by Sarra Cannon
He laughed, but it held a chilly edge. “Of course.”
“And?” She thought she knew the answer, but needed to hear it out loud.
“Everyone told me I was nuts. Like I said, it’s as if there was some sort of mass hypnosis that passed me by.” He paused. “And apparently you as well.”
Rune loped back to her, a marmot hanging out of his mouth. “Bella has one, too—a small one,” he informed them.
“Do you think we could risk a fire?” she asked, looking from Fionn to the wolf.
Rune bristled. She knew his opinion about fires.
“Better if we cook with magic,” Fionn concurred, apparently having read the wolf’s stiffened posture.
The raven’s wing beats filled the air. She dropped her kill into Fionn’s outstretched hands.
Aislinn grinned. It was obvious they’d done this before. “I hear running water,” she said. “There has to be a creek not far from here. Let’s go. It will give us fresh water for the cook pot—and maybe some greens, too.”
“Grand idea.” Rune’s tail swished. “Bella and I will get more meat.”
Aislinn watched his retreating form, glad he’d forgiven her for forcing him to her will.
It all worked out. We’re still alive. Now if we can just stay that way.
— —
After they’d eaten, Fionn pulled some badly stained topographic maps and a compass out of his rucksack.
She drew close, fascinated. “Do you know where we are?”
“Not precisely. Give me a minute.”
“I always wanted maps to help me figure things out—”
“It’s like with the books. The Old Ones either took them all or destroyed them,” he cut in.
“But you still have these.” She tapped the map with an outstretched finger.
“Only because I didn’t give them up, and they don’t know I have them.”
“You have books, too.” And so do I. She wasn’t sure why she was reluctant to let him know about their shared civil disobedience. She opened her mouth, but shut it before her secret could spill out. He’s not telling me everything, either, her inner voice noted, as if the quid pro quo made it all right to keep things hidden.
Fortunately, he wasn’t looking at her, or he might have read guilt on her face. He was doing something with the compass; it lay against one of the sides of the map. “We’re here.” He stabbed the map with a begrimed finger.
She bent over his arm, looking. “So that roadway we ended up on earlier was Interstate Five.” Her nostrils flared and her eyes widened. “We’re practically walking distance to Mount Shasta.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded. “Best I can tell, we’re near Castle Crags, only about twenty miles from the gateway to Taltos.”
“Where’d we come from?”
He pointed to an area north of Susanville, scribing a circle with his finger. “I’ve moved around a bit, but I’ve stayed in this same basic area for the last couple years. It was safe enough—until you showed up.”
She ignored his comment. “Do you suppose the Lemurians know we’re here?” He shot her a look that said he thought she was smarter than that. She tried again. “Have you ever been there before?”
“No. Told you I’ve kept my distance.”
If you’ve done that, why come with me now? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Aislinn turned her attention to Rune. “Why’d you go to the gateway?”
“Because I wanted justice—for Marta.” Aislinn was just about to ask him another question when he added, “They sent me away.”
She considered digging deeper, but it upset Rune to talk about his last bondmate. She saw it in the squared-off way he stood. Instead, she got to her feet. “I’m going for a walk. I need to think. If we’re going to be there tomorrow, I have to figure some things out, so maybe the Old Ones will answer my questions.”
She felt Fionn fall into step next to her before she’d gotten a hundred yards from the flat rocks near the rushing creek where they’d eaten. He circled her waist with an arm. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
She snorted. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking the same thing. I can turn tail and run back to my little hovel, fight when they call me, and spend the rest of my time hoping this will all go away.”
“Except it won’t.”
Aislinn stopped walking. She turned to him and laid her head in the nook between his shoulder and neck. After the briefest of hesitations, he pulled her close. His breath was warm in her hair. She wanted to kiss him. To lose herself in sensation so she wouldn’t have to think about all the rest. But that was the easy way.
