From Ashes

by Elise Faber

  What in the hell was she talking about?

  “—in which case, I’ll simply say that I—” Here she faltered, her cheeks heating, the confident tone becoming tinged with embarrassment. “That I was curious about you, so I asked Suz.”

  She kept her gaze locked onto his, and as he watched her, attempting to decipher what in the fuck all she was saying, her chin came up. It was late afternoon, and the sun was high in the sky, its bright sunbeams breaking through the canopy of trees that surrounded them, gilding her already blonde hair, making it appear to be strands of gold. In an instant, his mind shifted from trying to figure out what she was pissed about to other, more dangerous things—how her pert, little nose had a sprinkling of amber freckles, how her bottom lip was plumper than the top, how the flash of the pink tip of her tongue as she licked the corner of her mouth in nervousness made everything in him stand up and take notice.

  “Mason?” she asked.

  Mentally shaking himself, he forced his focus onto her as a whole and not each of the minuscule details he’d been obsessing over.

  But Gabby as a whole wasn’t that much better for his focus.

  Because though she was short and her breasts were small, her ass—

  Shit. His fingers actually tingled with the urge to reach out and find out how the lush curves felt in his hands.

  “You were curious about me?” he asked roughly.

  Her lids closed, blonde lashes resting against the fragile half-moon of her cheekbones for a long moment. When they opened again, her eyes were tinged with amusement. “That’s all you took from what I said?”

  He really needed to get a grip.

  “Um, yes?” Not exactly the witty comeback he’d been hoping for, but his mind was all but shut down, the urge to claim her riding him with sudden fierceness. He wanted to let loose his magic and wrap her in it. He to trace his hands across every inch of her. He wanted—

  A woman who wasn’t Victoria.

  Everything in him froze and he waited . . . for the stabbing pain of guilt, for the sting of betrayal, for the icing over of his heart.

  Instead he felt none of that.

  Oh, there was guilt and regret and anger, but they weren’t all encompassing, they didn’t make him want to shut down. In the same way that a paper cut hurts like hell right after it happens then is reduced to a dull throb, the overwhelming emotions that usually surrounded him had been diminished. Lessoned.

  Agony transformed to dull throb.

  “You realize that I’m nothing like you,” she said, pulling him from that shocking knowledge and drawing him back into the present.

  “Aside from the obvious?” he asked, his stare tracing her head to toe.

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re going to bring it down to body parts?”

  A shrug. “I guess I am.”

  She muttered something that sounded a lot like “men” before raising her voice. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t blame you for not wanting to spend time tutoring me. I’m not even remotely close to your league.”

  Now he was frowning. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I know,” she said, and it was like someone had placed a two-ton boulder on her shoulders at the admission. “Look, I’ll go back with you, okay? It was stupid to run from my problems. I—I know better.”

  Mason thought about pressing her, but since he ultimately wanted her back and safe behind the shield, instead he just nodded.

  She turned back in the direction of the Colony, unerringly orienting herself correctly without even a moment’s hesitation. It raised his opinion of her, elevated the underlying respect he already possessed for her, but it wasn’t until the glow of the green and violet shield came into focus before he realized that something else had been elevated as well.

  His awareness of her. The urge to possess. The way he was drawn to her, despite all the reasons he shouldn’t be.

  He needn’t have followed her so closely through the shield.

  He could have tracked her with his eyes closed.

  His magic intrinsically knew where hers was. It would unerringly always know.

  Not because of his skills as a LexTal, but . . . because he knew her an elemental level, knew her in the very fiber of his soul.

  Heart thumping, panic shooting through him like bolts of lightning, he struggled to maintain a calm façade.

  Because—fuck—Gabby was his.

  Eleven

  Gabby

  She had almost reached the brightly colored shield when a jolt jarred her from head to toe, mind to bone marrow. Part of her thought it might be how an expectant mother felt when her baby moved for the first time. The rest of her was too stunned into stillness to really process what she was feeling.

  Awareness—a soul-deep awakening.

  It was . . . Mason. Inside her.

  Slowly, she turned to face him. She didn’t have to search for him, didn’t need to look. She knew exactly where he was.

  This. Could. Not. Be. Happening.

  The draw—the urge to mix her magic with his, to strengthen their connection, to link their minds on an even deeper level—was simply her imagination. He couldn’t possibly be feeling the same thing she was.

  But horror flooded through her as she watched realization coat the features of his face—desire, need, hope . . . then his eyes went cold, his lips pressed flat.

  No, she thought. This couldn’t be happening.

  For a second, it seemed as though he had heard her—his head tilted to the side, and he seemed to be waiting for something, for her to do something.

  But she didn’t understand.

  Okay, that wasn’t true. The evidence had added up, the signs were too glaring for her to ignore.

  A bond.

  Fuck. Fuck!

  He prowled toward her.

  “Wh-what’s the matter?” she asked.

