by Zoe Chant
“Well, I don’t!” Hugh glared at him. “Don’t you ever, ever use your power on me, understand?”
Ash’s shoulders stiffened. “I told Ivy I would not do it without your consent.”
“I don’t consent. I will never consent. If I ever think you’ve burned so much as one second of my memories, the tiniest bit of my pain, then I will bloody end you.”
Ash did not comment on the likelihood of this. Which was just as well, since Hugh was one wrong word away from hauling back and punching the most powerful shifter in Europe square in the face.
“I will never affect any part of your mind or soul without your express permission,” Ash said, with utmost formality. “As the Phoenix Eternal, I swear it.”
Hugh let out a long, shaking breath, some of the tightness draining away from his own shoulders at last. “Good. We’re clear on that, then.”
“Very.” Ash studied him for a moment. “Would you have me make a similar vow regarding Ivy?”
Hugh opened his mouth to say yes…but hesitated.
It’s not enough, she’d said.
Ivy creeping about the house, finding any excuse to leave a room the instant that he entered. The way she flinched whenever she looked at him. Like he was a severed limb. A useless remnant, a gruesome relic of past trauma. Something better off burned and buried.
“Hugh?”
He twitched, pulling back from that echoing, silent space inside. There was no voice there to insist that he still had a purpose, that his mate still needed him.
Ivy didn’t need him. She needed to heal.
“No.” He sank down into the chair opposite Ash, weary in every part of his body. “No, don’t promise that.”
“It is irrelevant anyway.” Ash straightened the paperwork on the desk, precisely aligning the corners of the pages. “As I told Ivy, I will not do it to only one of you.”
“Yes. You will.”
Ash looked up sharply. “I beg your pardon?”
Hugh took a deep breath, bracing himself. “Ivy’s going to come see you soon. She’ll ask you to burn her side of our connection. I want you to do it.”
“No,” Ash said without hesitation. “You do not know what you are asking.”
“I do. I know exactly what it’s like to have something, and then lose it utterly. I wouldn’t ever want to forget my unicorn. I don’t ever want to forget Ivy either. But she needs to forget me, if she’s going to heal.”
“Hugh, you cannot ask me to do this to a friend. If I give her the comfort of forgetting, it will only increase your own suffering.”
“I’m asking you to do it as your friend. I want her to be happy, Ash.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the desk. “Let me take her pain as well as mine. I’d rather carry that burden than forget a single second we spent together.”
Ash sat absolutely motionless for a moment. Hugh couldn’t guess what was going on behind the Phoenix’s impenetrable eyes.
“I must warn you that the loss does not get better,” Ash said at last, softly. “The grief does not pass.”
He held the Phoenix’s gaze, unflinching. “If it hurts for the rest of my life…it will still have been worth it.”
An unexpected, heartfelt, and utterly obscene curse from the hallway made them both turn. A second later, Chase slunk sheepishly into view.
“Sorry,” he said. “The door was, uh, destroyed. I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Indeed,” Ash said, his tone notably cooler. “Perhaps that would have been more easily avoided if you had been at your assigned post.”
Chase winced, but stayed put. “I need to talk to Hugh. I should have done it earlier, I should have called you—damn it, I should never have told her in the first place! But she was so insistent, so certain it would help you, and I thought you couldn’t still feel the mate-connection since you weren’t a shifter anymore, so it truly seemed best—oh, I’m an idiot. An utter idiot. You’re going to want to break every bone in my body. You should break every bone in my body.”
“Chase,” Hugh said, finally managing to insert a word into the torrent of remorse. “What are you babbling about?”
“Ivy was here earlier. But she didn’t come to see Ash. She came to see me.” Chase scrubbed a hand over his face, looking sickened. “And I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Chapter 29
Rear cell block, top floor, third window from the right.
That was what Chase had told her. Perched in an old oak tree outside the prison walls, Ivy narrowed her eyes. Despite the distance and the darkening evening, her keen wyvern vision easily picked out the right cell. Now she just had to wait.
She was only going to get one shot at this.
This prison wasn’t a top-security facility, but she had no doubt that she’d trip some sort of alarm the instant she flew over the high concrete outer wall. She’d only have a few minutes at best.
But a few minutes were all she needed. The cell block walls were steel-reinforced and designed to withstand even a dragon…but nothing was stronger than wyvern acid. One blast at the barred window, and she’d be inside.
And then she’d help Hugh the only way she could.
Tell me where the police are holding Gaze, she’d said to Chase. And you’ll never have to see me again.
She hadn’t dared explain much more than that. After she was caught—and she would be caught—she didn’t want anyone to be able to accuse the pegasus shifter of colluding with her.
Still, Chase was no fool. She’d known from the way that his simmering hostility had turned to unease that he’d worked out what she intended to do with the information. He already thought of her as a dangerous assassin, after all.
But, as she’d hoped, his fierce loyalty and protectiveness had worked in her favor for once. He wanted to help Hugh nearly as much as she herself did. Add in the fact that it also meant that Chase would be rid of her for once and for all, and it was just too good a bargain for him to turn down.