Moving back so she could meet his gaze, she said, “How about this? I’ll go there by myself tomorrow. You can take the animals and return to your home. I’m sure I can find it again. It’s easy to find places I’ve been before.”
“What will you do after you get to the gateway?”
She shrugged, trying to lighten the anxiety nagging her. “Play dumb. Like I didn’t understand what Metae meant. Ask a few questions about my magic and how to deal with things like D’Chel. I’ve met up with two of the dark gods in the last few days. Makes sense I’d be rattled about it. Maybe the Old Ones have an anti-sex charm or something.”
When he didn’t say anything, she hurried on. “That way, there’d only be one of us hiding secrets from them.” Rune would be safe, and I wouldn’t have to worry about them hurting you, she added silently, surprised by the strength of her feelings for him. She hadn’t known Fionn all that long. She didn’t understand why it felt so important to protect him.
He pulled her to him again. This time, she laid her head against his chest. The beat of his heart sounded loud in her ear. He knotted his fingers in her hair and kissed her forehead gently. He’s just as scared as I am, she realized. Scared to love. Scared to lose anything else to the scourge that’s taken over our planet.
Twining her arms around his neck, she slipped her fingers under his hair, and then turned her face upward. With a soft moan filled with need, he covered her lips with his and kissed her. His tongue plumbed her mouth; she sparred with it, licking and sucking. His breath was sweet. He tasted of summer meadows and something spicy and exotic she couldn’t name. Her body heated under his touch as he ran his hands down her back and cupped her ass, drawing her firmly against him. The swell of his erection pressed against her lower belly.
This time when she reached between them to touch him, he pressed himself into her curved fingers. She sensed something untamed in him that ran close to the surface. He kept the energy tightly reined in, but need simmered, barely contained. She felt the shift when he released whatever brakes he’d imposed on his sexuality. Aislinn opened her eyes. His had darkened to midnight. Hunger blazed from their depths, and he pushed her down onto the ground. Shoving her clothing aside, he latched onto one of her nipples, suckling and nibbling, and then switched to the other.
She arched her back and wound her arms around him, trying to draw him closer. Electric sensation sparked from his mouth on her breasts, setting her nerve endings on fire. She buried her hands in his hair and rained kisses down the side of his face. Ever so slowly, he moved his mouth upward to her throat and mouth.
She let go of him long enough to fumble with the fastenings of her pants, undo one boot, and free one leg. When she reached for his pants, she saw he’d beaten her to it. Aislinn pushed Fionn onto his back. Wrapping a hand around his shaft, she straddled him and then guided him inside her. The shock of his body within hers rocked her. She’d had plenty of sex, but the intensity of his flesh buried inside hers stunned her with its immediacy. Orgasms crowded against one another until she wasn’t sure when one ended and the next began.
His hands gripped her hips. She heard breath rattle in his throat, and color splotched his face and chest. He cried her name, voice hoarse with wanting her, before his own release took him. Fionn shuddered inside her for a very long time.
Aislinn collapsed over his body. He stroked her b
ack and her hair, murmuring wordless endearments. “Look at me,” he said at last.
She pushed away, feeling cold where his body no longer lay against hers, and rolled into a sit, legs tucked beneath her. “I’m looking. What I see is beautiful.”
He colored. A tender smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. “That’s not why—” he began. Fionn shook his head, levered himself up, and sat across from her. He laid his hands on her knees. “I’m of two minds about your plan to go to Taltos alone, but I do think it’s better than letting them see us together. Especially after what we just shared.”
Realization raced through her. Like books and maps, relationships were also on the best not do it list. No one had any problems with humans having sex. They just weren’t supposed to develop feelings for one another. One more way to keep us isolated. And them in control.
He must have divined her thoughts, because he laughed wryly. “Oh, it wouldn’t have mattered whether or not we actually fucked. They’d sense that we lusted after each other. It would make them…uncomfortable.”
