phone her name, the woman had known right away what had happened to her. Apparently her story had been all over the news. Codie felt glad that she didn’t have any family left alive. They would have been worried sick about her.
Codie found the trip back to Toronto, Ontario, Canada to be a rough one. Though she’d seemingly had recovered from her ordeal in the desert, she found she grew tired more easily. By the time she reached her apartment all she wanted to do was sleep.
After spending another night without seeing Horus in her dreams, Codie took a long hot shower before rummaging in her kitchen to find something to eat for breakfast. Before leaving to go on her holiday in Egypt she had pretty much cleaned out her fridge, leaving only the things that wouldn’t go bad in her absence. That left her choices pretty limited. In the end, she decided to only have tea, which she had to drink plain since she had no milk to put in it.
Once the kettle boiled and the tea sat steeping in the teapot, she went into her small living room and turned on the television. She pulled open the curtains to the sliding glass doors that lead to her balcony and sat down on the couch.
Flipping through the channels, she grimaced as she caught the tail end of a news story about her rescue in Egypt. She continued to change the channel until she found a cooking show. She didn’t normally watch television during the day. Talk shows were not her thing, so the cooking show would have to do.
At first she thought her mind played tric
ks on her. She heard the cry of a falcon coming from outside her balcony door. But when Codie heard it a second time, she knew she had to look. Crossing the short distance to the balcony door, she looked through the glass. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes and blinked again. Perched on the railing of her balcony sat a sooty falcon. As far as she knew Toronto didn’t have any sooty falcons.
Slowly, she unlocked the sliding door and pushed it open. The falcon remained where it perched as it eyed her. Codie slid opened the screen door about to step out onto the balcony when the falcon jumped off the railing and flew past her into her apartment.
Swinging back around, Codie found the falcon calmly standing in the middle of her living room staring at her. Codie shook her head. “Oh, no you don’t. You can’t stay here. Out you go.” She pushed the screen door open wider, hoping the falcon would take the hint and leave. She didn’t want to chase the poor thing out of her apartment.
When the falcon didn’t as much as move, Codie took a step toward it. She quickly drew up short as the falcon’s image started to shift and change. Codie sucked in a deep breath as she watched her dream Horus take the falcon’s place. She shook her head, not daring to believe he could actually be there in her apartment. Breathing rapidly, she backed away and closed the glass balcony door as she pulled the curtains shut. If she was going to have a break down, she didn’t want the whole world to see. Not that anyone would have seen considering she lived on the sixteenth floor of her apartment building.
Horus smiled at her and held out his hand. “Come to me, Codie?”
Codie shook her head. The air rasped in and out of her lungs as she started to breathe rapidly. “You’re not real. I know you aren’t real. I made you up. All the time spent out in the hot sun must have fried my brain.”
“I’m real, Codie. As real as everything that happened out in the desert. Touch me and you’ll know I’m not a figment of your imagination.”
“Okay.”
Codie took a tentative step toward Horus. If she touched him and he disappeared, she would know she had a screw loose in her head. If she touched him and he was real…She didn’t let her mind go down that road just yet.
Taking the last remaining steps that brought her to stand before him, she could feel herself starting to hyperventilate. Codie took a deep breath trying to slow down her breathing. It didn’t do any good. Still she hesitated. Horus shook his head at her reluctance, grabbed her hand and placed it on his chest.
At the feel of his heart thumping beneath her hand, Codie really began to lose control. “Oh, god, oh, god. You’re real.”
Horus pulled her into his arms and pressed her face to his chest. “It’s okay, Codie. Breathe.”
Codie pressed herself closer to Horus. “I thought I would never see you again. I so much wanted you to be real. When I tried calling to you while in the hospital and you didn’t come, I thought for sure I made you up.”
Placing a finger under her chin, Horus tipped her head back. “I heard you call to me, but I wanted to give you the time to recover from your ordeal. I’m sorry if I made you think I did not hear you. You’re my mate. I will never leave you. I love you.”
Codie felt all the air leave her lungs in a whoosh at Horus’ confession. “Then why didn’t you come to me?”
“I wanted you better before you had to make the decision of whether you would want to be my mate or not.”
“Of course I want to be…”
Horus placed a finger against her lips before she could finish her sentence. “This is a decision you cannot make lightly, Codie. I want you as a true mate. You would have to give up your life in the mortal realm. Your friends, your family. I’d make you an immortal as I am. I could never let you go once you chose to live with me as my mate.”
Codie pulled Horus’ finger away. “I want to be your mate, Horus. I love you, more than I’ve loved anyone else. I have no family. They’re all gone. I was raised by my grandmother, and she died years ago. All I have is you.”
With a groan, Horus bent his head and claimed Codie’s lips in a searing kiss. She clung to him, desperately kissing him back. As their clothes disappeared, Codie yanked on his thick black hair and practically climbed up Horus’ body, needing him inside her. When the floor rose up to meet her and Horus came down on top of her, Codie knew she would never give up this man, this Egyptian god. At the feel of his hard cock pushing deep inside her, she didn’t think an eternity together would be long enough.
THE END
www.marisachenery.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marisa Chenery was always a lover of books, but after reading her first
historical romance novel, she found herself hooked. Having inherited a love
for the written word, she soon started writing her own novels.
After trying her hand at writing historicals, she now also writes
paranormals. Marisa lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and four
children. She would love to hear from you, so stop by her website and send
her an email while you're there.
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