by Elisa Paige
Hatred for Reiden, Cian and every fae who’d ever dared to walk the mortal world surged within me until I feared I could no longer contain it. I welcomed it, in all its seething violence.
Use it, I snarled in my mind. Nurture every caustic shred and hold it close. When I stand over the lords in the final seconds before I gut them, I will pour that gall straight into their gaping wounds.
Breathing hard, I fought back the frenzy such thoughts threatened to ignite. I had no desire to go berserker with Koda so close, enclosed in the pickup’s cab. There was no way I would risk any harm coming to him, especially by my own hand.
My eyes drifted over to the speedometer as the needle passed 100.
That’s when I noticed Koda was chanting. The hair along my nape stirred and my woven leather necklace grew warm as his voice increased in volume. A heavy wind shoved the truck sideways so hard, even Koda’s instant correction couldn’t keep us from swerving into the other lane.
My head cracked into the side window before I could get a bracing hand up. “That’s Air Kith! The arrogant pricks always announce themselves first before they turn up the wind.”
“Wind kills?”
“The fae kind scours flesh from bone.”
“Damn, I hate the fae.”
I snarled, “Welcome to my world!”
He shot a dark look at me. “Will Reiden send the Hunt?”
“No. He reserves them for the big stuff. Chasing a runaway bittern with delusions of regicide wouldn’t qualify. It would be an insult to the Huntsman and even Reiden has to be careful not to piss him off.” I bared my teeth. “Now if I actually succeeded in killing the bastard, Berand might come after me anyway. Just on principle.”
Koda swore to himself, the words “death wish” and “suicide” figuring prominently in the profane mix.
The sense of something enormous swooped over the pickup and bent the trees in its wake. Even though we were roaring along at over a hundred miles an hour, from the corners of my eyes, a lot of little…somethings were keeping pace in the undergrowth beside the two-lane road.
A vicious grin bared Koda’s teeth. “Payback’s a bitch.” Pointing a finger upward without removing his hands from the steering wheel, he said, “Cetan doesn’t like anyone messing with his element.”
Figuring that was the big thing flying around overhead, I resisted the urge to look through the windshield. I had a feeling I didn’t really want to know what it looked like. Movement caught the corner of my eye again. “What’s following us in the woods?”
“Pukwudgie and nimerigar, both armed with poison arrows. Pukwudgie work fire and nimerigar are skilled with the earth.”
My brows lifted. “That leaves only water.”
“Nope, we’re covered there too. We’re under the protection of the cymbee. But we mustn’t speak of them. The water spirits are easily angered.”
I did a doubletake. “So for every kith, you have a corresponding ally?”
“Yes.”
“How’d they get here so fast?”
He laughed, the dark sound raising gooseflesh on my body. “Ever since we left New Orleans, I’ve had them shadowing us.” Koda watched my face as I absorbed this.
“Okay.” I nodded slowly. “Good to know.”
“That’s why only Air has been able to attack.”
I looked pointedly at the arrows bristling from the truck like a porcupine’s feather-tipped quills.
“That hardly counts. Anybody can shoot a damn arrow.” At my snort, he amended, “All right, a lot of damn arrows. Anyway, our allies are holding the kiths at bay and Air won’t get another chance at us, not with Cetan harrying the fae bastards off this plane.”
“What’s he like?”
Koda shook his head. “It’s not polite to talk about the earth and animal spirits. It’s disrespectful to discuss them casually.”
I nodded again, feeling wound up tighter than a bowstring but unable to do anything about the enemies pursuing us. It felt wrong. Beyond awkward. I shifted in my seat, crossing and re-crossing my legs. Plucking at the seatbelt didn’t help and neither did flipping the sun visor down as Koda did when he was ticked. Sighing, I rubbed at my face. I didn’t know what to do with myself or all the amped-up energy.
I felt Koda’s senses extend, so I knew when the tension relaxed from his body. “We’re in the clear now. Our allies formed a skirmish line behind us. Reiden and his forces won’t get past them.”