Intuition chimed a sharp note. “That’s not all you want to tell me.”
He nodded. Smiles and laughter gone, he looked serious as death. “You will not do anything to jeopardize yourself. You will come home to me.” He moved one of his hands from her knee and closed it about her wrist like a vise. “I will not lose anything more to them.” Because he’d stopped shrouding them, heat from his emotions seared her.
She swallowed. This was what she’d feared—and wanted. He cared about her. And I care about him. Christ, I hope this wasn’t a mistake.
Chapter 9
If Fionn was one type of problem, Rune had been another. To say the wolf was not pleased by her plan was an understatement. He’d run off into the woods and shielded himself so she couldn’t find him.
“I’m afraid he’ll track me on foot,” she said to Fionn, returning after a fruitless hour hunting for the wolf. “After all, he knows where the place is.”
“We have some time yet.” Fionn’s deep voice sounded reassuring.
“I suppose we do. There’s nothing magical about me showing up at the gateway tomorrow. We can wait him out, but it makes me nervous setting up a camp so close to Taltos.”
“Hmph. They’ll probably think we’re spying on them,” he concurred, scratching at his beard. “Actually, taking your bondmate with you isn’t such a bad idea—”
She whirled to face him. “What if something happens to him?”
Fionn tipped her chin upward with a finger, forcing her to look at him. “Something could happen to any of us. It’s why we’ve avoided entanglements.”
So I’m not the only ambivalent one here. “Guess I haven’t gotten used to having an animal companion.” She prevaricated, finding it easier to focus on her feelings about Rune than the jumbled mess inside her whenever she thought about Fionn.
“They’re pretty good at taking care of themselves.” He smiled. It was a toned-down version of his ten thousand-watt grin, but it still made her guts go all mushy.
“Rune,” she tried again, using mind speech this time. “Come to me.”
“Mistress.” His voice dripped censure.
“I am not your mistress. But I’d like to be your friend.”
“Then stop trying to foist me off on others. We are bondmates for a reason.”
“Can we talk about this?”
“We are talking. If you’re trying to get me close enough to trap me, forget about it.”
She looked at Fionn. “Did you hear that?”
“Every word.”
“What do you think?”
“Rune definitely has a mind of his own. I say we ask him what he thinks of your plan and take his counsel into consideration.”
The wolf sauntered out of a grove of blue firs. “At last, a human with sense.” He growled, keeping his distance from her. His hackles were at half-mast, his amber eyes chilly.
“Okay.” Aislinn placed her hands on her hips. “What do you think we should do?”
A surprised look spread over the wolf’s face. “You have to take me with you. Metae already knows we are bondmates. She would think it odd if you showed up alone.”
Aislinn hated to admit it, but Rune had a point. “I was just trying to keep you safe,” she snapped.
“We are safer together,” the wolf replied in a patronizing tone. “You have much to learn, bondmate.” His sarcasm escalated with the last words.
“It’s true,” Fionn concurred. “Part of the magic cementing the bond is a synergistic energy that’s more together than its individual parts.”
Aislinn squatted next to Rune. “Just don’t disappear on me again,” she muttered. “I’ll have my hands full, and I don’t know if I can pull this off if I’m worried about you.”
“Then don’t send me away.”
From a nearby branch, Bella squawked an unintelligible opinion. Aislinn assumed the bird agreed with the wolf.
“Okay.” She stood and spread her hands in surrender. “I know when I’m outnumbered. Let’s strategize. What are the most important things we need to know from the Old Ones?”
— —
Morning came all too soon. She’d slept wrapped in Fionn’s arms with Rune against her other side. It felt right somehow. Like she belonged between the two of them. She was tempted to retreat. It was unlikely her gambit would pay off, and she would’ve put herself and her wolf in harm’s way for nothing.
“They know we’re here,” Rune told her. “You have to go. The Old Ones would think something was very wrong if you came all this way, only to turn around.”
