“Where would you go? Half the country will be looking for you by morning.”
“I don’t care,” she cried, her power rushing through her, as if now that it had been unleashed it was too much to control. Fire tipped the ends of her fingers like the tiny flames on birthday candles. She looked at them, surprised and yet somehow comforted at the evidence of her power, too. It was that other her, she assured herself. The one who had stood in moonlight and called on shadows. The witch who had opened something dark and embraced it with welcoming arms.
That wasn’t her.
“I just need to think,” she shouted, willing the flames on her hands out and then staring at them as if she couldn’t believe what was happening to her. “I need to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do.”
“You’re supposed to mate with me,” he told her flatly, grabbing her other arm and pulling her to him.
Yes, her body shouted, arching toward him, her breasts aching for his touch, his kiss. She could almost feel the warmth of his mouth around her nipple and she groaned with a need that was primal. All-consuming.
She wanted him. Needed him. But she’d had him in the past, she reminded herself, and nothing had changed. Nothing had stopped her from opening herself to the dark.
“According to my vision, we already tried that a few hundred years ago. Nothing happened.” Not true, her mind whispered slyly, reminding her of what she had found in his arms. The glory. The pleasure. The soulshaking orgasms.
Oh, God.
But she had not experienced a huge growth in her magical abilities.
“It’s different now, damn it. Don’t you see?”
She whipped her hair out of her eyes and fought back the hungry whispers in her mind. “How? How is now any different?”
“It’s the Awakening, Shea,” he said, his voice lost in the burst of something wild and fierce she felt at his words. “In all those other lives, we were working our way toward now. Toward this lifetime. The end of the spell cast so long ago. At last it’s begun. The time of atonement is here and you’re the first-we are the first…”
“What are you not telling me?” She could hear the unspoken words waiting to be acknowledged.
“Nothing.” He let her go, took a step back and shoved one hand through his long, dark hair. “It’s nothing. Another witch. When I was trying to find you. She said she was the first. Her name was Kellyn, but it can’t be so.”
“Does it matter who’s first, for God’s sake?” She laughed and didn’t like the sound of hysteria she heard.
His gaze speared into hers. “No. It only matters that you’re here. With me. And we have a chance to end what was started so long ago.”
She scrambled backward a few steps. “I talked to some of the witches in prison. They told me that a chosen witch and her Eternal share power when they mate.”
“Not a sharing, more of a merging. You will be stronger with the mating.”
Stronger. That could be good. Or terrifying.
“And what do you get out of it?” she asked, though she already knew she would go through with the ritual. She had decided that while she was in the camp. She was never going to be helpless to defend herself again. Not if she could prevent it. She would learn. She would remember. And she would become powerful enough to protect herself and any others who needed her help.
“I get you, Shea.” His gaze locked on hers and she felt the fire inside him burning all around him, like a halo of power and strength, wrapping him in its intensity until it had no choice but to burn outward, enveloping her as well.
“I’ve wanted you for lifetimes. Through all the years, through the centuries.” He took a step closer to her and his gray eyes swirled as if lit from within. She saw shapes and colors and shadows playing out in their depths. Sensed that he was feeling as tightly wound as she was-that his hunger was more than a match for her own. Something inside her woke up and stretched its arms, eager to accept him, to ease this soul-deep need Shea had never known before.
“You’re mine,” he said. “You always have been. As I am yours.”
They were alone on a darkened hillside, standing beneath a small slice of moon. and she could see him as clearly as if there were a spotlight shining down on them. Her body yearned and her heart ached and still her mind argued. She had to understand what was happening and how to control her powers. She had spent years taking care of herself and she needed to be in on what was happening in her life.
“In this merging, your powers grow, too?”
He inclined his head.
“What kind of growth? I mean, do you get super hearing or X-ray vision or something?”
One side of his mouth tilted into a smile. “No. My abilities will be strengthened. I’ll be able to flash-travel for longer distances without resting. I’ll be stronger physically, more able to protect you. And our minds will connect, allowing us to communicate without words.”
“You’ll be able to read my mind?”
He shrugged. “Not so much read as hear you when you reach for me. And you will be able to do the same.”
“Would this happen for you with just any witch?”
“No.” He swore it to her. “Only you, Shea. Only you are for me.”
She felt the truth of that, as if the knowledge had been stamped on her heart and soul at the beginning of time. She’d only needed to hear it to recognize it. He was hers. As he had always been. And still, Shea needed to be an equal in whatever came next. In whatever the two of them faced.
“Torin, I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
“I know,” he said, watching her. “But I have been close, Shea. Always.”
She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, but my point is, I’m not the kind of woman who just turns her own safety over to someone else. If we’re going to be together, then you have to treat me like a partner-not a damsel in distress.”
He gave her a quick, unexpected grin that left her nearly breathless at his sheer physical beauty. “I have never considered you weak, Shea. Or less than an equal. We are a unit and will act as one.”
That was good, she thought. She didn’t want to be in the dark about anything anymore.
“Where are you taking me, Torin?”
“Away.”
“How far?”
“Tonight-to a safe house.”
“Not what I meant,” she said. “I have to be a part of this, Torin. You just said we were a unit. So tell me what you’re planning.” Shea wasn’t about to let herself be kidnapped again, either, not even by her supposed destined lover.
“It depends on you,” he told her, his hair flying about his face in the sharp wind. “Only you know where we have to be. I’m keeping nothing from you, Shea. The answers you seek are buried in your memories. Once you open yourself to them and your powers, you’ll know where we need to go.”
True again. And again, she felt a soul-deep recognition of something that would have seemed like fantasy only weeks ago. The Awakening was about her. Her memories. Her powers. She was going to need all the strength she could find. Just as, she thought, looking up into Torin’s eyes, she was going to need him beside her.
The flutter of energy pulsing through her made Shea smile in spite of everything and gave her a sense of completion. All her life, she’d felt as though there had been something missing. Some piece of her lost. Now at last she was finding it.
“Okay, I think the power thing has started.” God, a few days ago that statement would have terrified her. She had been ready to run not only from the authorities but from what she had sensed in herself. Now she welcomed that surge of something… extra.
She was a witch. Like her aunt before her. Like the thousands of women worldwide who were coming into unexpected skills and talents. Like the women already living with power and the fears that accompanied it. She was a member of a proud sisterhood that had survived throughout the centuries despite witch trials and persecution. It was past time for her to take pride in who she was and learn to use the gifts given her.
In fact, Shea’s newfound sense of self believed the more strength and power the better. “How do I get my