“Have you forgotten fae can shift?” My tone was sharper than I intended.
Lifting a brow at me, Koda said mildly, “Pukwudgie can do something similar.”
“So.” I smacked the visor back up. “Checkmate.”
“Feeling kinda unnecessary?”
“Yeah.” Staring out the window, I scowled at the trees blurring by.
“Welcome to my world.”
I turned to look at him and saw the way his jaw muscles were clenched. “You feel unnecessary?”
“It’s what I was talking about before.”
I opened my mouth to snarl at him, then shut it with a snap as I thought better of it.
“You’re strong and independent, two traits I admire. You’re also intelligent and a lethal fighter.” His eyes practically smoldered. “Unless you haven’t been paying attention, you’ve probably figured out that I find you sexy as hell.”
Blushing, I pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“I don’t have anything to prove, Sephti. I don’t have to save the day and I’ve never seen anyone less in need of rescuing.” I felt his gaze like a caress on my cheek. “But I do need to feel like I’m part of your life and not just an add-on fixture.”
My heartbeat sped up as I thought about his words and what they seemed to imply. “But what about—”
He snarled, “Don’t you dare say a word about our people’s histories. Not a word!”
I stared at my fisted hands where they lay in my lap. Shaking my head, I whispered, “I won’t.”
“No?” Koda jerked a surprised look at me before returning his gaze to the highway. We were still driving at close to a hundred miles an hour, but I didn’t worry about a cop pulling us over. Since he’d felt the fae hunters, I figured he’d have no trouble sensing a mundane speed trap. “You’re letting it slide that easily?”
I shrugged. It was hard enough to admit the shameful truth to myself. How could I tell him I was so lacking in integrity that I was pathetically grateful for his angry refusal to let me reason with him?
He gave me another startled look. “What’s the catch?”
I shrugged again, watching the world blur past my side window. “What you said, once before. That there are tools for dealing with…” I waved vaguely between the two of us. “Where can I find them?”
I heard the smile in his voice. “It was a figure of speech.”
Crestfallen, I sagged in my seat. “Is nothing ever easy?”
He took my hand, lifted it to his lips and breathed a kiss across the palm. “This is.”
Meeting his gaze for a second, I nodded. Once my instincts were subdued, reveling in Koda’s touch was the easiest thing I’d ever done. It was the emotions I couldn’t get a handle on.
Returning his attention to the highway, he took an entrance ramp to I-10 without slowing and headed west. “I know this is new to you. It probably seems very strange. Maybe even frightening.” My breath caught and I looked away, but not before I saw that he’d heard. “All I ask is that you try, Sephti. Forget all the reasons why we shouldn’t. Forget whatever shit my brother said to you. Think only of you and me. Be my most precious friend, Sephti. Truly be my lover and give us a chance.”
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the seat. Breathing in and out, I thought about honor and about doing the right thing. I thought about Ahanu’s hateful words, so similar to the ones I regularly castigated myself with. And for the first time in my short, very violent life, I thought beyond today. My engineered DNA resisted conceptualiz
ing the future. Didn’t in fact allow for that kind of mental processing. This made a cruel kind of logic since no one knew how long bitterns could live. So it was significant that I could even conceive of the next few weeks—the span between now and Halloween.
I imagined that time with Koda in it. In the way he suggested it could be between us. Friends. Lovers. I marveled over the words in the most secret corner of my mind.
They were entirely new concepts since my native tongue didn’t have any way to express either and English was new enough to me that I still translated everything in my head to Fae. It was a language that had “allies” one fought beside in battle. At least, until it was no longer convenient. Fae also had “not-enemies” who were usually far too powerful to take on directly and didn’t possess anything valuable enough to bother trying.
There simply was nothing comparable to “lovers.” Fae mated, coupled, bedded and applied a vulgar assortment of other verbs for sex. But nothing so precious, so tender as what Koda described.
