Chapter 1 #2
That thought, the reminder of what was coming faster than she was prepared for, made Isla’s stomach turn.
She turned back to face the apartment building. “So, should we just… wait here?”
“You don’t think he’ll be very long?” Amusement gilded Kai’s tone.
“If he’s anything like you.”
Kai let out a heavy breath, feigning being wounded.
And then Isla was twisted, her back pressed against the brick wall.
She did her best to maintain her snarky, challenging facade as Kai’s body enveloped hers.
But, Goddess, the shadows and moonlight adored him as much as she did.
The contrast caressed his face perfectly, in the way she wished she could mimic with her fingertips, with her lips.
Kai’s fingers dipped below her chin, tipping her head back for a better view of her face. Her mouth. “So, your claws came back, huh?”
“Lucky for you.” She found herself inching closer, arching into him with a desperation she should’ve been too proud to convey and dragging her nails over the skin of his forearm as she’d done many times down his back.
A brush of his mouth against hers and his tongue teasingly sweeping over her bottom lip had her toes curling. But then Kai stepped back, leaving her cold and her body wound tightly.
“Bastard.”
Her curse earned a chuckle in return.
Tonight had been one of those rare times without obligations when they could’ve spent the entire night in their bedroom, tangled up with each other until dawn broke. Or even just catching up on ever-elusive sleep. But instead, she’d wanted to go out.
To follow Eli, yes, but something else weighed like a boulder on her chest. Something, or someone, she was hoping to find or even simply glimpse while traveling along the winding river tonight.
A swallow caught in her throat as Isla glanced back at the streets, her heart constricting at their barrenness. She waited for a shadow that didn’t appear. One that had been following her, both of them, and protecting them from another threat they couldn’t see.
Again, she felt a hand beneath her chin, and Isla let Kai turn her face to look at him.
His eyes searched her fallen features, and before he could ask her what was wrong, she lifted onto her toes and kissed him this time. Sweetly. Gratefully. He knew; he had to have known her ulterior motives, and he was here all the same.
Even if her mother had a heavy hand in the greatest tragedy of his life.
When she dropped away, as if he could taste the unspoken words on her tongue, Kai laced his fingers through hers and stepped forward out of the shadows. “Come on. I’m going to hope for his dignity that they’ll be a while, and this place up here makes some decent food. We can eat while we wait.”
The scent of earthy spices flooded Isla’s nose as she and Kai settled onto the stone of a nearby rooftop, a musky wind lifting the warm steam from the bowl cradled in her hands and brushing it across her face.
Gnawing on a piece of bread she’d dipped in the savory broth, she watched her mate closely as he craned his head against the breeze, his posture shifting, his eyes narrowing with an animal focus.
She followed his gaze upward to the starless sky looming above them, the silver winks of the constellations blotted out by thick, roiling gray clouds. Even with her dulled senses, she could scent the shift in the weather in the air, the heady metallic tang before a downpour.
“Another storm,” she observed aloud, her voice light with a hint of excitement.
Kai’s features tightened for a heartbeat, then softened. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The bread in her mouth felt leaden as she swallowed. “Should we be… worried?”
“No, no.” Kai shook his head, though a bit too quickly for her liking, even with his slight, reassuring smile.
Isla angled her body toward him, eyes narrowed. “Are you feeling okay?” It was, perhaps, a question she’d lobbed at him a few times too many as of late.
Kai breathed through his nose. “Would you believe me if I said I was fine?”
“Probably not.”
“Would you accept it if I said, ‘Don’t worry?’”
“Even less likely.” Isla placed her bowl down by her side, her gaze still fixed on him. “How do you feel?”
Kai shrugged, giving her his full attention with that look in his eyes. The easy, disarming one that was meant to distract her from her concern. “No headache this morning.”
Isla hummed, not falling for the charm. “An improvement.”
He’d had them for weeks since his challenge against Brax. Weeks of hiding the wincing. Weeks of pretending he wasn’t trembling in sleep from nightmares he didn’t want to talk about, only to jolt awake and hold Isla tighter, making sure she was there.
“I’ve been thinking.” Isla’s voice dipped quieter, barely audible above another lazy stretch of wind.
“What about Raana? You said it yourself; you felt like her magic called to you. Maybe I could call Adrien and see if we could talk to her. If she felt something from you, then maybe she could tell us what it is.”
