20. Logan
CHAPTER TWENTY
logan
Ihad told her later.
Later… After she’d asked about the new layer in my soul. She’d caught it the second I came home. Later, because a war council was no place to explain that I’d walked into the Void a shifter and come out with a new power.
Later had arrived. She lay sprawled across my chest, still coming down, her rainbow hair a wreck against my skin. My hand rested between her breasts, and her heart throbbed beneath my palm. The bond gaped wide between us with nowhere left to hide.
Feel that? I sent her.
Hmmm?
I drew the new silver-white thread into her light. It didn’t flicker. It held steady as a level line.
Emma went still against me. Not afraid. She was evaluating the frequency and formulating a diagnosis dropping into her all at once.
That’s what opened in the Void. There were a hundred shadow mages between me and getting home to you, and I tapped a power I’ve never had before. Not the wolf, not the pack, and I sliced through his army like they were fog. And, Emma…
Yes? Her reply was tentative.
I liked it. I tore a hole through a hundred yards of the dead, and I liked it, and I don’t know how much bigger it’ll be next time. Death becomes me. That’s what I hear when I close my eyes.
Her hand flattened over my heart, over the scar, over the once-dead flesh that ached whenever his work came near.
We’re the same tonight, both scared of what our magic did easily.
Yeah, I guess we are.
And that was it. That was the whole confession, the thing I’d been carrying since the drowned flat, and she didn’t recoil from my truth any more than I’d recoiled from hers.
She lifted her head and studied me with her mossy-green eyes, soft and fierce at once.
“Then here’s what we do about it. You be my anchor, and I’ll be yours.
Whatever’s rising in you, it runs to earth through me.
Whatever’s rising in me runs to earth through you.
Neither one of us burns the house down alone. Together or not at all.”
I loved that woman in a lot of ways, in a lot of rooms. I didn’t think I had ever loved her more than right then, naked, wrung out, and unafraid, prescribing us a way to survive our own power like she was writing up aftercare for a stitched wound.
“Deal.”
Then I rolled her under me, and we re-consummated the fating of our souls.
The first time that night had been for her… for the shaking, for the fear, for reminding her whose she was and who she still was. This time was for me.
I took every inch I’d starved for, every soft sound I’d lain awake missing while I stood at that window and wanted to tear the distance apart. Her curves, her blueberries-and-sage scent, the way she gasped my name when I revisited the places only I knew.
My wolf howled approval in my head, and Emma’s satisfied smile echoed through our bond. The silver light in my chest went quiet too, banked and harmless, grounded exactly the way she’d promised, running through to the one person in the world built to take my current.
“Logan.” Her nails dragged down my back, and her legs came around me. She rocked her hips, bringing us together over and over. The bond was so wide there was no telling her pleasure from mine, doubling, climbing. She panted. “Harder. Harder.”
“Bossy,” I growled against her throat. “I am your alpha. Forever.”
“I will end you. Oh, oh, oh…”
“Come again for me.” I set the pace she demanded. Her desire built, and I clenched my teeth. “That’s right. So good.”
I poured every sensation into her and devoured hers. God, yes. Mine. Home. Don’t leave me on the wrong side of a wall again, Emma. Whatever’s coming. Take me with you.
“Oh, God, Logan, yes!” she screamed, and her muscles clenched.
“Good girl,” I moaned. “Such a good girl. Mine.”
Then she shattered around me, pushing me over the edge with her.
For one perfectly suspended moment, there was no war, no Void, no seam in the sky, nothing we feared. Just my mate, holding on, calling my name.
After, she slept. She dropped into it fast and hard, and the bond hummed satisfaction between us. I lay in the dark with her tucked against me and did the math I hadn’t let anybody see me do in the gym.
Five days to the Beaver Moon. Five days to a feast that was going to be a battle.
A camp full of clans held together by a truce my mate had reached into their chests to rebuild, and an army of shadow mages in the south feeding on the boundary of the world, and a premonition he’d burned into my head.
The two of us lying here keeping our secrets for each other’s sake, calling it love, and not being wrong.
She whimpered once in her sleep. I gathered her closer and pushed steadiness down the bond until she settled. She calmed because I was her anchor, and I could still ground her.
I didn’t sleep. I wasn’t sure I tried.
In the early morning, I eased out from under her one careful inch at a time, tucked the pillows into my shape so she wouldn’t wake yet, and stood a while just looking at her rainbow hair. Breathing. Mine. Still Emma. Still here.
Then I pulled on a shirt and a pair of shorts and went down to the kitchen. If I couldn’t sleep, I could at least get ahead of the day, and I’d promised myself I’d give my mate one morning without adding my problem to her stack.
I brewed coffee, carried it into the study, and placed my mug on Torbin’s doily. Then I stood at the map wall with its new constellation of pins, and I started to pace, waiting on the one person in Louisiana who’d be up before the sun and would hand me a library instead of an opinion.
She’d be along by six. Dr. Eleanor Wise always was.