by Chant, Zoe
She hurried around the kitchen, making use of the herbs she already had and cursing her inability to go search for more. But she didn’t dare leave Ethan alone in the palace. She made some more syrup for soothing coughs and hot tea to keep him hydrated, feeling all the while like she was slapping a Band-Aid over a bullet wound. Then she cut up another mango, dipped some cloths in cool water, piled everything on a tray, and returned to his room.
He hadn’t moved from where she’d left him. She set down the tray on the table and stroked the damp hair back from his forehead. His skin was like fire. He turned his head slightly, moving into her touch.
“You awake?” she asked quietly.
His eyes opened slowly. His blue-green gaze was glassy and unfocused.
“Ellie?” he mumbled.
“It’s Destiny. Ellie’s not here.”
He didn’t seem to hear her, and he obviously wasn’t seeing her. “Ellie, call in to the base for me. Tell them I’m sick. I’m not…” He coughed painfully. “…not fit to ship out.”
“I’ll make the call. Don’t worry about it.” Destiny wiped the sweat from his face with a damp cloth, then coaxed him to take a spoonful of the cough syrup.
He swallowed it, then closed his eyes. She was debating whether it was worth waking him up to get him to drink some tea when he opened his eyes, pushed himself up on one elbow, and shouted hoarsely, “Valdez! Valdez! Stop fighting, we have to go back! Merrick, grab his other arm!”
“Ethan, you’re safe in bed. You’re safe!”
He didn’t hear or even look at her, but kept on shouting orders from some battle long past until a coughing fit cut him off. When it ended, he slumped back into the pillows, exhausted.
“Oh, Ethan.” Destiny stroked his hair, which seemed to calm him. She lifted his head so he could drink some tea. He took a few sips, then turned his head away. She went back to stroking his hair.
“What’s it take, Dad?” he mumbled. “Straight As? A baseball scholarship? Or nothing? Nothing, right? There’s nothing I can ever do that’ll ever be good enough.”
“You are good enough,” Destiny said. But he obviously didn’t hear her.
“Recon Marine won’t be either,” he went on, his voice very hoarse. “But that’s not why I’m doing it. That’s for me, not you. For me!”
He began coughing again. When he finally stopped, she tried to get him to take some more cough syrup, but he refused it. She set down the spoon before he’d have spilled it all over the bed. It obviously wasn’t doing any good anyway.
She had never felt so helpless in her life. Ethan was trapped in nightmares and she couldn’t do anything but sit there and listen. If only there was some villain or monster to fight! She’d rather face a million T-Rexes than have to sit by Ethan’s side and watch him suffer, knowing all the while that all he needed was medical help that was just a short plane flight away, but might as well be on the moon for all her ability to get it to him.
“Destiny?” Ethan whispered, startling her.
“I’m here.”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
He coughed. “I can’t breathe. Help me sit up.”
She lifted him and let him lean on her, with his head resting on her shoulder. The heat of his body made her break into a sweat, as if she was sitting by a raging fire. She wasn’t sure if he was still delirious or not. He’d called her by name, but his gaze was unfocused and his voice was distant and dreamy.
“I’ve loved you since the day I met you,” he said. “Every day, I wake up and think of you. Your beautiful eyes. Your laugh. Your hand in mine. Then every day, I remember that you don’t love me and you never will. And every day, my heart breaks all over again.”
“Ethan,” Destiny whispered, then stopped, unable to say more. She knew he was speaking the truth of his heart, but she didn’t know if he meant to tell it to her or if it was only his fever that had loosened his tongue. But more than that, his words broke her heart. Oh, she’d known he liked her a lot. That he had a crush on her. But how could he truly love her when she wasn’t his mate?
But he did. She could hear every minute of that two-year heartbreak in his voice.
Before she could say anything, he went on, “Dad was right. I’m not just good enough.”
“He was wrong!” She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. “Of course you’re good enough! You’re brave and strong and funny and hot—you’re everything any woman could possibly want. You’re everything I want!”
Destiny heard her own words as if they had been spoken by someone else, allowing her to know the truth of them. Slowly, she repeated, “You’re everything I want. You’ve always been everything I wanted. Ethan, your face is the face I imagine before I open my eyes, and then I see the empty pillow. It breaks my heart too. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I—”
She broke off. His lips were parted, his eyes wide and bright with astonished joy. The heat still came off him in waves and he might sink back into fever dreams at any moment. But she could see that right now, he was here with her. Whatever she said next, he’d hear and remember.
“I said no because I was afraid,” she admitted. “I’m not your mate, so I thought one day you’d meet her and leave me. But—”
“I hate that fucking imaginary mate!” Ethan burst out. “She doesn’t even exist, and she’s still keeping you from me. If I ever do meet her, I’ll show her the door so fast it’ll hit her ass on the way out.”
A snicker escaped from Destiny’s lips. “You don’t need to be mean to her. I’m sure you wouldn’t be anyway. You’re a gentleman.”
“You’re right. I’ll very politely escort her out. And then I’ll put out a restraining order on her, to make sure she stays out.”
