Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
ELIZA
Iawaken shivering, burrowing deeper into the blankets Kael piled over us.
But his body heat’s missing, and the rock beneath me is too hard. I sit up, yawning and stretching, feeling the delicious ache that reminds me of what we did earlier.
Feeling him, too. Even before I see him standing at the mouth of the cave, bare-chested and glowing. Not as brilliant and uncontained. But softer, more stable.
The pulse beneath the glyphs is in my blood, behind my sternum as our eyes meet across the darkness.
“Did I wake you?” he asks gruffly, with a lopsided grin.
He stares at me for one breathless moment—reverence floods me, puts a dangerous sting behind my eyes.
Not mine.
His.
I pull the blankets more tightly around me, teeth chattering.
He’s by my side in a moment, pulling me hard against his hot core. I wrap my arms around him, luxuriating in the feel of him until my temperature stabilizes to his warmer one.
“How can you walk around shirtless?” I ask. “It’s freezing in here.”
“Not for me,” he grunts, circling my waist with his arm and pressing his palm flat over my stomach. “Mine.”
A new possessiveness flashes in his turquoise eyes. Warmth pools behind my sternum. My tongue darts out, wetting my bottom lip. Heat curls at the base of my spine, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
“That’s what you said after the snake bite. In your sleep. You called me yours.”
“Did I?” he asks, wrapping his legs around me for extra warmth. “Even then, a part of me knew. Wouldn’t admit it, though. Too stubborn.”
“You said us being together like this could draw unwanted attention. What did you mean?”
His grip tightens on me, brows furrowing. “Long story.”
“We have all night,” I whisper, my hands sliding over his broad shoulders.
He nods, throat working as he searches for words. “Legend says something drew the first Sentinels to the Starborn Range for a reason. A hum they couldn’t ignore. Something locked in the mineral veins of the mountain.”
I stare transfixed at the strange lines crisscrossing the cave, still giving off a faint glow.
“And the hum? It’s something all living things do. Isn’t that what you told me?”
He nods once, tugging at his beard as he pauses for a long moment. “The hum is like the resonance. A pitch that calls. That communicates. When two beings find each other and resonate, it amplifies it. Don’t know how. But it’s a part of this place. A part of us now.”
My hand comes up, palming his cheek. “Like the light that surged up afterward?” It still flashes in my mind, too beautiful to forget.
“A beacon.” His voice falls away.
“And beacons call things… people,” I say.
“If it can awaken the mountains, it can awaken the people still on the mountains. The Ancients.”
“The Sentinels?”
“Yes.”
“For a Wildblood with diluted blood, that’s a problem. The volatility of it. The unpredictable nature. It brings too much attention. But for one like me, half Sentinel, half human, it could have larger repercussions. It could call up there.” He nods toward the sky.
Goosebumps rise on my arms. He pulls me closer, pressing a kiss to my temple.
“Have you seen any sign of an awakening?” My voice trembles.
“No.” But he doesn’t sound happy or even relieved.
“What’s wrong, then?”
“It’s too quiet, Eliza. Like they’re waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” I ask, teeth chattering again despite Kael’s heat.
“Dunno.” His face is guarded as if he’s not telling me everything.
“Maybe we’re like Ash and Jo. Maybe everything you were told before was just old wives’ tales.”
He shrugs, brows furrowing. “Maybe.”
I whisper, “When’s the last time you saw one of the beings from the mountain?”
“Too young to know for sure. Couldn’t have been more than two or three.
I have an image of my father with my mother.
He didn’t look different. Didn’t act different.
But later, after the Sentinels ambushed them, my grandmother told me stories.
About how hard he fought to suppress the glow.
More than marks on flesh. His whole body. ”
My eyes drop, fingers coming up to the luminescence. My breath hitches in my throat. “Your marks. They’re on me now. Only softer.”
He nods, seizing my hand and pressing the knuckles to his lips. “Warned you, you’d never be the same.”
“Yes, you did. But I had no clue how much.”
“You won’t glow,” he says quietly, thumbing over the faint gray lines at my wrist beneath the bracelet. “And you don’t have nearly as many.” His voice fades away as his fingers crawl up my arm to my shoulder, gauging lines and spaces. “But others will know who you belong to.”
“How did it happen, though?”
“Can’t say for sure. Just always knew I would brand the woman I touched. Used to scare the hell out of me. Now, I see its beauty. Nature, whatever it is, declaring in front of the whole world that you’re mine. Only mine.”
“Why doesn’t Jo have these, too?” I ask breathlessly, twisting the arm I stare down at.
He shrugs. “Dunno. Ash is several generations more human than me. You’d have to ask her.”
“I can’t believe this.”
His eyes meet mine, voice thick. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
I blink slowly, trying to find the right words to explain what I’m feeling. “Of course, it is. You’re all I want, Kael. That will never change. But you have to understand how weird this is for me.”
“For me, too,” he confesses. “Only ever heard about this in legends. And from other Wildbloods. Like my brother, Clemson.”
“Is he still alive?”
He shakes his head, face simmering. Like he’s remembering hell in one breath.
“What happened to him?”
“Ended up like my parents.
“But I don’t understand. Aren’t your kind almost immortal, like you?”
Kael’s jaw tightens. “Long-lived for sure. But not immune to violence. In my parents’ case, Sentinels. For Clemson and Ruby, it was the Wildblood hunters.”
“How did they kill them?”
“Don’t know with my parents,” he says, voice gravel. “Just that they target the mate, not the man. For Clemson and Ruby—” his voice breaks, hand going to scars on his stomach “—ambush. Shot him, which wouldn’t do nothing. But the lead killed her. He faded away after that.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, stroking his beard. “Because their lives were tied together?”
“Yes.” He eyes me for a long moment, face darkening. “But don’t worry, primrose. Won’t let anything touch you. Ever.”
“Is that why you can’t sleep? Bad memories?”
He nods once, pressing my hand over his heart. “Part of it. And it’s too quiet… after what we did.”
“What if they come?”
Kael grabs the bracelet at my wrist, twirling it absentmindedly around my wrist. “We suppress them. Like Ash and I did with the government men.”
Fear whispers through me despite his words. He squeezes me tightly. And that’s when I feel it, his mind pressing back against mine, turning worry into something like faith.
“Together, they can’t break us,” he says.
I nod, snuggling against his chest.
Tempest’s tail swishes in the distance, soft and predictable. My eyelids droop, the world dimming.