by H. D. Gordon
With that, Adriel leapt over the side of the dock… and was scooped up by a Harpy, landing on her back as though he had done just that a million times before. I watched in wonder as they soared off toward the horizon.
All I had to do was follow. Adriel would lead me home.
I turned to make the leap, the Harpy that would take me home just about within jumping distance.
“Rook,” Ryker said, as I cast one final look at him. He was so close, and yet so far away. His blue eyes pleaded. “They’ll come for you. I won’t stop them. Not if you leave me.”
I released a sigh and met Ryker’s blue gaze. Even now, my body still called to him, the potion having been conquered by my mind, but not my body.
“I suspect we’ll come for you, too,” I told him, my voice smooth enough to give Adriel’s a run for its money. “And I won’t stop them, either.”
With that, I leapt.
35
For all of two seconds, I was positive I was going to hit the dark water.
Then, I made impact with a feathered body, and my arms and legs clung for purchase out of pure instinct. I felt the bird Shifter’s magnificent wings flap and flap, and we were lifted high into the air.
I managed to maneuver myself so that I straddled the bird’s back, and watched in absolute wonder as the dock and Ryker and all the Wolves lining the beach receded below.
It reminded me so much of my last daring escape from this seaside city, from the blue-eyed Wolf standing on that dock, that for a moment, déjà vu flooded me.
I clutched the beautiful creature and stared out at the passing landscapes as we left the Western Coast behind, not seeing a bit of it. My mind kept replaying the moment when Ryker realized I’d had a blade beneath my dress the whole time, the utter betrayal that had filled his blue eyes.
We made it all the way to Mina, passing through a secret rift that led into the Between Realms, and sailing over the Emerald Forest before I was able to focus on anything else.
Adriel had the Harpies set us down on the outskirts of the town, inside one of the many walled gardens, where the scents of mint, citrus, peppers and other produce was strong. The garden was empty at this time of night, and the duel moons of the Between Realms beamed down and made the space glow blue and silver.
I thanked the Harpies as they set us down and soared off again into the town. I thanked Asha, too, but she said nothing as she also wandered deeper into Mina, leaving Adriel and me alone in the garden.
Adriel ran a hand through his dark hair, and gave me the half-smile I hadn’t realized until just this moment that I loved so much.
“Welcome home,” he said.
“You came for me,” I replied, my voice soft among the chirping night insects.
Adriel’s head tilted a fraction, his ebony hair blue in the moonlight. His red eyes held mine, and I remembered thinking about how scarlet was the color of home when I’d been standing on that dock.
“You came with me,” Adriel said, with the same relieved astonishment I’d heard in my own tone.
I shifted a little on my feet, feeling utterly ridiculous in my blue gown. “Did you doubt that I would?” I asked
Adriel’s beautiful face twisted with pain for the briefest of moments before the expression disappeared. “I wasn’t sure,” he admitted. “But I knew you weren’t going to Mate him.”
I wet my lips, wanting to step into his arms, but not entirely sure if that’s what he wanted.
“How did you know that?” I asked instead.
Adriel’s red eyes looked down as he bit his lower lip in a failed effort to suppress a smile. Some of his dark hair fell over his forehead, and I had to resist the urge to brush it back again.
“Because I knew you’d never Mate a Master,” he said simply, “whether you loved him or not, you would never take part in that system. In fact, I was pretty sure you’d sooner burn it to the ground.”
He was right. I took a step toward him. “You know me so well?” I asked.
Adriel’s red eyes rose to meet mine again, and something warm spiraled through my stomach. He sighed, and the scent of soap and peppermint surrounded me.
“I’d like to,” he said quietly.
Making my second leap of faith in a single day, I closed the distance between us, and my heart swelled when Adriel opened his strong arms to me, folding me into an embrace that felt long overdue. My hands slipped around his back, holding him to me as his wrapped around my waist.
I had to tilt my head back to look up at him, and his scarlet eyes were bright with attention. It felt absolutely natural when I rested my cheek upon his wide chest, when his hand came up and smoothed my dark hair back over my shoulder.
“You’re right,” I said. “I was going to kill him. I was going to kill Ryker.”
“I know,” Adriel replied, his smooth, deep voice right against my ear where my head still rested on his chest.
I stared out into the night, listening to the steady beat of his heart. “He’ll come for us,” I said. “So will the other Masters.”
Adriel released a slow breath, still stroking my hair gently. “I know that, too.”
I pulled back so that I could look at him. The power he radiated surrounded me, wrapping me in a cocoon of safety that I was keen to never crawl out of. This was what it was supposed to feel like. This was where I belonged. Adriel would never have put me in the position Ryker had put me in. Adriel would never have locked me in a room and made me drink a potion in an attempt to force me to Mate him.
Adriel, for all the Monster the world thought he was, would not even have forced me to follow him off that dock, despite the risks he’d taken to be there.
Stupid Hound, he’d said to Ryker. Rukiya has never needed anyone to protect her.
And he was right. He’d been right all along. I’d just been slow to see it.
So as I stared up into Adriel’s scarlet eyes, at the perfect lines of his face, basking in the magic that hung around him, commanding an enormous power that he chose consistently to use for good, despite the way the world treated him… I knew I had been right in my thinking on that dock.