She laughed again, a little incredulously. No one would ever do that to their mate… but what was a mate, anyway?
“I kept telling you that you weren’t a shifter, so you couldn’t understand,” she said. “But you understood better than I did. If a mate isn’t the person you love with all your heart and want to spend the rest of your life with, then I don’t want a mate. I want you. And I’m sorry I made you wait so long.”
“You’re worth waiting for. Destiny, you—” His words were cut off as he broke into a long, painful coughing spell. He covered his mouth with his hand.
When he finally stopped, gasping for breath, his hand fell to his side as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it up any longer. Where his palm touched, it left red smears on the blanket. Slowly, she raised her gaze to his face. There was blood on his lips, too.
Until that moment, she had never truly known terror. Nor had she known despair. It was only then that she realized that Ethan had been right: she’d been knocked down a thousand times, and gotten up a thousand and one. But this was something she could never get up from. The man she loved was dying in her arms, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to save him.
He was also looking at the blood on the blanket. Without fear, but rather the cool evaluation of a bad situation she’d heard in his voice when they’d been in combat together, he said, “I think I’m going to die if I don’t get help.”
Wild ideas raced through her mind. “I could carry you to the Apex base and break in—”
“Destiny.” He had to stop to catch his breath before he went on. “I won’t make it. But shifters heal better. Bite me.”
Never bite anyone who isn’t already a shifter had been so ingrained into her that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try it until he’d mentioned it. Cold fear struck deep into her heart at the thought of it. “Ethan, no! I’ll kill you!”
With that same detached calm as when he’d mentioned it, he said, “You said that was rare.” He pulled in a labored breath. “I hate to make you risk it. But it’s my only chance.”
Destiny felt paralyzed. If she bit him, she might kill the man she loved. If she didn’t, she’d be letting him die through inaction.
<
br /> Her tiger surged up, trying to force her to shift. Destiny pushed back. There was a brief but fierce inner battle. To Destiny’s own surprise, she won.
He wants to be a tiger, said the big cat inside her. He needs to be a tiger. Set me free. He will recover, and we will all be free to hunt together, as we should.
Destiny looked into Ethan’s eyes, and saw the predator within him. Her tiger was right; all she needed to do was set his own beast free.
“You sure, jarhead?”
“I’m sure, mudpuppy.”
She helped him sit up in bed, propped against the headboard and some pillows. Then she stepped back and pulled off her shirt—his shirt. It still smelled like him. She stood naked before him, the jungle air warm on her body and his regard hot on her skin.
When she reached into herself to become a tiger, she found that doing so felt different than it ever had before. When she’d been a child, it had always been completely involuntary and, once she understood that she should only do it when she intended to, a shameful proof of her weakness. Later, after she’d started using the pills, it felt like a simple physical action, like drawing her gun, with no sense of connection to the big cat within her.
Destiny had always known that her tiger was a part of herself. But she’d never truly felt it. First she’d fought her tiger, then she’d built a wall between them, and then, when she’d lost her pills, she’d fought her inner beast again. But now she felt attuned to that other self. She was her tiger.
When she’d been a child, her tiger cub had contained the full force of a strong-willed child’s anger and frustration. The little girl trying to suppress those feelings had never had a chance against the part of herself that expressed them.
But now she was an adult, and so was her tiger. She didn’t have to fight herself in a desperate battle for control or lock up her feelings in separate boxes. She could accept all of herself, and just be herself.
I never got to grow up, her tiger said. Those herbs kept me too quiet to grow or learn. I was always a cub at heart. Until you stopped taking them, and I began making up for lost time.
Her tiger had been acting like a rebellious teenager, ever since she’d stopped the pills. No wonder she’d been so much trouble!
And now? Destiny asked, though she already knew the answer.
Now we are one, her tiger purred.
The shift felt as natural as breathing. Destiny avoided looking at Ethan’s face; she was afraid that if she did, her terror of him dying would come rushing back. It was best to simply act, and do it quickly and without thought. She lowered her muzzle to the bed and bit his forearm just deep enough to draw blood.
Destiny became a woman again. She pulled her shirt back on with shaking hands, and turned back to Ethan. If anything was going to—to go wrong—it would happen very quickly. Her gaze focused first on the trickle of blood from his bitten arm, then moved to his chest. He was breathing. And he kept breathing. Was it her imagination, or were the harsh gasps of his breath softening?
“You did it.” There was no mistaking it: his voice was stronger. “Destiny, you saved me.”
The force of her relief made her weak at the knees. She dropped down beside the bed, laid her head on his chest, and let her tears flow. For the first time, she cried in front of another person and felt no shame. She had no need to put up a bright front of strength and cheer. Ethan would understand; Ethan loved her; Ethan would live.
He didn’t tell her to stop crying. He didn’t speak at all. He just held her, stroking her back and hair, while she let herself feel all the pent-up emotion of everything that had happened that day. Everything that had happened since she’d first met him, and turned him away for reasons that now seemed absurd. Who cared about mates when she could have Ethan?
She wept until her tears dried up, replaced with a deep sense of inner peace. At long last, she lifted her head, and looked into the blue-green ocean of his eyes without fear.
