Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
KAEL
Abed of dirt and a blanket of stars. Heavy air presses down on me. Wet and weighted with something I can’t name. But I can taste it.
Cricket choruses throb, frantic for mates.
That’s how nature made it. Two become one.
The look on Eliza’s face when I told her pierces my heart again. The ache behind my sternum doubles, throbbing and violent.
Without the dampener, I’m too dangerous to stay.
Maybe it’s the pull of the mountain… or her.
She asked me what this is. But I can’t say the word out loud. It’s a death sentence to those like me. And even more so for her.
I grip my tattoos, feeling their pulse across my bare chest. Pain. Tension ratcheting toward a breaking point.
If she knew what she does to me. How uncontrolled she makes me. But I can’t let her know, because next time, I won’t stop.
My throat tightens. My heart hammers behind my ribs. God, I need her.
More than air. More than water.
Like she’s a second skin I could fit beneath.
But what would she become? And worse, what might we awaken?
When I go, I won’t look back. It’s better for her that way. But for me, it’ll be unbearable.
I cradle my head in my hands, staring up at other worlds. Wondering which glittering orb my people came from.
Distant thunder rolls across the Starborn Range, where the Sentinels first set up camp. Where they remain, I’d wager.
“See those hills, darlin’?” I say to Tempest. “My father came from there, feral and mean. Centuries of loneliness bearing down on him until he cracked. Couldn’t take anymore. Caved to temptation and destroyed my mother.”
No fairytale ending. Just violence and taking.
The tattoo pulses beneath my flesh, a mark from birth, the curse of satisfying otherworldly lust with human flesh.
“But was that it?” I wonder to the stars. “Lust alone or something else?”
Tempest snickers, ears flicking.
“I’ve spent my whole life apologizing for that crime, Tempest. One I never committed.
I suppose it’s no different than humans, bearing the original sin of Adam and Eve.
A generational curse. An abomination. I thought I was better than my father.
That given half the chance, I wouldn’t do the same thing.
” I sigh low, mind wrapping around the thought.
But now I know more disciplined men have already fallen.
Ash, of all people. The emblem of restraint… unlike me.
I close my eyes for a moment, letting my thoughts wander far away to hazelnut curls hung in a loose braid over one shoulder. Pink cheeks smattered with freckles. A button nose and dancing brown eyes that look like sunshine in human form.
One taste. My fingers find my lips, tracing over them. One.
But I’m not like Ash. And I don’t have Mags’s discipline. I’d wreck Eliza if I ever touched her. That look in her eyes, the simmer behind it, says she’d welcome destruction.
Tempest’s tail swishes, her teeth cropping verdant cheatgrass low.
I lift my head, eye my mount. “Should leave tomorrow, old friend. Better that way.”
But my mind still races with all the loose ends I haven’t finished tying up. Unmended fences on the south perimeter. Chicken coop in need of patching and reinforcing from countless bobcat attacks. Irrigating pastures, baling hay, weed control.
“I could stay ten years and never make a dent in the list.” Tempest doesn’t answer. Neither do the mountains.
Not your place, Kael. You weren’t made for staying anywhere.
But wandering forever? That’s hardly a plan.
Cursed blood. Cursed lineage. Should end with you… and Ash.
The thought hits hard. A wedding in two weeks. I should stick around to stop it. But another day with this woman, and I’ll break. I know it.
Somewhere between sleep and awareness, a vision hits me of a tongueless cow with no organs, no blood. Splayed beneath a tree, stiff and recriminating. Pointing to every sin of the first ancestor, the one who took too much.
I awaken with a start, perspiration lining my forehead and chest. Overhead, a shooting star streaks past. I watch it gain speed, evaporate into unending dark—unending space. The symbol from the field flashes in my mind.
Heat sizzles beneath the mark on my chest. Pulsing, aching. Like the faint lightning that fractures the sky at the horizon line.
“Any of you bastards still exist?” I whisper to the storm, hand brushing over my beard.
Soft fingers replace my rough ones, a gentle touch so close I could almost revel in it. And the whispery snip of scissors.
Would it be so bad if I asked for one more shave and cut? If I gave her one more show?
Yes.
But when sleep comes again, I’m wrapped in human arms, heartbeat steady and strong beneath my ear, soft flesh pressed against my hardness. It could be home. If a man like me were allowed such a thing.
“Tomorrow, Tempest.” Those are the last words I remember.
“Thank you for the bouquet,” Eliza says, cheeks glowing as we ride in the cool of the evening.
I shrug. “Nothing special. Just local wildflowers.” I left them in a Mason jar on the kitchen table. A way of thanking her and saying goodbye.
“Mariposa lilies, Sierra primrose, lupine, the red ones. What did you call them again?”
“Castilleja. But I’ve heard red paintbrush, too.”
“Never would’ve taken you for a man who appreciates wildflowers,” she says, voice too gentle. The kind of gentle I could settle into and never leave.
“Had a sweetheart once… in my youth,” I say, though I can’t fathom why. “Back when flowers had their own language.”
Eliza’s eyes narrow. Her cheeks flush scarlet. “That the reason you stay… so guarded?”
I cock my head. “You jealous, boss?”
“No,” she says too quickly.