  He didn’t say anything, just crowded her, not stopping until his chest was mere inches from hers. His stare raised the hairs on the back of her neck, made every cell in her body quiver . . . in awareness, in fear, in desire?

  Damn, she didn’t know, couldn’t begin to process the whirlwind of emotions spinning inside her.

  All she understood was that being this close to Mason felt right.

  “What is it?” she whispered when he didn’t speak.

  He held up a palm. Strands crawled from its surface, bunching together into a sphere of green and gold and brown.

  Unbidden, her magic rose and swelled within her mind. It begged her for release, for her to allow it to crawl down her spine and burst from her hands to join with Mason’s.

  To complete the bond. Like Daughtry and Cody.

  Privacy is an issue because your thoughts are never only your own again. The memory of her friend’s words when discussing the connection she had with the man she loved flared to the front of Gabby’s mind, flooded her heart with absolute terror.

  Stumbling backward, she tore her gaze from Mason’s magic.

  She couldn’t.

  They couldn’t. They. Could. Not. Bond. It simply wasn’t possible.

  “It is possible,” he said, gleaning the thought from her mind.

  And—fuck—it was beginning already. He had a window to her soul and she had to slam the shutters, to yank the blackout shades closed.

  “What’s possible?” she asked, playing stupid even as her chest heaved and her palms were sweaty from a combination of nerves and the painful resistance of keeping her magic locked in place. Why she could do that without issue but couldn’t make a freaking ball of water was beyond her. But before she could focus too closely on her magical ineptitude, he spoke again.

  “It is possible.”

  She stumbled another step backward, shook her head.

  God, she’d wanted to escape Mason earlier, had forced her way through the shield in her efforts, but now that the truth of why she kept wanting to run from him was staring her in the face, she felt as though she could burst throu
gh a concrete wall.

  Except there were no walls, only a shield she wouldn’t be able to get back through and open space with nowhere to hide.

  “You wouldn’t be able to hide from me,” he said, cherry-picking more thoughts from her mind. “I’ll always know where you are.”

  Suz or Daughtry would have said something snarky to that pushy statement, would have rolled their eyes and accuse him of sounding like a serial killer. But she was hardly able to breathe, let alone be witty.

  Instead, she shook her head, a mute denial. A useless denial.

  He stepped close, the ball of magic still in his hand. “Let your power flow.”

  So many things flashed through her mind.

  The urge to do as he’d ordered. A bone-deep desire to bond with him on the most basic level, to belong somewhere, to have someone love her. But her fear of doing so, of someone discovering her past far outweighed anything else. She couldn’t let desire drive her. Not in this case. She didn’t belong at the Colony. And—her gut burned with nausea—if Mason had access to her mind, he would discover the truth she’d worked so hard to keep secret.

  Because, in the end, it would come down to whether or not she was worthy.

  And there was no doubt that she wasn’t.

  “Let. It. Flow,” he ordered.

  He was a dog to the bone, but she’d known that already, could see that reinforced from his expression, feel it in the way his emotions practically battered at her skin.

  He wouldn’t let this go.

  Either she let her magic fly free and they completed the final step of bonding—mixing their powers was required in order to do so—or she discovered her suspicions were wrong, and nothing would happen when their magic wove together.

  That they weren’t bonded after all.

  It was shocking how sad the thought made her. Which was wrong, so completely sick and wrong, but . . . it was the truth.

  A truth she couldn’t accept. Because they couldn’t bond.

  She needed an opportunity to flee, a distraction, to get far enough away from this place that Mason would forget she existed. Surely it couldn’t be that hard to overlook her presence. God knew, her own mother had done it often enough.

  And suddenly, she knew exactly what she needed to do.

  How to push him away.

  The words that came out of her mouth were a cruel, awful necessity.

  “You’d so easily betray your wife?” she spat, hardly recognizing her own voice, disgusted that her fear would drive her to do something so terrible, and yet unable to keep from doing it anyway. “You’re so anxious to forget her? To forget your son?”

  He visibly recoiled, stumbled away from her, face paling, eyes filled with hurt.

  She turned her back on him, trembling, filled with revulsion at her cruelty, but at least she’d succeeded in pushing him away. Because this time when she left, putting distance between herself and the Colony, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her destination the mountains in the background, he let her go.

  Twelve

  Mason

  He stood frozen for about two and a half seconds.

  Then he followed her.

  His footsteps were silent, his tracking instinctive and effective. Add in the magical draw, the way he could sense Gabby’s direction without really thinking and his ability to teleport with nary a thought, and even if she’d been hours ahead of him, he still would have easily caught up to her.

  But instead of doing that, he trailed her through the woods and tried to figure out why her?

  And for that matter why him?

  He’d spent decades avoiding woman, drawing back from any sign of interest or attraction, not wanting to forget Victoria or mar her memory, or—

  Hell, he’d been terrified to put himself out there.

  Truthfully, it hadn’t been hard to protect himself. He hadn’t experienced one iota of temptation. Until Gabby. He didn’t know what it was about her that captivated him so completely. Why he followed her when he wouldn’t have bothered with anyone else, especially after what she’d said.