Scarlet was the color of home. Scarlet was Adriel’s color, and Adriel was everything good that existed in the world.
“Let them try,” I told him. “We’re going to free the slaves. We’ll kill every Pack Master and any Hound that stands in our way. So just let them try. We’ll face them together. We’ll burn the system to the ground.”
Adriel’s perfect mouth tipped up in a half smile, and he tilted my chin up with his fingers. Slowly, as if to give me a chance to get away, he placed a soft kiss on my lips.
Against my mouth, in that smooth, strange-accented voice, he mumbled, “Rukiya dearest… I thought you’d never ask.”
The End
For now.
Moon Born, book 3 in The Wolf Wars Series, coming soon.
About the Author
H. D. Gordon is the author of several urban fantasy novels. She is the mother of two amazing daughters, and a lover of kick-ass females, beautiful things, and nerdy t-shirts.
She believes our actions have ripple effects, and in the sacred mission of bringing love and light to the world.
H. D. spends her time with family, eating desserts, and taking strolls by the sea.
She resides in southern New Jersey—which she insists is really quite lovely.
For more information, please visit:
www.hdgordonbooks.com
Want more from H. D.?
Read on for a sneak peek at The Halfling, the first book in H. D.’s urban fantasy Aria Fae Series…
Prologue
Life had been admittedly difficult to live as of late, but that didn’t mean I wanted to get shredded to pieces and eaten by a monster.
In fact, I wasn’t sure I could think of a worse way to go. So I ran. I ran like the love child of Forrest Gump and Bruce Jenner. I ran for my life. It was fitting, I supposed, as I’d started this story out running, that I s
hould end it that way as well.
I was fast, of course, but the beast was faster.
It was gaining on me; I could feel its hot breath against my back. The whole world became the chase, just me and the creature coming after me. Nothing existed outside of that. My mind could go no further than to tell me to move. The factory lights were bright above me, but I was lost in the darkness, perhaps had been for a while, but only now could see so.
My arms and legs pumped, my breath tearing in and out of my lungs. Terrible pain exploded across my back as the beast’s sharp claws cut through my jacket and ripped through my skin. I cried out in pain, stumbling, nearly falling, but somehow kept my feet.
To fall now would mean certain death.
I ran, but knew I could not keep it up much longer. I couldn’t leave here without her… but it seemed I was unable to save her, and thus, I would likely not leave here at all.
How had things gotten so dire so quickly? How was it that I was going to die before ever seeing eighteen, or graduating from high school… or falling in love for the first time?
And worse, so was she, because I couldn’t save her, because I was too weak to save her.
Terrified as I was, I could not run much longer. That left only the option of turning, and facing the beast for a fight.
Chapter 1: Ten Days Earlier
The place was new. A city this time, rather than a small town. I’d needed a change. Had needed to run, I guess, depending on how you looked at it.
The high school was much larger than my last one. Easily five times the students, stuck right in the center of Grant City. The walls were made of stone and the windows offered views of brick and concrete. I hated it instantly, or so I told myself. Realistically, I recognized that it was not the place I was unhappy with.
It was my life in general at the moment. Things had taken a nosedive in a record timeframe, and this was my way of dealing with it. I had run, and found that my issues had tagged along with me.
“Miss Fae?” said the teacher, a mousy woman whose name I hadn’t yet remembered, pulling me from my thoughts. “Do you want to stand up and introduce yourself to the class?” She smiled at me and waved her hands in a come on, get up gesture.
I suppressed a sigh and stood from my seat. I couldn’t understand why teachers always asked this question. Was anyone’s answer ever really, “Why, yes, I’d love to do that!”
“My name is Aria,” I said, trying not to fidget. All the attention, the eyes of the other students, made me uncomfortable. “I moved here from Blue Hook. I like reading and long walks on the beach.”
No one in the class looked particularly impressed. No one even smiled. Feeling like a super butt-wipe, I sighed and took a seat.
“Thank you, Aria,” said teacher-what’s-her-name. “And welcome to Grant City. I’d imagine it’s quite a change from Blue Hook, but it’s not so bad once you give it a chance.”
I gave her a small smile. I could sense she was a good person, and despite the rancid air, constant noise, and lack of greenery, maybe city life wouldn’t be so horrible after all. If there was one thing I prided myself on, it was my ability to adapt. I had to believe I could find happiness here, because like my current issues, I knew my happiness came from within me.
And, yet, my depression was overwhelming; my moods unpredictable, my emotions a roiling sea. My mother was dead, and the people who’d been the closest things I’d had to calling my own had cast me out.
I was a wanderer, an orphan, a soul without a home.
These were the conditions under which I arrived in Grant City. Nothing more, nothing less, than that. I’m not sure if that makes all the things that happened next fate, but looking back now, it sure feels like it.
Chapter 2
The morning passed by in a blur. I stood and introduced myself to the class three more times. Sat through lectures, took notes, read some of the novel I was into while pretending to follow the prescribed text.
