Chapter Eighteen
Ipaced the bedroom, staring at the motionless bodies of my mate and the man I envied more than any other being on earth because she loved him.
There was something different about the Jazriel I’d known yesterday and the one currently sleeping like a baby. He’d always been powerful, but even in his sleep, alpha energy rolled off him with each rise and fall of his chest.
I shouldn’t have been affected by it, but I was. Although I’d never admit it to the arrogant stallion.
Iolani’s eyelids fluttered, drawing me from my inner musings. Sitting down on the bed beside her, I brushed my knuckles across her cheek.
“Bluebird?” I whispered, desperate for her to wake, but also wanting her to sleep as long as she needed.
“Hm?” she asked, her voice husky. Then her big blue eyes opened. “August?”
“I’m here.”
“How long was I asleep?” she asked, pressing her fingertips to her eyes.
“Almost twenty-four hours.” I stared at the bandages covering her body and rage boiled up inside me.
“And Jazriel?” she whispered, trying to push herself into a sitting position.
“He’s beside you.” I gently pushed her back down on the pillow. “As far as I can tell, he is uninjured, but he’s a ridiculously heavy sleeper. I dropped him once, and he slept through it.”
Her eyes widened. “Because I ordered him to. He’s not going to wake until I undo it.”
I gaped at her. “What if you had died?”
“If I’d died, the command would have been released. I think.”
I was never going to get on her bad side. The last thing I wanted was for her to turn me into Rip Van Wynkle. “So now what? You wake sleeping beauty with true love’s kiss?”
Iolani rolled her eyes, then reached out a hand to stroke his hair. “Time to wake up, Jazriel.”
He was lying on the bed one moment, and the next, he’d pulled the blanket off her and was running his hands over her body. “My love, you must be in so much pain.”
“I’m too relieved to be in pain,” she lied. “I’m here with you two and the veil is stable. Nothing else matters right now.”
Smoke drifted from his hands and swirled up his forearms to his elbows. “Be still and let me care for you.”
Taking his time, he removed the bandages and healed the wounds one by one. When he finished, there wasn’t a speck of blood or a mark on her skin.
“That’s new,” she whispered, her eyes huge as she looked up at him. “Arabelle wasn’t kidding.”
Jazriel tilted his head. “Arabelle?”
“I mean Belle. Remember her from the lounge chairs?”
“But what does she have to do with this?” Jazriel asked.
I listened silently as Iolani babbled on about everything in her vision, feeling my heart sink the longer she talked.
Jazriel clearly understood what she was talking about, which showed me how close they’d become. She’d confided so much in him.
I wanted her to trust me enough to tell me when she needed me, just as she’d let Jazriel follow her into that hellscape of a battle the previous night. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, but I remained silent.
“What do you want to know first?” Iolani asked, locking her eyes on me.
“You can read thoughts?”
She nodded. “It hasn’t worked the same on Earth as it did on Cucalas.”
“I can read thoughts too,” Jazriel volunteered as if this was a sharing circle.
“Yeah, I know,” I growled.
“Really? How’d you figure it out?”
I snorted. “When you started insulting me in my head.”
Jazriel nodded. “Yeah, that was a risk.”
I turned my attention back to Iolani. “Cucalas?”
“My world, the phoenix afterlife.” She crawled across the bed, climbing onto my lap, facing me. “I’m a phoenix, and I was blasted through the veil between our worlds when I helped Ryls return to her mates.”
“You’re a phoenix.” All the pieces of the puzzle that didn’t make sense fell into place. “You didn’t survive the crash landing on that cliff. Or the waterfall. Or the horse running away with you. Or Jazriel throwing you off his back. You died all those times, didn’t you?”
She nodded, not meeting my eyes.
“Hey! She forced me to throw her, so I didn’t kill her.” Jazriel scowled at her.
“I still owe you for that one,” she said.
It made so much sense, and I wanted to bang my head against a wall for not putting it together sooner. The missing clothes, the lack of fear when facing death, the insanely fast healing, the flashes of blue I sometimes caught from the corner of my eye that must have been her fire.
I finally swallowed back my bitterness and looked at the intricate mark that Iolani had left on Jazriel’s chest.
The night they’d completed the bond, her sweet arousal had scented the forest, drawing me to her like a fly to honey.
Jazriel had spotted me almost instantly and had angled their bodies so I wouldn’t miss seeing him touch what could have been mine. I’d left before they’d marked each other, so I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at the mark fully before that moment.
It was a phoenix. I’d purposely avoided looking too closely at any of the signs that pointed to her identity because I knew it would only make it harder to walk away.
It’s about freaking time,Jazriel yelled in my mind, the corner of his mouth twitching as he caught my wince.
Ignoring his attempt to aggravate me, I wondered if his actions had a deeper motive than simple gloating or male possessiveness. If he wanted her for himself, why did he continue trying to taunt me into getting over my insecurities and show her how I felt?
From the rumors about pegasus, they weren’t the type to share anything, especially not a bed. Yet Jazriel had left a space for me to sleep beside Iolani wherever we camped.