  Her words before she’d run again had been harsh, but true.

  As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, he was still scared. Of what would happen if he allowed himself to care, if that caring led to something else.

  Bonding didn’t equate to instant love, but it did tie two Rengallas’ magic together, and that connection meant something—it drew them together on a most basic level, erected links that were difficult to break. And if the bond was eventually severed, if he bonded with Gabby but failed to keep her, if they each were unable to nurture and grow the connection, they would both lose their powers.

  Cleary, he’d been hasty in his decision to mix their magic.

  He understood that now.

  But he hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly, his mind and body filled with the need to claim and possess, and it had been impossible to resist the urge to push. Fuck, he’d given Cody so much shit about chasing after Daughtry, so much crap about not being able to control himself.

  And two seconds after he’d clued into the bond, he’d cornered Gabby, demanding she complete their link.

  But as he followed after her, reality intruded.

  And the old fears crept back in.

  He’d loved Victoria, had been utterly eviscerated by her death. That potential would be magnified exponentially with the bond. It was a mental, a magical, a soul-deep connection, and once formed, it allowed one’s bondmate into the inner depths of the other’s mind. Bonded couples could communicate telepathically, could sense emotions and thoughts, could view memories.

  The concept was old, but the reality was new.

  Before Daughtry and Cody, there were no other bonded couples at the Colony. Until they’d bonded, the Rengalla had thought the ability was lost forever. Five hundred years had passed without one and then Daughtry had swept into the Colony, bonded with Cody, and saved the lot of them from the Dalshie.

  Mason had a boatload of respect for Dee, not just because she’d been courageous or because she’d fought for the Rengalla. No, his respect came from the fact that she’d stood up to him when he was in the wrong.

  Anyone who held their ground against someone stronger and a hell of a lot meaner, earned points in his book.

  “I know you’re there.” Gabby’s voice made him start. She took a breath, a long, slow breath that elevated her shoulders somewhere in the vicinity of her ears and when she turned, it hissed out of her mouth on her exhale. “Why are you following me?”

  Why was he? For all intents and purposes, she was trying to get rid of him. He should let her.

  But fuck. He just . . . couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Raising a brow, he took a step closer. Her eyes were puffy and slightly reddened from the remnants of tears, but her expression was defiant.

  And, God, he loved that.

  Victoria had never stood up to him. Not directly, anyway. She hadn’t been weak, exactly, but she had been very soft, almost fragile. There was nothing but strength in Gabby—brittle strength, but a steel will forged by trauma, by pain, that called to him.

  To soothe. To hold. To help her through.

  Not that she would let him.

  Gabby wouldn’t hand over her problems like Victoria had, wouldn’t stand back and let him take care of everything. She was too independent, too used to doing things on her own. And while Mase had no shortage of respect for people with spines in day-to-day life, he never would have thought to desire such a thing in a relationship. He was the one in charge. He made the decisions. He—

  Had never expected to be in another relationship.

  But the fact of the matter was that he wasn’t one to deny the truth or stick his head in the sand.

  The bond was a gift. It wasn’t something to be thrown away just because he was scared.

  It was special.

  Pieces settled inside him, his path becoming clear. He wouldn’t push the bond, wouldn
’t force them to do something that couldn’t be undone, but that didn’t mean he was going to allow Gabby to run away without even exploring where the draw between them would lead.

  If it worked out—if they were both willing to take the risk—then they could complete the bond.

  He took another step toward her, noting her eyes widening, abruptly remembering her fear, her panic when he’d touched her without warning.

  And . . . he was crowding her again.

  Cool.

  Tamping down on the urge to get closer, to eliminate the distance between them, he forced himself to stop, to shift so his back was against a tree and the trail was wide open, not missing that the moment the exit was in full view, she relaxed. He wanted to press her. He wanted to demand answers, to force her to hand him every one of her memories, her fears, so he could take care of them, make them disappear, vanquish her enemies with proverbial steed and sword.

  Victoria would have thrown them at him.

  Gabby held tight to hers.

  So he didn’t demand. Instead, he slid down the trunk of the tree and sat on the ground. Then when her gaze rested on his, he opened his palm and called forth some water.

  “Ready for your lesson?”

  Thirteen

  Gabby

  She stared at him, her mouth hanging open, the tension in her spine turning it into a rigid steel rod.

  She’d expected him to make demands of her.

  To force her to return to the Colony. To mix their magic and complete their bond. To reveal every single one of her secrets. Instead he sat on the dirt, his face placid, and the little sphere of magic hovering above his palm.

  God, she wanted him—both physically and magically.

  But she couldn’t risk letting someone in.

  Daughtry and Suz were different. They each had their own painful memories, and despite all the time they spent together, they didn’t push Gabby to reveal more than she was willing.

  In her experience, men were different.

  Hell, in her dealings thus far with Mason, he been nothing but arrogant and demanding.

  What was different now?