Kai’s features pinched again. “I wouldn’t trust any communication over the phone, especially with Io. I didn’t lose the challenge. If Cassius didn’t have it out for me before, he does now. He looked like a fool putting us all through that.”
Isla couldn’t disagree. The reminder of the Imperial Alpha made her scowl, heat pricking beneath her skin.
She stiffened when Kai gave her a long once-over, his gaze sweeping from her boots to her eyes with slow, deliberate intent. “You’re still feeling okay, right?”
“Other than the fact I can’t shift, I feel fine.” Isla noted the tension in his expression. “Why are you worried?”
“Because it’s you, and I can’t stop myself,” he said simply. His voice held that quiet ferocity that had always tugged at their bond. “Raana said her magic was… different, and it felt strange when she was healing you. Like you were still pulling away.”
Isla exhaled sharply through her nose. Just what she wanted to be reminded of. She’d done her best every day not to worry about what it meant to be healed by magic she didn’t understand. She had enough on her mental plate without imagining herself sprouting a second head.
“Adrien was fine,” she reasoned, as she routinely did in her own mind.
“Adrien was healed by Raana’s mother, a witch,” Kai said. “Not a witch with fae blood—however the hell that’s possible.”
Isla let out a long breath. “You said she mentioned her father was fae. But he couldn’t actually be fae. The veil between worlds became like stone after the War of Realms. We’ve been entirely divided for a millennium. It must be somewhere distant in her bloodline.”
Frankly, she didn’t even know if it was possible for mortals and immortals to bear children.
“If that’s the diluted blood of fae,” Kai murmured, stealing another bite from his bowl, “I don’t know how this realm survived the war against them, let alone defeated and banished them.”
Isla couldn’t fathom the scale of the chaos and destruction of that war. Sometimes, she could barely wrap her mind around the other worlds out there—the realms of fae, demons, and deities. Their existence made her own feel small and fragile.
“So, whatever it is you can do,” Isla began, sorting the words carefully, “the power you feel—it responds to her magic… but you don’t think you have magic?”
“At this point, I don’t know. I don’t even know what I want to be.
If it gets out regardless, I don’t think there’s getting around it being a disaster—with the other alphas, our own people.
The entire continent will look at me as an anomaly, as a threat to the balance of things.
It’ll put the people I love at risk. But… ”
“But?”
Kai met her stare, his eyes shadowed. “If I hadn’t been so afraid of this, if I’d embraced it, I could’ve ended the fight and gotten to you sooner. I could’ve found you. I could’ve gotten to the witch. Maybe I could’ve killed her.”
“What happened to me isn’t your fault.” Isla sighed, uncurling her legs beneath her and shifting to kneel beside him. “I went down into those tunnels. I killed the bak before they got into the city. I did my job—what I’ve been trained to do.”
“Warrior Princess or not,” Kai’s voice guttered as the raging guilt swept in, “my job, my duty, above my throne, above my people, is to protect you. To love you.”
Isla offered him a smile. “Loving me is a job?”
Kai snorted, the corner of his mouth twitching up, exactly as she’d hoped. “Alright, smartass.”
He leaned down and kissed her, and Isla deepened it, wrapping her arms around his neck, shifting until she was flush against him.
His hands spread warmly across her back, anchoring her.
As she broke the kiss, she whispered against his lips, as though sharing a secret meant only for him, “It works two ways, you know… that duty.”
“I know.”
“Good… and you remember my promise.”
Kai’s breath tickled her lips as he moved closer still, their noses brushing. “To and through eternity.”
He’d recited the words just as Isla made her way onto his lap, her legs bracketing his hips, the moon and city behind her as she settled. “Do you think things will ever become simple? Where we can just be happy, old, and in love.” She spoke amidst the phantom caress of his mouth against hers.
“I can probably only guarantee those three.” Kai laughed softly, his hands slipping beneath her shirt, palms warm against her skin.
“I will do everything in my power to make you happy, I will love you forever, and we are going to have a long life together. Whether it will be simple, I’m not sure, but my gut says it won’t be. ”
Isla shivered as his touch swept over her stomach, spreading warmth in its wake. “I suppose that’s fine as long as in the end, it’s you and me.”
Kai hummed in agreement before meeting her mouth with his. A kiss, slow and sure, sealing the promise between them. “I’m not going anywhere.”