He was asking for such a little thing from me. That I be with him for whatever time was left to me. And he was offering so much in return—his generous heart, kind spirit, fierce devotion and proud nature. And yes, his incredible body. Just thinking about it had my heart pounding and heat blooming low in my belly.
An immense weight suddenly lifted as relief filled up all the spaces inside me. Spaces where the crushing heaviness of uncertainty and guilt and heartbreak had resided.
Maybe I had only a short time left—I wasn’t fatalistic, but it was impossible to imagine anything beyond confronting Reiden and the lords on Halloween. But I could spend that time with Koda. Really with him instead of the stupid, agonizing, back-and-forth dance of desire and doubt we’d been engaged in.
I opened my eyes to find him splitting his attention between the highway and my face. When he saw my smile, he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. For the first time, he grinned openly, without reservation.
I stared up at him, my heart beating so fast it should have exploded from my chest. He was the epitome of masculine beauty, even when he scowled. But like this, with his eyes dancing, his white teeth flashing in his tawny face…he was…he was…transcendent.
Staggered, I lifted tentative fingertips to brush his right dimple, not realizing until this moment that he had them. Koda caught my hand and kissed the palm, smiling against my skin at my sharp inhalation.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice low and husky.
“Oh, yes.” I remembered what I’d once heard human children say on a playground. It had sounded like the most solemn of oaths and wholly appropriate to the moment. “But no take-backs.”
On his lips, it was a tender promise. “No take-backs.”
Chapter Seventeen
Koda and I took turns driving for the next two days, taking great care to stay on the move and do nothing that might attract fae notice. The bigger issue was avoiding human notice, since the pickup looked like a giant porcupine, what with all the arrows sticking out of it. So we stopped when we felt it was safe and spent the better part of an hour pulling them all out.
I wasn’t sure whether to cry or scream profanity at the condition of my bike. A little of both, maybe, since it was a total loss. Judging by the rage quivering just within his control, Koda felt just as bad about his honeycombed truck.
We arrived at his home as the sun was setting, painting the surrounding prairie gold and the wide-open sky brilliant shades of pinks and purples. Situated at the end of a long track, the small cabin was so far from the two-lane highway, even our ears couldn’t catch the sounds of an occasional ranch truck passing. That the cabin wasn’t far from the Sioux’s South Dakota Tallgrass Reservation—we’d actually driven past the entrance—warmed me with Koda’s implied trust and the knowledge that he’d brought me this close to his people.
Nestled in rolling grasslands, Koda’s home was built of enormous timbers stacked one on top of the other. It had a broad, wraparound porch with windows that were taller than I was. The walls, porch rails and braces had weathered to a lovely golden shade that matched the prairie grasses’ long stems.
I leaned against the truck’s holey flank and tilted my head back. Closing my eyes, I let my awareness loose and reveled in the peaceful surroundings—the chill breeze playing with my hair, the sun’s waning warmth, the tickle of long grass on my outstretched fingertips.
Koda came to stand beside me. “I feel the same way, every time I come home.”
“The land here is so…so…” I looked up at him, trying to find the proper word.
“Alive.” His voice was hushed, reverential.
I smiled and nodded. “Could we walk for a while?”
He ducked his head to kiss me, a quick kiss that was, nonetheless, full of passionate promise. With a wicked look, he said, “Let me get something from the house first.” In one of his too-fast-to-be-tracked moves, he was back by my side with two colorful blankets tossed casually over his shoulder.
“It’s not that cold.” I took his hand, smiling happily when he laced our fingers together.
Pulling me into his embrace, he kissed me again and let this one linger. “It’s not for warmth.”
“No?” I asked, breathless, as we set off again.
He just grinned, his dimples putting in a delightful appearance.
We walked close together and always touching, with a sweet new awareness of one another hovering on the air between us. I looked up at Koda sidelong, just a quick glance and laughed out loud to catch him doing the same to me.
“You are happy here,” I murmured.