Mine, her tiger purred with immense satisfaction and absolute certainty. Our mate.
“What?!” Destiny burst out. “Now you tell me?”
Ethan looked equally amazed and baffled. “Is your tiger saying we’re mates? Because mine is sure of it.”
“So’s mine.” To her tiger, Destiny demanded, Why didn’t you say so before?
With an air of injured innocence, her tiger said, I didn’t know before. I told you, I was a cub at heart. You can’t know your mate when you’re a child.
Destiny repeated that, adding, “It was those pills! They didn’t just give me control over my shift. They were stopping my tiger from growing up with me. Mate recognition doesn’t kick in until you’re old enough to do something about it.”
“Mataji didn’t know that would happen, right?”
“No, I’m sure she had no idea. And I did need them at the time. I just should have stopped taking them later, once I was more mature.”
Unexpectedly, Ethan chuckled. “So, you’re saying you literally had an inner child.”
“Smartass.” She poked his arm—not the bitten one. “You must be feeling better.”
“I am.” He was still fever-hot, but not blazing like he’d been before, and his breathing had eased. His eyelids fluttered, then closed. He seemed to force them back open. “Sorry. I’m really tired.”
She stroked his forehead. “Go to sleep. You need it.”
“One thing first.”
He reached up a hand, caught the back of her head, and pulled her down to him. Their lips met in a kiss that was short but felt eternal in the very best way, a kiss of both passion and comfort.
A kiss of love fulfilled at last.
Chapter 13
Ethan
When Ethan awoke, a sense of happiness and wellbeing filled him even before he remembered where he was and what had happened. He drew in a deep breath, and it neither hurt nor left him feeling suffocated. He was neither burning up nor freezing, but pleasantly warm. His head didn’t hurt any more. Best of all, his heart wasn’t filled with loneliness and the bitter knowledge that what he wanted most, he could never have.
He reached out a hand, and felt Destiny’s fingers curl around his.
“Ethan?” she said softly. “You awake?”
He opened his eyes. She was perched on the bed beside him. A shaft of morning sun fell across her face, catching the golden undertones of her skin. Her warm brown eyes were brimming with the same love for him that he felt for her.
Our mate, his tiger purred.
That new inner voice should have felt strange, but it didn’t. Ethan could feel that his tiger was a part of him. He’d never denied the fiercer parts of his self, so having the wildest and most primal aspect of himself given a voice of its own felt natural. And calling Destiny his mate was only putting a name to what Ethan had always known.
He couldn’t believe that they’d known each other for so long and spent so much time together without giving in to their feelings. To their desire. It burned in him like a wildfire, fierce and hot and unstoppable. And when he looked into her eyes, he saw that it burned in her too. How the hell had they both managed to control themselves for two years?
“You are the most stubborn woman on the face of the Earth,” he said.
“Gee, you really know how to give a girl a compliment,” she teased. “And same to you. Well, not the most stubborn woman…”
He sat up, laughing, ready to make some terrible joke about proving his maleness. She was laughing too. But the laughter faded as he put his hands on her shoulders. At that simple touch, the raw sexual heat that had always smoldered within them, banked and repressed and fought with all their might, burst into flames.
He’d meant to take his time and savor the moment. He savored the moment, all right, but the instant he touched her, he knew that neither of them were in the mood for any slow careful lovemaking. It was love, yes, but love like a fever, love like a fire, a love that was wild and fierce and never again to be denied.
He kissed her
with the ferocity of two endless years of pent-up passion. She returned it with equal urgency, nipping at his lips as he nipped at hers. Her scent surrounded him, filling his senses and driving him wild. He pulled at her clothes, impatient to touch every inch of her smooth warm skin, to mark it with his own skin, his own scent, to claim her and make her his own.
But her strong soft hands were already inside his pants, stroking his thighs, on his rock-hard erection. His urgent need threatened to flare out of control, and he heard himself growl.
With a teasing purr, she stopped her explorations just long enough to allow him to strip her. He feasted his eyes on her delectably feminine curves, her irresistible scent. All of her.
“My Destiny,” he growled. “Mine.”
“Ethan,” she gasped. “Ethan, oh, Ethan, finally—!”
He pulled her out of her chair and laid her down on the bed. And then he let himself feast for real, tasting her, savoring her, teasing her sensitive nipples and feeling them harden to nubs under his tongue. Her nails dug into his shoulders as he went lower, but the tiny pain only sharpened his pleasure. She responded to his smallest touch, moaning and writhing, losing control. He loved seeing, hearing, feeling her desire. Destiny wanted him, needed him, just as much as he needed her.
He licked at her inner thighs, and she instinctively opened herself to him, inviting him to taste her tangy sweetness. He did. Her clit was like a little pearl under his tongue, and he felt it swell and throb as he made her climax.
Then he could hold himself back no more. And she was ready for more, a woman to match his own desperate desire. Even as he raised himself over her, she was pulling him in to her. They came together as if they were made for each other. And, he realized, that was because they were.
“Now!” she called out. “Come on, Ethan, now, now, now!”
