Chapter 29
There was no warning.
One moment, Leonie was coming, head thrown back, pulsing around him. And the next, she was scrabbling away, recoiling as if he’d burned her.
“Leonie?” Alarm chased away bliss. He surged up, reaching for her. “What is it?”
“No.” Her eyes were squeezed shut. She clutched at her head, voice rising in panic. “No, no, no!”
“Leonie!” He grabbed her shoulders, supporting her as she swayed. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head in a jerky, violent arc. He could feel her distress down the mate bond, beating in his chest like a trapped bird.
And yet…the feeling was muted. For a shining moment, he’d been inside her, body and soul. Yet now, the bond felt unfinished. Like it had started to form, but then stretched and frayed, leaving only a thread of connection between them.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
No. His qiongqi should have been in a fury, ready to tear apart the world. Instead, it was oddly still, burning eyes fixed on Leonie. This is right.
He thrust his animal to the back of his mind, more concerned with his mate. “Leonie. Look at me.”
Her breath came in ragged heaves. Slowly, she lowered her hands, head lifting.
She opened her eyes.
They were gold. She’d always had a thin, bright ring around her pupils, but now it filled her whole irises. No trace of amber remained. Only deep, rich gold.
He stared, aghast. Her eyes weren’t like his own. She still had round pupils, human whites. But still…had he done that? Infected her with his own nature, stealing away her humanity?
Leonie must have read the horror in his expression. She pushed past him, rushing to the bathroom. She peered into the mirror.
“No,” she whispered. She reached out, hand shaking, touching her own reflection. “That’s impossible.”
He followed, unsure what to say. Before he could even open his mouth to apologize, she was pushing past him again, ducking back into the bedroom. She scrabbled through her discarded clothes, pulling out her phone.
Now he was completely lost. “Leonie? What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer, jabbing at the screen with shaking hands. Putting her phone to her ear, she closed her eyes.
“Please,” she said under her breath. “Please pick up, please, please, please…”
Whoever she was trying to contact, apparently they weren’t at home. Letting out another low moan, Leonie flung her phone down. Still stark naked, she bolted for the door.
“Leonie!” He intercepted her, catching her wrists. “Stop. Talk to me. I’ll help you. But you have to tell me what’s happening.”
“I have to go.” Her golden eyes were wild. “I have to go right now, Shan!”
“All right.” He kept his voice calm. “I’ll come with you. Clean yourself up and get dressed. I’ll let the other senior staff know we’re leaving. Then I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
“Yes,” Leonie breathed. She grabbed her clothes, retreating to the bathroom. “You can fly us there. But we have to leave straight away. Hurry, Shan!”
He still had no idea what was happening, but that didn’t matter. He yanked on his jeans, claws tearing through the denim in his haste. Not bothering with a shirt or shoes, he dashed out.
Moira’s cabin was closest. He hammered on the door. When it didn’t open straight away, he kicked it in—and immediately had to duck.
Ragvald blinked down at him. “Friend Shan?”
The wyrm was dressed in a simple linen tunic over loose trousers, his hair and beard unbraided. From the rucked-up bedroll at his feet, he must have been sleeping right behind the door.
“You are lucky I recognized you in time, or you would be a head shorter.” Ragvald lowered his ax, though he didn’t make it disappear. “I had thought you’d left the steading. Why are you here?”
“I need to speak with Moira.” He looked past the wyrm. “Right now.”
“Ragvald?” Moira’s sleepy voice floated from the interior of the cabin. Unlike Leonie’s, it was divided into two rooms, separated by a curtain. “What’s happening?”
“Friend Shan is here, Princess,” Ragvald called over his shoulder. “He begs an audience with you.”
“In the middle of the night?” The curtain rustled. Moira peered out, rubbing her eyes. “Shan, what are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
“Leonie,” he said grimly. “She’s insisting we have to leave.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know, but she wants to leave straight away. I thought I’d better tell someone.”
“Wait.” Moira hurried out from behind the curtain, knotting the belt of a silk dressing gown. “Ragvald, put that away. Shan, take us to her.”
When he led them into Leonie’s cabin, she was fully dressed, raking her hair back into a hasty ponytail. At the sight of her, Moira drew in a sharp breath.
“By the Sea.” Moira hurried over to her friend. She took Leonie’s face in both hands. “How did this happen?”
Ragvald cleared his throat, politely looking away from the rumpled bed. “Ah, Princess? Perhaps we do not need to know the details.”
Moira ignored this, still studying Leonie’s changed eyes. “I didn’t think this was possible.”
“It shouldn’t be.” Leonie clutched at Moira’s wrists, her expression agonized. “It’s never happened before. Moira, she’s not answering.”
“Stay calm. In all likelihood, she’s just asleep.” Moira held out her hand. “Give me your phone. I’ll call Conleth.”
“Friend Shan?” Ragvald muttered out of the side of his mouth. Despite Moira’s command, the wyrm hadn’t put his ax away. In fact, he now had a second, larger one in his other hand. “Do you know what is occurring?”