She eyed the wolf. “I’d forgotten you could read my mind.”
“Good thing.” He met her gaze, tongue lolling. “Someone has to keep you on the straight and narrow.” Surprised he’d know about human idiomatic expressions, she asked how he’d come by it. Pain flickered behind his eyes. “Marta used to say that.”
“Wolf has a point.” Fionn crouched by a nearby creek, making them breakfast out of crushed pine nuts and some berries he’d located the night before. “Your plan depends on the Old Ones thinking you still trust them.”
“So I have to act like I do.” She squared her shoulders. This was going to be hard. She’d never been a very good liar. “Is the food ready?” She didn’t feel much like eating, but she’d need energy.
“Bring your cup over here.”
— —
She was just cleaning the dregs of pine nut flour paste out of her eating mug when Fionn reached into one of his many pockets. He handed her what looked like a piece of river-washed quartz, clear with green flecks in it. “You want me to take that?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, and he nodded. “Why?”
“It’s linked to my magic. If you get into trouble, lay your lips against it and breathe my name into the stone.”
“Just Fionn? Or will I need a last name, too?”
Leaning close, he whispered to her.
She drew back, her mouth rounded into an “o.” Breath caught in the back of her throat. “B-But you aren’t really,” she stammered. “It’s not possible. I mean, that just happened to be your father’s last name. Right?”
He looked at her. Flickers of green danced around his sea blue irises. “Time for you to get going.” He paused a beat, added, “lass,” and winked.
This gets stranger and stranger. I feel like Alice without the white rabbit. She lurched to her feet, located her rucksack, and started stuffing things into it. She felt the heat of him behind her before he touched her. It sat like a living thing between them.
He circled his arms around her. “Turn about,” he said.
Maybe because she was listening for it now, she heard the faintest of Irish lilts in his voice. It reminded her of her mother. If she hadn’t grown up fed on Celtic myths, she wouldn’t have recognized his last name. Pivoting in his arms, she looked up at him.
“I took a bit of a risk, telling you what I did,” he said.
She st
ammered, “Ah, not to worry. I won’t—”
“Sshh.” He closed his mouth over hers.
The kiss was sweet, not demanding a thing from her, but it still made her knees weak. When she opened her mouth for more, he drew back.
“Uh-uh.” The tiny creases around his eyes deepened as he smiled. “No more today. There are other things for you to focus on. Don’t be thinking about me or Bella. Get what you can from those bastards who see themselves as rulers here. Maybe we can find a way—”
“Maybe we can,” she echoed. It wasn’t easy to pull back from his embrace. She wanted to take up residence in those arms and never leave. Instead, she shouldered her pack, clucked to Rune, and pulled the magic she’d need to jump.
Tears were dangerously close to the surface as her spell made the air around her shimmer. What the fuck am I doing? she asked herself roughly. I got along fine without him until now. I don’t need anything that will make me hurt again. Nothing.
“Think about the Old Ones and our task.” Rune was in her mind, his voice stern.
Good advice. She spat out the words that would take them to Taltos, still feeling ridiculously conflicted.
Because she’d aimed for Mount Shasta City, thinking it held the gateway, Aislinn was surprised to find a collection of dilapidated buildings and nothing more. Usually cities retained more in the way of debris. It looked as if no one had lived here for fifty years. Rune broke from her side and dropped a paw onto a mouse that had the bad luck to scurry by at just that moment. Its small bones made little crunching sounds between his powerful jaws.
“So where is it?” she asked, eying him.
“Follow me. We can walk from here.”
At first, she was annoyed he hadn’t sent her the right image, but as she stretched her legs into a long-strided lope, she was grateful for time to organize her thoughts. They climbed a hill that led due east out of town. The bulk of Mount Shasta towered above them. Snow spilled down its flanks nearly to the remains of the town. Rune disappeared into a hillside. Even though she couldn’t see the opening, she figured there had to be one and followed him.