Chase had told her where to come. Now she just had to wait for the right moment to strike.
Yes, her wyvern hissed in bloodthirsty approval. Spit. Strike. Kill. Destroy all threats to our mate!
For once she didn’t attempt to hold back her beast’s murderous instincts. Acid burned at the base of her throat, more potent and concentrated than ever before. With one act, one breath, she would forever silence Gaze. Hugh’s secret would be safe.
And he would be safe. Not just from potential hunters, but from a far more dangerous threat.
Herself.
She had to be locked up, to protect him. She wasn’t strong enough to just leave him. Plus, there was always the risk that Hugh might track her down—even after the terrible things she’d said.
The only way to be absolutely sure that he’d be safe, that he’d never come into contact with her venom, was to put impenetrable walls between them. Walls that neither of them would be able to breach, even if one or both of them was tempted.
She wouldn’t be locked up in a pleasant, airy prison like this one, open to the wind and sky. No, she would be put away in a maximum-security facility, deep underground, like her own mother. Monsters belonged in dungeons.
I’m sorry, Hope.
But her sister had Betty to look out for her now, and Griff, and all her other friends. None of them would ever accidentally put her in a coma due to a moment of carelessness. Hope was better off without her.
Everyone was better off without her.
A dark shape moved behind the cell window. Ivy snaked her neck out, straining to see through the dusky twilight. She had to be absolutely certain that she had the right target.
The man in the window turned his head, his profile silhouetted by the harsh cell light. There was something on his face—something far too bulky to be mere glasses. Some sort of visor was strapped to his head, completely covering his eyes.
Only one person could be wearing that.
Heart hammering, Ivy spread her wings. Her talons flexed
on the tree branch. It was time.
Time to save her mate.
“IVY!”
Hugh’s shout shocked her so badly, she lost her grip on her branch. She fell out of the tree in a shower of twigs and snapped branches, too off-balance to be able to twist in mid-air and take flight. Her back hit the ground with a crash that knocked all the breath out of her.
She struggled to her feet just as four black hooves touched down in front of her. Hugh slid off the pegasus’s back, his hair and clothes windswept. He stepped toward her, holding out his hands.
Ivy recoiled, scrabbling awkwardly backward on her hind legs and clawed wing joints. She hissed in frantic warning.
Hugh stopped, though his hands stayed outstretched, as if he was trying to calm a wild beast. “I know what you’re planning, Ivy. You can’t go through with this. You aren’t a killer.”
Acid dripped from her jaws, scorching smoking black holes in the leaf litter. He was wrong. She was made for killing, from her deadly breath to her venomous tail. She’d fought her monstrous nature all her life, but now she was finally willing to embrace it.
“I know you’re trying to protect me,” Hugh said. His expression was intent and focused, his eyes fixed on her as if nothing else existed in the world. “The fact that you’re willing to do this proves that you were lying before, at the hospital. You said you didn’t want to be my mate, but we both know that isn’t true.”
Unable to speak mind-to-mind with him, Ivy could only swing her head from side to side in mute denial. She didn’t want to be his mate. She had brought him nothing but pain.
She could never undo the damage that she’d caused, but she could at least stop him from getting hurt again in the future.
Chase still had his black-feathered wings spread, blocking her way, and the oak branches above her head prevented her from simply leaping into the air. Although she was faster than the pegasus in flight, he was much more nimble on the ground. She’d never be able to get past him in this form.
She shifted. The moment that she was back in her human skin, she attempted to dodge around Hugh, but he was faster. She had to skip backward to avoid touching him.
“Please, Hugh.” She circled, trying to keep a wary eye on both him and Chase. “Let me go.”
“No.” His arms were spread wide, ready to catch her if she tried to make a break for it. “You can’t do this, Ivy. You don’t have to do this.”
“I do!” She jerked off her gloves, throwing them carelessly to the ground. She put up her hands, not in surrender, but to show him the venom slicking her skin. “Now get out of my way, or else!”
He stepped forward again. “You won’t hurt me.”
“I will!” she cried, her voice breaking in desperation. “If you don’t let me do this, I will hurt you, Hugh! Sooner or later, I’ll slip up, or I’ll give into temptation, and I’ll touch you!”
“Good,” he said softly. “Because you can. We can.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I feel it.” Hugh touched his heart. “Right here.”
She shook her head in denial. “You don’t. You can’t. You’re not a shifter, you don’t have an inner animal-“
“I don’t need an animal to know that I love you.” His mouth quirked. “And to know that you love me, for all that you try to deny it. Trust that love, Ivy. Trust yourself.”
“That’s not the problem!” Ivy stumbled backward, hands still upraised defensively. “I don’t trust my animal!”
No, her wyvern said, unexpectedly. You do not trust him.
She’d never before heard her inner animal speak of itself in the singular before. Always, always it said we or us. But now she had a sense of it pulling away from her. The ever-present burning core of rage at the bottom of her soul faded into nothing.
I will always protect you, her wyvern said to her. Its mental words came slowly, haltingly, as if it found it unnatural to refer to the two of them as separate beings. But you must stop being afraid now. You are hurting our mate.