Shan watched Leonie pace as Moira murmured into her phone. “I’m beginning to have an idea.”
Moira passed the phone back to Leonie. “Paige says he’s on his way. He won’t be long.”
Sure enough, it was barely three minutes before Conleth strode into the room, out of breath, red hair windswept. Since he didn’t live on site, he must have flown at top speed to get here.
Conleth took one look at Leonie’s eyes and swore under his breath. “Well, that’s new.”
“It just happened,” Leonie said miserably. She gestured at the bed. “While we were—”
“I don’t need a labeled diagram, thank you,” Conleth interrupted. He flashed an indecipherable glance at Shan. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Leonie can’t get in touch with Lola,” Moira said to Conleth. “Can you contact Connor?”
Conleth was already pulling out his phone, thumbs flying over the screen. After a moment, he shook his head. “No good. Message undeliverable. The crew must be out on a fire.”
All color drained from Leonie’s face. “Conleth, what if she was in the air?”
“She wouldn’t be flying at night.” Conleth put his phone away, all brisk confidence. “There won’t be anyone at the base until morning. I can get there well before then. I’ll find them.”
Leonie grabbed her backpack. “I’ll come with you.”
“And me,” Shan said to her. “Wherever you go, I’m coming too.”
“You’d only slow me down,” Conleth said bluntly. “Leonie, I know this is awful, but the best thing you can do is wait here. I’ll call you as soon as I have news.”
“Thanks, Conleth.” Leonie hesitated, biting her lip. “But what about Paige? You can’t leave your mate.”
“She’ll be fine. The baby’s not coming any time soon.” One of Conleth’s eyebrows quirked. “Besides, Paige would castrate me if I let my neuroses get in the way of helping a friend during an actual crisis. Tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Moira asked Leonie after Conleth left. “I can keep you company while you wait.”
“No, that’s okay.” Leonie gave her friend a wan smile. “No point all of us being exhausted. Go get some sleep.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Shan said to Moira. “As soon as you can, contact Zephyr. Tell him Leonie’s not going to be at work today.”
Leonie didn’t even attempt to argue. That worried him more than anything else.
He shut the door behind Moira and Ragvald. “You should try to rest as well.”
“I can’t.” She sank to the edge of the bed, wringing her hands. “Not until I know she’s okay. If she’s okay.”
He sat next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, resting her head on his chest. For a long moment, he just held her.
“It’s your animals, isn’t it?” he murmured. “You have them both, somehow. The eagle and the lion.”
She nodded, cheek rubbing against his bare skin. “It’s never happened before. Not when we’re apart from each other. We’ve always had to be touching.”
“Do your eyes always change like this?”
“Yes. When Lola has the eagle, her eyes are yellow. Not like yours, though. They don’t glow. Though she still gets a lot of double takes from non-shifters.” Leonie made a choked sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’m lucky. At least lion eyes don’t look that strange in a human face.”
He stroked her hair. “And when you have both, your eyes are gold.”
“That’s right. Like my dad, and my brothers, Rory and Ross. And Rufus.” She sighed, a little of the tension draining out of her body. “I guess it’s a griffin thing.”
“What color are your eyes when Lola has both animals?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Brown.”
He tried to picture Leonie without her animal. It felt as wrong as picturing her without her head. “I can’t imagine you with brown eyes.”
“Yeah, it looks weird to me, too. Which is odd, really. It’s a perfectly normal eye color. I suppose I’m just not used to it. Lola’s never really enjoyed shifting into the griffin. She says it’s too confusing having that many limbs. Like being an insect.”
“It still seems strange to me that your animals can merge into an entirely different creature. Your lioness doesn’t seem to mind it?”
“No.” Leonie was quiet for a moment. “When we…when I felt you in my mind, my lioness freaked out. She kept saying we weren’t ready. Somehow, she managed to reach out to the eagle, and yank it out of Lola and into me. I think my lioness was trying to stop the mate bond.”
And it worked.
He wasn’t about to say that to Leonie. He didn’t need to do so anyway. She could sense that for herself.
Leonie sighed. “It’s likely to be a while before we hear anything. We might as well try to get some rest. Stay with me?”
He settled her down on the bed, wrapping his body around hers. “Always.”
Leonie didn’t speak for a while, though he could tell she wasn’t falling asleep. He held her close, her fingers twined through his.
“Shan?” she said at last, very quietly. “What if this keeps happening?”
He tightened his grip. “Then we’ll deal with it. Together.”
“Okay.” Her heartbeat was slowing at last. “Shan?”
“Yes?”
“You aren’t disappointed, are you?”
He kissed the back of her neck. “No. Rest. I’ll wake you if there’s any news.”
It took a while, but eventually the exhaustion of her body overwhelmed her. Leonie fell into an uneasy, restless sleep, curled up against his chest. He stayed awake, holding her as she twitched and muttered.
Feeling the slow, inevitable shift creep up his hands. Trying not to feel the darkness seeping up from the bottom of his soul. Building the wall across his mind higher, thicker, shutting it out.
His mate was in distress.
And his monster…was happy.