I let out a low chuckle. “Marjoram Ashby. Used to carry her likeness in a locket. Heard she moved on…” I can’t find the words to explain. “After… married and had a family. Never looked back.”
“She broke your heart then?” Eliza asks flatly.
“Did something fierce. Time heals all wounds, though.”
She grimaces, looking away and blinking too hard.
“A schoolboy’s crush. I see that now.” Because of her.
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Seems I do.” It comes out too gruff and serious. Maybe because she makes me want to smile like a fool and puts butterflies in my gut.
An awkward silence settles between us, the crunch of horse hooves over gravel the only sound.
“The language of flowers… what do you mean?” she asks after a long pause.
“Been a while,” I excuse, shifting in the saddle. “But if I remember right, white means purity and pink gentleness, admiration.”
“Like the lilies and primroses.”
I nod once. “Purple means royalty.”
She huffs a laugh. “Hardly fitting. Lupines are pretty, though.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, removing my hat and ruffling my hair. “Wakefields have been royalty around these parts long as I can remember.”
She eyes me, face paling. “And the Castilleja?”
“Red flowers signify passion—”
Love.
I can’t say the last part.
Her cheeks glow, and she looks down, studying Daisy’s mane too hard. “Thank you.”
When her brown eyes meet mine again, they’re large and filled with questions. Questions I already know I can’t answer. But I have to try. She needs to understand why I can’t stay.
“What do you know about Wildbloods?”
“Wildbloods.” She huffs a laugh. “Only every tall tale Raven’s Ridge has ever produced.”
I arch an eyebrow, waiting patiently. The saddle creaks beneath me, a gentle breeze cooling the sweat gathered at the back of my neck.
The corners of her mouth tip up. “Let’s see… Wildbloods ride lightning and rope whirlwinds. They tame devil horses faster than steam engines—not as impressive in the age of airplanes, I’ll admit.”
I chuckle, already enjoying this too much.
“You hear things the rest of us don’t. Feel them, too. Deep down in your bones. Sometimes, you give warnings to us mere mortals, help us protect our land or families. And all you ask for in return is… privacy.”
I nod once.
“You heal too fast, live too long, and were made to tend this land better than any rancher or Wakefield ever could.”
The irony of her last statement nearly chokes me.
“Am I wrong?”
I shake my head. “Nope, just imagining what old Alistair would say about that. Along with you and me riding like this.”
“You talk about him like you knew him.” Her words hit too close.
“Sounds impossible, huh?”
“I know! You’re a vampire,” she teases. “Bloodless bull. It was you all along.”
“Sorry to disappoint. No immortality here… or bloodlust,” I correct in gravelly tones.
“Lust. Interesting word choice. Another thing men like you are known for.”
I tug at the collar of my shirt, wishing this heat would break.
“Couldn’t be further from the truth.” The words convict me. Need curls low, insistent at the base of my spine. I could take her here. Make her mine before she even knew what happened.
She couldn’t stop me. Couldn’t fight me off.
But never. I’d die before I hurt her.
“Could’ve fooled me with all that silly talk of Marjoram Ashby.”
The lopsided grin finally captures my lips. “You are jealous.”
I turn, and that’s when I see it from the corner of my eye. A hint of black and tan against red sand.
Eliza gasps. Daisy rears back. I reach for her reins but miss. Tempest lunges to the right, side-stepping and stomping.
A sidewinder lies in the cool of a rock, tail rattling. Daisy shrieks, rising again. Eliza tumbles from the saddle less than three feet from the snake.
I don’t think. I don’t breathe…
Sharp teeth dig into the flesh of my forearm, body shielding Eliza from the viper.
I let out an awful grunt. A new kind of burn travels up the glyphs on my flesh as it strikes again, then a third time, caught between me and the rocks.
Tempest comes down hard next to me, hooves kicking and smashing, screaming into the still of the desert afternoon, until the snake lies trampled beneath her.
I grip my arm, fingers digging into flesh that burns and swells—violent, caustic. My fingers don’t close right. Like they don’t belong to me anymore.
“Kael!” Eliza covers her mouth with her hand, crawling toward me. Her eyes round, washing over three sets of puncture wounds dripping blood and venom.
“God,” I groan, teeth grinding. My pulse pounds too fast, as if it’s trying to break out of my chest.
Then it stutters.
Misses.
Kicks again.
“I have to call nine-one-one,” she says.
Anguish sears my brain. But those words cut through.
“No,” I gasp, body tensing around the next wave of pain. Sharp, tearing, violent. Like my veins scorch from the inside out. “You can’t.”
She eyes Daisy, spooked and running. “B-but I have to.”
“No.” Another rush of heat burns through me like ignition. My veins feel like they’re collapsing in on themselves, straining and breaking. “No, they’ll kill me if they find out.”
“Find out what?” she pants, forehead creasing.
The edges of her blur as if she’s slipping out of the world before I am.
“That…” I groan through another wave of pain. “I’m not human.”
I’ve taken worse.
Bullets. Blades. Venom before.
Never felt like this. Not with something worth staying for.
Eliza’s voice is in my ear. Too far away. “Kael, stay with me…”
I try.
But I already know this feeling.
Not like this.
Not with her watching me die.