“Ngh?” Kayal said, already lost to the motions.
“Pig!” I hissed.
“I thought this was how you wanted to do it?”
“What? No! Pig!”
It took a moment for him to see it.
The damn party piglet was right there with us!
And if the piglet was here, the kids couldn’t be far behind.
Footsteps rushed through the narrow stream outside.
They arched their necks to locate the little creature in our midst.
“Grab him!” I hissed. “Keep him quiet! The kids can’t see us like this! It’ll ruin them for life!”
Kayal extricated himself from me and snatched up the piglet.
Before he could place his hand over its mouth, it oinked and squealed, getting the attention of the kids outside.
Shit!
I eased back and huddled into a ball.
The kids deliberated over who would go into the cave.
It looked sinister from the outside, especially at night.
Kayal placed the piglet on the cold stone floor and shoved it forward like a wind-up toy.
It was the jump start it needed and ran toward the exit hurriedly.
“Here he comes! Grab him!”
The kids dived for him.
The little piglet successfully avoided two pairs of grasping hands but was snatched by a third.
A kid with long wavy hair and horns that hadn’t come in yet was the victor.
“I got him!”
“Good job, Jarack!”
They played with the piglet for a moment and I thought they would never leave.
Then they turned and left us in peace as they drifted through the forest back toward the farmhouse.
I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until I could no longer hear the snap of broken foliage beneath their boots.
“They’re gone,” Kayal said. “That was close, huh?”
I shook my head and laughed.
“Too close!”
Kayal drew up to me, his eyes glinting golden in the darkness, his muscles picked out gorgeously by the moonlight.
“Now, where were we?” he said.
And he entered me again.
Kayal
The party had long since ended when we finally left the forest to return to my ship.
Warm yellow light spilled from the farmhouse’s downstairs windows.
Pana watched us out the kitchen window as she washed up some dishes.
She smiled warmly at the sight of us, hand in hand, heading toward the barn.
The woman had some magic in her, I thought.
She seemed to know a lot more than she let on and I wondered just how much she did know.
I loved the feel of Ava’s hand in mine, the smoothness of her skin and gentle touch were like mana.
My body ached the way it always did after a good workout when I had given everything I had.
And she had taken it all.
She sounded good when she moaned, smelled good when I caught a whiff of her, and felt amazing as our bodies joined and became one.
I had to slow down more than once to pace myself.
I feared blowing too early and ending the moment before I wanted.
She was just so damn sexy I could hardly control myself.
We sent nervous smiles at each other before looking away again.
Our relationship had changed and would never go back to the way it had been.
And for that, I was pleased.
Confused and a little unsure, but still pleased.
I always wondered what that blinking light in my chest really meant, the beacon that would lead me directly to my fated mate.
Ever since I saw her I wanted her, and that was the way it should be.
The Shadow academy taught me my desire for her was nothing but animalistic and needed to be acted on as soon as possible.
We dragged our mates to the Citadel and handed them over for the ceremony.
There, we didn’t make love.
We fucked, often against the fated mate’s wishes.
And I was still meant to take Ava to that place.
It didn’t matter that I had claimed her.
The rewards were less but I could still complete my mission.
I was meant to share her with the other Shadows, meant to let them touch her, caress her, enter her…
I felt sick to my stomach.
I couldn’t do it.
Could I?
I’d already forfeited my right to a better social level, the thing I had dreamed about since the academy planted the seed in my head.
But that moment I watched Ava march out of the cave, my instincts overrode every impulse I’d ever had.
I wasn’t supposed to make love to her.
I wasn’t supposed to feel anything but lust.
If I let her leave the cave having turned down her affections, I knew she would never again look at me the same way, would never go through all the effort to show me how much she cared…
I couldn’t stand by and let her leave like that.
In that instant, I doomed myself to crawling on my belly to the natural-born Shadows for the rest of my life.
At that moment, none of that mattered.
The only thing that did was claiming her.
Now, she was mine.
The act severed the link between her and the M’rora.
He would no longer be able to trace her.
I doubted he was still looking for her anyway.
As he hadn’t taken me out already, it meant he was still on the other side of the storm, waiting for us to reemerge.
Would he give up the hunt?
Or would he remain there, waiting for Ava to appear once more?
Would he even stay there now the bond had been cut?
It was impossible to know.
Not without passing through the storm and—hopefully—emerging on the other side.
We entered the barn and stepped in the ship’s elevator.
I ran my thumb over the back of her hand and she did the same to me.
This wasn’t so bad, I thought. If I had her by my side, nothing else mattered.
I was surprised by that revelation.
I’d been trained to succeed at my mission, no matter the cost, and now I was ready to give myself my own mission.
A flurry of possibilities assailed me.
What if we didn’t head through the storm?
What if we bypassed it and headed to another planet where the Shadow hadn’t touched and wouldn’t even twenty years from now?
We could create a life for ourselves.
We could have a farm, children.
I could even take my family with me.
Come to think of it, I could even take them through