She could almost see it standing behind Hugh. He glanced up, looking startled, as if he too felt the shadow of emerald wings closing over him.
He trusts us, her wyvern said, very gently. Trust him in return. He will never hurt us. He will always treasure us, always defend us, as we treasure and defend him. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.
In the strange silence of her wyvern’s withdrawal, she could finally feel what its anger had always masked. Her own deep, terrible fear.
Not the fear of hurting others, but the fear of being hurt herself.
Letting other people get close, letting them in, meant that they could hurt you. Deep down, she’d wanted to keep the world at arm’s length, to never be vulnerable. Her wyvern had only been trying to protect her.
But she didn’t need to be protected from Hugh.
He was still standing in front of her, head cocked and a slight frown on his face, as if trying to catch a conversation right on the edge of hearing. His eyes widened a little as she stepped forward, but he didn’t flinch. He held her gaze, and there was nothing but love and faith in his own.
She let go of fear…and took his hand.
His fingers folded over hers, warm and strong. He smiled down at her.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Chapter 30
Ivy’s phone beeped as they arrived back at their house. Hugh’s whole body thirsted to stay in contact with her, but he reluctantly relinquished her hand so that she could answer it. The brief separation was worth it though, for the way her expression changed into a relieved, thankful smile as she listened to the voicemail message.
“That was Betty,” Ivy said, lowering the phone again. “Apparently Hope woke up, demanded one of everything from the vending machine, and is currently asleep in a pile of empty cans and chocolate bar wrappers.”
“Sounds like she’s going to be fine,” he said, smiling back. “Do you want us to go pick her up?”
Ivy shook her head. “Betty says the doctors still want to keep her in under observation for a while.”
He reclaimed her hand. He never, ever wanted to be parted from her for a second longer than was strictly necessary. A deep, quiet joy filled him as her strong fingers intertwined through his.
“Then we have the house to ourselves tonight,” he said, drawing her up the stairs.
Ivy’s lips parted a little, her breath coming faster. Nonetheless, she hesitated in the doorway to the bedroom.
He paused too. A part of him—a very specific part—wanted to pull her straight into bed. But even more than that, he wanted this to be right for her. That meant that she had to come to him whole-heartedly, without reservations or fear.
“Are you still nervous?” he asked.
She dropped her gaze, peeked up at him shyly through her dark lashes. “A little.”
He raised their joined hands to his lips. She drew in her breath as he gently kissed the tips of her fingers, lingering over each one.
“You won’t hurt me,” he murmured.
“I know.” Her cheeks flushed a delicious pink as she made a vague, embarrassed gesture at his crotch. “But, uh, I’ve seen how big you are. And this is my first time like this.”
He let out a low chuckle, relief sweeping over him as he realized the true reason for her hesitation. “Oh. Don’t worry, Ivy. I won’t hurt you. I’ll make sure of that.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, a naughty smile tugging at her mouth. “But this is your first time too. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Trust me,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I’m a doctor.”
She let out a giggle, which turned into a startled laugh as he twirled her around and flung her onto the bed. He covered her body with his own, stretching her arms above her head, their hands still intertwined. She arced up eagerly to him as he bent his head down to claim her mouth.
Oh, it was even better than he’d remembered. He kissed her leisurely, deeply, a
nd she opened like a flower to him. Nothing holding them back from each other. Nothing coming between them.
Except, of course, far too many clothes.
Despite the impatience singing through his blood, he made himself take his time. He savored the sweetness of her lips, the heat of her mouth, every little breathy sound of pleasure she made.
She kissed him back with equal fervor, exploring him in return. Together, they learned the shape of each other’s desire, until they were both gasping, their interlocked fingers clenched tight with the effort of holding back.
Breaking away from her mouth, he kissed his way along her jaw to her ear. “How do wyverns mate?” he murmured.
“I—ah!” Her hips jerked underneath him as he nibbled at her earlobe. “I have—no idea. Don’t stop.”
He laughed under his breath. “Wasn’t planning to.” He nipped gently at her neck, and was rewarded with another one of those delicious, helpless moans. “Well in that case, we’ll just do whatever feels right.”
What felt right to him at the moment was to get rid of these increasingly irritating clothes. Drawing back, he pulled her upright, off the bed. She was as eager as him, undoing his shirt buttons even as he unfastened her jeans. There was a mutually awkward, impatient moment of tangled limbs and cloth…and then they were both bare to each other at last.
All the breath left his lungs at the sight of her glorious, naked curves. He had to close his eyes for a moment, fighting for control.
He very nearly lost it again as Ivy’s hot mouth closed over his own nipple. His cock jerked, seeping helplessly in response to her slow, circling tongue. It was all he could do not to throw her onto her back and thrust into her there and there.
She made a smug little sound of delight, deep in her throat. Her hands stroked over his clenched abs, exploring every line, then traced the sharp lines of his hipbones. Every light touch seared him like fire. It was a glorious agony, all-consuming yet leaving him desperate for more.