I actually enjoyed the practice of learning, had been taught its value at a young age—which was why I’d enrolled myself in the high school the day after arriving here. But I just wasn’t super enthusiastic today, for obvious reasons.
As I’d told the classes, my name is Aria. But what you don’t know is I’m only half human. The other half of me is Fae—hence the last name, a personal joke of mine, as Halflings like myself only have a single name—but I’ve lived the majority of my life among humans as an operative of the Peace Brokers.
The Brokers are an organization of Halfling supernaturals that try to maintain peace between the races. I’ve studied in the human schools, eaten the human food, and absorbed the human culture, right down to the Van sneakers on my feet and the skateboard I ride around on.
But I’ve never felt completely comfortable among full humans. The other half of my blood is Faevian, and that world, the world from which my mother hailed and where I’d been a liaison, was nothing like this one. Now that she was gone, and my superiors had shunned me, I was stuck on this side of the veil permanently. I had no reason to return to any of the other supernatural worlds anyway.
It would be a lie to say that the idea of pretending to be a human, of living a normal human life, didn’t deepen my depression. I’d always thought I was meant for something more. As it turned out, I was mistaken. I wasn’t even a legal adult yet, and I’d already messed up everything irrevocably, lost it all with a few tosses of the dice.
Now, in a city full of people, I felt utterly alone.
So when the lunch bell rang, I was more than ready to find a quiet corner to eat and lose myself in a book. If you’ve never experienced the power of a good novel, the way the words can carry you away from your problems and into a new world where the stakes are not your own, I feel sorry for you.
Books have saved my sanity more times than I can count, and if I’d ever needed saving, it was now.
I followed the sea of students into the cafeteria, keeping my guard up against the onslaught of emotions that could overwhelm me in a crowd this big. It was something I’d gotten good at, as any Fae Empath who hopes to make it through puberty must. Full human teens were a particularly sensitive bunch.
The cafeteria was small—too small, I thought, to hold all of the students flowing in, with off-white walls painted with the school’s mascot and colors—blue and white. Signs reading things like, Go Bluejays! and Stop Bullying! hung in various places. The chatter and hustle of the crowd swallowed me up, and I watched my feet, careful not to make eye contact.
I don’t want you to think this anti-social behavior is typical of me—it’s not. With the Peace Brokers, I’d been taught since childhood how to be diplomatic, how to treat all life with the honor it deserved, how to get people to like me, to trust me. The power of persuasion I had over most people was also part of being a Fae Halfling, and the Brokers had used this ability of mine to the fullest.
Until I was kicked out of that whole universe, anyway.
I sighed, chewing my lip, and grabbed a tray with a cheeseburger and fries, the sight of the food comforting me. I was of the belief that one of mankind’s greatest creations was a good burger, and it was one of the things in my life that had become familiar, a constant. I may not be like all the other people around me, but all in all, the human world itself had accepted me as one of its own.
And yet, I am adrift in a sea of agony, I thought, my inner somber poet rearing its head.
I paid for my food and stood looking at the cafeteria, forgetting until just this moment how terrifying it was to pick a lunch seat at a new school. You had to choose a good one, because you could end up being stuck there all year. It was not too different from the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter.
Luckily, I didn’t have to choose, because I noticed some students exiting with their lunches through a glass door that led outside, and followed them. Much to my relief, when I pushed through the door, I found that there was a square courtyard. It was surrounded on all sides by brick buildings. The air
was still rank with exhaust and garbage, like any city, but there was some grass, a few trees. When I looked up, there was the sun, still warm in early September.
It was a small blessing, and I took it. As half Fae, I thrived in an outdoor environment. Spotting a corner with an empty bench, I hurried over with my food and took a seat, instantly feeling more at ease now that I’d settled.
I ate, and no one bothered me, for which I was glad. I felt lonely beyond words, but there was not a soul near that could make me feel otherwise. Or so I’d thought. It’s funny the things you learn as you get older.
Shoving the food in my face a little less aggressively than I would have in private, I watched the other students with a practiced disinterest. People watching always entertained me. It’s a quiet, personal activity that opens up time for reflection.
Problem was, at the moment, I wasn’t ready to do any reflecting.
A sound pulled my eyes to the center of the courtyard, where a group of girls were standing, and I looked up just in time to see what looked like a brand new laptop fall to the concrete near the group, the device cracking with an unmistakable sound.
The small courtyard grew as silent as a stuffy church. No one even seemed to chew their food.
“Hey!” said a thin, strawberry blonde-haired girl. Her voice raised in pitch. It was obvious she was fighting back tears. “You broke it!” She looked like she was a freshman or sophomore, but the other three girls standing in front of her were definitely seniors.
She went to pick up the laptop, but the largest of the senior girls blocked her path. My shoulders tensed, my stomach dropping. Fear was rolling off the blonde girl in waves, hitting me with nauseating force.
The bigger senior girl—the ringleader, from where I was sitting—had her hands shoved coolly in her jacket pockets. She was an average sort of pretty, tall enough to be a model, but corded with muscle in a way that suggested sports instead. She had short, cropped brown hair and hard brown eyes that revealed Latino descent, and wore a lettermen jacket that more than likely belonged to some hotshot football player.
