Chapter Twenty-Seven – Taran
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Taran
My first thought was that I couldn’t believe what Thea had just done. She was in my branches, and we were running away, and it was real, not my imagination.
My second thought was... of course she’d stood up for herself! She was strong, loyal, and pure, and there was no way she could’ve functioned in that world. Not when she’d gone through so much and seen how little she mattered to those people. They were using her. She loved her family, but they didn’t love her the same, and if she’d accepted it until now, not knowing there was true love that was available to her, love that wasn’t conditioned, now she knew, and she would accept nothing less.
I’d shown her that. I was proud of myself, and I was proud of her. How could she not be my mate? True mates saved each other.
“What now?” I asked when we were deep in the woods. “What do you want to do?”
“Whatever you want,” she said, clinging to me, pressing her body against the upper part of my trunk.
I kept my face human, but the rest of me was leshy. Thea didn’t even flinch. She was used to my natural form by now, and it didn’t bother her anymore. If I hadn’t known she’d struggled so hard with being in nature, I would’ve been tempted to say she felt better in the middle of it than surrounded by people.
I stopped and looked down at her. She cupped my cheek with her hand and kissed my other one gently.
From the moment she’d run to me, adrenaline had shot through my roots, and branches, and vines – pure fuel, pushing me forward. Now it was like poison. It made me feel slightly unhinged. I had to calm down, so I could think.
Here I was, in the wilderness, with Thea Everhart in a wedding dress. She was a runaway bride, and I was her secret lover. I was taking her away from her very wealthy, very powerful family. It was na?ve to think they wouldn’t do anything about it. Maybe not today, but they would be coming once the commotion at the resort was over. And then there was Soren Sinclair. She’d humiliated him. Exposed him in the most horrible way. Logic said he’d be looking for revenge soon.
“Thea, we have to think,” I said.
“Think about what?”
“First of all, are you sure about this?”
“Yes. I’m not going back there. Ever. I want to be with you.”
That filled me with hope and so much love for her that it hurt.
“If you leave your world behind,” I said, “And you come with me... Then you have to come to my world.”
“Yes.”
I didn’t think she actually understood. Then again, she didn’t know my world. I’d told her very little about the leshy communities. I didn’t even live in one. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into, and I didn’t know either. This was new, and exciting, and a little bit scary. Could a human and a leshy be together? It was unheard of. We were either going to make history, or crash and burn in the next twenty-four hours.
“Thea, do you know what you’re asking me...” It was half a question, half a warning. But in reality, I was pleading with her.
“Yes. Yes, I do. Take me to your place, Taran, wherever that is. I’m done with my world, with the bubble I lived in. With my ivory tower. I’m done with my past. I have no home anymore. You are my home.”
It hurt so good to hear those words coming from her full, delicious mouth. This was insanity, but we’d come so far. I couldn’t tell her... How unusual this whole thing was. How it barely had the tiniest chance of success. If we failed, the damage would be irreversible.
“Okay, I will take you to my oasis.”
“Your what?” Her green eyes widened.
“That’s where I live. You’ll see.”
“But when you say oasis... It makes me think it’s in the middle of a desert.”
“In the middle of a deserted land, yes. There once stood a forest there. The forest is no more, all the trees cut down and nothing new planted. I built my oasis there, my home, so I would revive the land, little by little.”
She chewed on her lower lip, which let me know she understood what I meant. The forest had been cut by a furniture company. Her father’s furniture company.
“Is this what leshy do?” she asked. “Rebuild what humans destroyed?”
“Sometimes.”
“Show me, then. I want to see your oasis.”
I readjusted her weight in my branches, and she wrapped her arms around my trunk, right below where my human face was. My roots moved quickly over the forest floor, and I sent my thoughts to the trees and bushes, so all the vegetation leaned out of my way. As we neared the edge of the woods, we stayed silent. I wondered what Thea was thinking but didn’t want to pressure her into telling me. She would talk when she was ready. It was probably hard for her to understand how I could like her so much – love her – when she was the daughter of a man who’d only done damage to my world. Truth be told, it was hard for me, too. Love made no sense.
We emerged from the forest, and there was a highway before us. A car passed, then another. When there were no more cars, I crossed the highway quickly. We entered the forest again and continued on our journey. I moved fast, but my oasis was pretty far from here. We would have to travel for the better part of the night.
The sky was peppered with stars, but the canopy was too dense to let in the silvery light. The moon was a sharp sickle that spent most of the night hidden in a cloud or another. In my branches, Thea was exhausted. Her eyelids fluttered closed every few minutes, and she struggled to stay awake.
“You can sleep, my flower.”
“No, I want to see...”
“It’s a long way home. We’ll be there in the morning. No need to stay awake all night.”
“But I want to...” She yawned.
“There’s nothing to see. Only trees.”
“I like... trees...”
I smiled. Three days ago, Thea had stood before a tree line and almost run for her life.
“Sleep, flower. You’ll bloom again at dawn.”
She chuckled. “That’s nice. You say nice things, Taran. You’re a poet.”
“It’s a good thing you’re too tired to remember in the morning.”
“I’ll remember,” she whispered, leaning her head against my trunk, eyes closed. She wasn’t fighting it anymore.
“Let’s test that. Let’s test if you’ll remember that I told you...”
“Mm... what?”
“You’re my mate.”
“Your what?”
“My fated mate. My soulmate.”
She opened her eyes and looked at me from underneath her heavy lashes. She grinned. “I’ll remember.”
But then she was out, and I highly doubted she would.