“You’re not insulted that he’s with a Heartborn, though? Instead of someone…like you?”
“Me?” Lea laughed and shook her head as they continued to make their way through the tall grasses and trees toward the river. “The Alpha likes his girls pretty. Not with a weapon in their hands.”
Zara looked out in the direction of the river, and she could already hear the water from where they were. “It wasn’t my looks that got his attention. I took the time to care about him. To be there for him. That’s all he ever wanted.”
“Well, isn’t it lucky that you can hear for yourself everything he wants before he even knows he wants it?” Lea rolled her eyes and then hacked away at some of the particularly annoying grasses and branches. “Why do you care what I think, anyway?”
Zara smiled as she looked back at Lea, stopping momentarily to meet the woman’s hazel eyes. “I’m a Heartborn. What you think matters to me more than you could ever imagine.” Just then there was a snap of something from behind Lea, and just as they walked under a tree, a louder crack sounded from above.
A branch came soaring down out of the trees, a massive hunk of foliage that fell right on top of Lea, with a Forestborn wolf standing on top of it as though it had been surfing the branch from the treetop. Lea screamed in pain just as one of the smaller branches from the piece of the tree smacked her so hard in the face that it left a wicked cut along the side and knocked her unconscious.
Zara looked at the Forestborn, particularly at the Council uniform it wore, then took off running toward the river as fast as she could.
There were another few dozen Council uniforms along her way as she ran, all of them up in the trees and buried in bushes as if the shrubbery was a blanket wrapped around their shoulders. They were all camouflaged perfectly with the woods around them, and they were far enough away from the compound itself that not even a Skyborn would hear her if she screamed. They didn’t attack, but they all smiled at her, seeming to enjoy her flight through their woods.
When she got to the river, it was at a point where the stream was only a dozen feet across, but it ran almost as deep as she was tall. There was no obvious way of crossing it at first sight, and there were more Forestborn on the opposite bank looking back at her.
Zara stared at the Forestborn for a moment and then did the only thing that she could think of doing. She dove into the water and let it take her. She was a good swimmer, and the current carried her downstream quickly, past the watching eyes of the Council fighters on both banks that watched her go with grins on their faces. She twisted and turned with the current as it swept past rocks, through submerged roots, and quickly around several bends before the river got suddenly shallower and she came up on a wide bank of gravel punctuated by smoothed stones.
At last, there were no Forestborn in sight.
Across the shallow pond, there was a man sitting on one of the stones just above the water wearing blue robes. He stood up casually as she came in sight and looked down at her from a few dozen feet away with eyes as deep a blue as the water he was standing in. “What a very, very pleasant surprise it is to see you, Zara.”
Slowly Zara stood and looked into the eyes of the man she once called master, his own element dripping down her face, her clothes clinging to her body, soaked and sending ribbons of water down her arms and legs. “Surprise?”
“I said pleasant surprise.” He grinned at her and took a step closer. “The emphasis, of course, is on the pleasant.”
“I wondered how long it would take before you came after me.” She dipped her hands back down into the water and then splashed across at Coren, leader of the Council, as though he was nothing but another person in the world. “It took longer than I thought.”
“I know what you thought.” He didn’t flinch as she splashed him, just enjoying the feel of the water on his skin. “Just like you know I didn’t think it would take you this long.”
Zara continued to stare at him as she walked slowly through the water to get to him. He was still standing on the rocks, and he towered over her. “Did you miss me?”
Unlike Nick, Coren knew just about everything there was to know about Heartborn. Including just how much they enjoyed hearing things said out loud. He stepped down off the rock and seemed to float down through the water as if it was semi-solid until he was finally just a step away from her. “Every moment.”
Almost harshly, she reached out for him and pulled him to her by his robes, and she kissed him so hard and so passionately that it was almost painful. There had been an ache inside of her that wouldn’t end for so long, until that moment. Until she felt his presence against her, she had felt incomplete.
The water around them swirled up and around her, drenching them both as it ran over every part of her. He knew she enjoyed it very nearly as much as he did, though she could never actually draw power from it directly.
How long before your toy Alpha comes looking for you?
A few hours at most. She wrapped her arms around him and moaned against his water and his touch. You’ll have to make it look like I was beaten, too. Like that useless piece of metal Ironborn your guards left twisted under a branch.
I had to borrow some of Avery’s men. They are