“I am. Although I am of the entire continent, the grasslands and the Black Hills farther west have always called to me. It’s why I built a home here. Why I always return to this area. And why I am closer to the Sioux than the other nations, although Ahanu would be scandalized to hear me say so.” His voice was easier, lighter than I’d ever heard it. “But none of that is why I’m acting like a besotted fool.”
I frowned, unsure what the first word meant but absolutely certain “fool” could never apply to Koda. Before I could chastise him for speaking harshly of himself, he swept me up in his arms. Then he was kissing me and all thoughts evaporated.
As we sank to the ground and our clothes came off with astonishing speed, I figured out what the soft woven blankets were for.
It was the last coherent thought I had for a while.
A half-moon rose overhead as I lay in Koda’s arms, there in the lee of a hill where the cool breeze couldn’t find us. My head rested on his chest and I listened with utter fascination to the steady throb of his heart.
How had I ever thought him cold? With every touch, he was generous. With every smoldering glance, he exuded heat. For hours—without shame, without restraint—we’d reveled in one another’s touch. Images of our incredible lovemaking flashed through my mind, filling me with wonder and remembered passion. No matter how many times I’d wanted him, he was ready for me. No matter how many times he’d needed, I welcomed him just as fervently.
I turned my head to kiss Koda’s chest. He made a happy sound and held me close, burying his face in my hair. Burrowing into his side, I grinned unabashedly that I could do this—could kiss and touch him, could nuzzle against him—with the surety that he would welcome every bit of it.
Sated and in Koda’s sweet embrace, it was as if we existed on our own plane where nothing but the moment mattered. No worries bubbled to the surface of my mind. No anxieties marred the perfection of our time together.
Everything felt so new, so fragile, so precious, I trembled with the incredible joy of it.
“It’s like that for me too,” he whispered, his smile deepening when I looked up to find him watching me.
I rolled to my stomach and leaned on my elbows. “Reading my mind now?”
He caught my hand and kissed the knuckles. “It was your face I read, Coyote.”
“So why now and not when we first met?”
&n
bsp; “I wish I could have read you then. I wouldn’t have had to work so hard for the most minuscule insight.” He smiled softly. “I think because what’s between us…these emotions…. they’re still so new to you, you’ve not yet learned to hide them. I hope you never do.”
Color flooded my cheeks at being so transparent.
Koda laughed and stood, pulling me against his chest. Catching a strand of my hair and twining it around his finger, he kissed my forehead. I stood on tiptoe and brushed my lips against his, then stooped to pull my clothes on. Knowing he was watching, I took my time about it and put a little shimmy into the effort.
When I was dressed, he shook himself and put his jeans on. “We should head back. Don’t think I didn’t hear your stomach growling. It’s been too long since you ate.”
Marveling that I was doing this, I snagged his sweater from the ground and stretched to pull it over his head. While his arms were trapped in the sleeves, I took decadent advantage and swiped my tongue across his magnificent chest. The salty taste of him was pure heaven and I licked him twice more.
“Sephti,” he murmured in a ragged voice, pulling the sweater all the way on and kissing me deeply.
“Does your cabin have a bed?” I whispered, breathless, when he let me.
His breath caught. “It does.”
“Then I’ll race you back!” Feeling playful, I shot off, sprinting hard and fast across the moon-silvered prairie. After a few strides, Koda caught up with me, his grin flashing white in his bronze face.
We were a quarter-mile away when, without warning, a pronghorn antelope bolted past us. Then another and another. In moments, the small herd had left us behind, their bobbing white rumps disappearing into the night.
I staggered as what felt like a wall of frigid air hammered into me, almost driving me to my knees.
“Wendigo!” Koda cursed, stopping and turning to face back the way we’d come. “Sephti, run!”
Stumbling to a halt, I was spinning to join him when I got body-slammed face-first into the hard ground. Somehow, whatever was chasing the antelope had flanked us without either Koda or me knowing. It had taken me down with the force of a speeding car, knocking the wind from me and still I couldn’t get a read on it. My senses kept insisting Koda and I were alone, despite all evidence to the contrary.
