His pale gray eyes stared into hers and Shea could have sworn she saw shadows moving there in those depths. Shadows of things that had been, things that would be. Her breath stilled while her heartbeat quickened.
She shook her head, embarrassed by her foolishness and wild imaginings. And when she looked again into his familiar eyes, she saw only her own reflection staring back at her. Smiling, she asked, “What do you know of it, you great beast?”
He grinned at her, one corner of his mouth lifting as he pulled her off the bed and onto his lap. Pushing her skirts out of the way, he had her straddle him, her bare thighs atop his.
“Beast, am I?” he asked, slipping one hand beneath the fall of her skirt to slide his fingers up the length of her leg and toward her hot, damp center. She shivered in his arms and sighed out his name.
“Beast is what you are,” she said then, “if you don’t give me what we both need.”
“Then name me Torin,” he said, lowering her onto his gloriously hard body. “For a beast I won’t be.”
He pushed himself home and she welcomed the invasion of his body into hers. She groaned and arched her back, swiveling her hips to take him higher, deeper. The thick fullness of him claimed her completely, as if he had been made to join his body with hers.
His fingers at her hips, he gripped tight and urged her to move on him and so she did, because it was all she wanted, needed. Her body sang under his touch, her blood burned and her soul shattered. Again and again, she took him deep, hard, rocking on him, setting a rhythm that he matched and controlled.
Their eyes locked and when the first of the pleasure ripples coursed through her, she looked into her beast’s eyes and almost-almost-found what she was searching for.
Chapter 13
“They shot you.” The witch pushed out of Torin’s arms once they’d reached the nebulous safety of the treeline and stared at the bloodstains on his shirt.
“It’s nothing.”
He’d flashed from the prison just as the bullets went flying, but still a couple of them had caught him. The bullets had passed through, doing little enough damage that he would be healed by the morning. Torin was unconcerned about a few bullet holes in his flesh. Compared to a slice from a broadsword, they were barely more than insect bites. Instead, he focused on the situation.
Yes, they were free of the prison, but not free of the danger. The guards would soon pour out of the camp and begin searching the surrounding woods. They’d have to be long gone by then.
Before he could say anything else, Rune spoke up. “You want to tell me why you rescued her?”
“She knows of another Awakened witch.”
Rune shot the woman a dismissive glance. “Impossible. She’s lying. Yours is the first.”
“Shows how much you know,” the witch snapped. She shot a look over her shoulder at the camp as more lights burst into life until the whole compound blazed like a sun in the darkness.
Torin had no patience for arguments between Rune and a witch. There was little time and all of it mattered. He couldn’t bear thinking of Shea in a place like this. Surrounded by enemies with no one to turn to. He had to find her.
“You say you know who we are,” he said. “Then you know Eternals can sense the Awakening. We feel the changing pulse in the weave of the universe as one of the chosen comes into her powers.”
“Apparently,” she countered, moonlight glinting in her eyes, “you’re not as all-knowing as you would like to think.”
“Then tell me of this witch,” he said, demanding the answers she’d promised him in exchange for her rescue.
“Take this off of me first,” the woman insisted, pointing at the white gold chain draped around her neck.
“You would bargain with me? Again?” He glared at her, but the witch held her ground.
She lifted her chin, met him stare for stare and said, “I would bargain with the devil himself to get as far away from here as possible. I can hardly draw an easy breath with this damn thing around my neck. You know I can’t take it off myself. So if you want your answer, free me.”
Rune snorted. “You’ve a hell of a nerve. We’ve already saved you. We can just as easily leave you here for the guards to find. With that chain on your neck, you won’t go far.”
Torin nodded, watching her to judge her reaction. He knew he wouldn’t leave her to the mercies of the prison guards. As an Eternal it was his nature to protect all women-especially women of power. But she didn’t have to know that.
“You’re not going to leave me here. You can’t,” she argued simply. Her gaze shot from Torin to Rune and back again. Her short, spiky hair somehow made her look elfin, vulnerable. “You want the information I hold, so you’ll do as I ask and take this weight from my neck.”
When Rune would have continued the argument with the stubborn witch, Torin held up one hand for silence. Behind them, the compound was coming alive. The double doors swung open and a dozen or more armed guards spilled through. The searchlights were a brilliant white against the surrounding darkness and Torin knew they had only moments before they were found. He could grab the witch and flash away with her. But he didn’t want to be hampered with the woman in his search for Shea.
The choice was a simple one. Get the information she held or not. Save her or let the guards reclaim her.
The answer was, there was no choice. He would do what he must-as he always had. Without a word, he gathered the fire, focused its strength and touched the tip of one finger to the center links on the white gold chain lying against her skin. The witch held perfectly still, her gaze locked with his.
The flames he called forth were the very essence of magic, so they didn’t harm her skin, but a moment after he had channeled his power, the chain’s links had melted. Then he simply flicked the offending antimagic device to the ground.
The witch smiled, inhaled deeply and stretched languidly as if she were a cat stepping from a confining cage. She sighed in relief before saying, “Thank you, Eternal.”
Unmoved by her gratitude, Torin dismissed it. “Thank me by keeping your word. Tell me who is this Awakened witch and where is she?”
She slanted her sharp blue eyes on him. A smile curved her mouth as she said, “Her name is Kellyn. And she’s standing in front of you, Eternal.”
Then she swept out her arms, tipped her head back and whispered something that struck him as old and powerful. She laughed and was gone an instant later, in a shimmer of movement that seemed to ripple the very air.
“A teleporter,” Rune muttered in disgust.
“As we are,” Torin reminded him. He glanced out to where the prison guards were beginning a concerted sweep of the area. “I don’t care that she’s gone. But if she was telling the truth, something is very wrong. If Kellyn is Awakened, how is it we didn’t sense her coming into her power? And where is her Eternal?”
Eternal and witch were closely bound by the link between them, one created by fates and the old gods. The Eternals, who were created to protect these few special women, instinctively felt when one member of the coven was Awakening. At that time a ripple of awareness moved through the Eternals and the sister witches of the coven. Like a pebble tossed into a lake, the effects of the Awakening echoed within them all.
So how could they have missed the Awakening of another witch?
“What do you mean where is he? Who is he?” Rune replied.
Over the centuries, the Eternals had drifted apart, each of them watching over the many incarnations of his witch. But being witness to a mate’s life and death over and over again during the course of hundreds of years eventually took a toll on all of them. Some elected to disappear, to seek solitude and remain apart from their brothers until the time of the Awakening. Not the wisest course, Torin thought, but understandable.
Still, that left the remaining Eternals with the problem of locating those who had gone missing when they were needed. Now, with the Awakening at last upon them, those absent Eternals should be making themselves