Even in that moment of sacred intimacy where they came together as mates, he hadn’t tried to hide her beautiful body from me or exclude me. No, he’d let me watch the emotions and pleasure on her face.
Jazriel snorted, then spoke into my mind. Yeah, to please my mate. I tried to get you to give in to what I knew both of you wanted. But don’t get it twisted… I attempted to push past my selfish desire to have Iolani to myself, but I seriously enjoyed rubbing it in your face.
Okay, he was definitely still a jackass.
Pegasus, Jazriel corrected. And for the record, our mate gets really turned on when you’re involved. Even if you just stand there motionless while I do all the work.
Not sure what to say to that, I turned back to Iolani. “Why didn’t you tell me what you needed from me? I never would have left. Last night, I could’ve given you power before you got hurt.”
I struggled to keep my voice from shaking. “Instead, I’m camping not too far from the lodge because I can’t bear to take another step away from you, and a fiery blue bird shows up. I was so sure I was conjuring it in my mind, until it landed on my shoulder and electrified the crap out of me until I got up. And every time I stopped following it, the tiny sadist would swoop back and light me up again.”
Jazriel snickered. “I would give half my fortune to see that.”
“You think it’s funny? Look at my back!” I sat Iolani on the bed and lifted my shirt to show him.
Jazriel’s laughter boomed in the small room. “I got a blue mane that matches Iolani’s hair and an intricate tattoo, and you look like you fought a grill and lost.”
“August!” Iolani sobbed, moving to her knees on the bed so she was level with my back. “My magic did all of this?”
“Of course not. Most of it is from whatever was attacking you two when I arrived.” I tried to pull my shirt down, but she wouldn’t let me.
Jazriel’s laughter faded, and Iolani’s fingers traced the deep gashes that criss-crossed my back and shoulders. In some places, I’d been scratched in the same place so many times that glimpses of my ribs could be seen.
While I’d waited for them to wake up, those had stitched themselves together, so at least she didn’t have to see the full extent of the attack.
“I thought she stopped attacking us because she’d used up her energy and faded to the point that she couldn’t physically touch the living without another recharge. But she didn’t leave. You let her attack you instead.” Iolani’s fingers grew hot against my skin, and I quickly turned, catching both her hands in one of mine.
“Don’t you dare try to heal me,” I growled. “I will heal with time, and you need to save your energy and rest.”
“But that has to hurt!” She tried to pull her hands free, but I refused to let go, needing her to know I wasn’t going to back down on this.
Jazriel sighed and pushed to his feet. “Allow me.” Smoke curled around his fingers and circled my skin.
“I would’ve healed,” I pointed out, uncomfortable accepting his help, even if I did appreciate the pain disappearing.
Jazriel shrugged. “Yeah, you would. But it’s upsetting our mate. She wants you to look pretty, since you’re far more delicate than her.”
His eyes glinted with anger, then he blinked and it was gone. “You have a lot to learn about our mate. So let’s start with this: make her cry again, and I won’t be anywhere near as understanding and patient as I’ve been thus far.”
Dropping his hand from my shoulder, he sat back down on the bed, this time beside Iolani.
As I stared into her big blue eyes, the memory of seeing her in the middle of the scorched earth with bullet holes in her skin, still trying to protect Jazriel’s fallen body as the wind screamed and an unseen monster lacerated her skin, was a sight I’d relive in my nightmares for centuries to come.
She’d refused to give up, even as I’d listened to the slowing of her heartbeat.
“Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?” I dropped to my knees in front of her. “I never would have left your side.”
Iolani brushed her fingers through my hair. “It wasn’t about trust, August. I knew you would be willing to face any monster for me, because you’d consider it your duty.
“But I didn’t want you to be with me out of some misguided notion of honor and obligation. I wanted you to be there because you wanted me,” she whispered, brushing her fingers along my stubbled jaw.
Iolani thinks you claimed her because the pull of the mate bond forced you to,Jazriel spoke in my mind. Now set the freaking record straight so she can be happy and you two can finish claiming each other.
“Iolani, I resisted the pull of the mate bond. It was uncomfortable and mildly irritating, but I could have kept resisting it. A bond is a sign of a good match, and it encourages our beasts to mate and mark. Have I been rock hard every day since I saw you on Xerxes’ lawn? Yes. I’m wildly attracted to you, and you are the first woman to cause me to experience lust. But I could resist that.”
Her lips were parted, and she barely breathed as she listened.
“It was you I couldn’t resist. It was your laughter I woke up wanting to hear. It was the joy you find in everything around you and the kindness you show to both humans and animals. It was the adventure of hours spent trail riding with you, never knowing what waited for us around the next bend.
“It was falling asleep with you next to me, and waking to find you covering me with your wing because you wanted me to be comfortable. I fell more in love with you every single day. I want to make love to you until you can’t walk straight and Jazriel would have to carry you everywhere. But that’s not because of the pull of the bond, and it’s not why I begged for you to accept me as your mate last night.”
“It’s not?” Iolani asked.
“No, it’s because I can’t imagine a single day of my life that doesn’t have you in it. I want your heart.”
“August.” Tears streamed down her face.
“I’m asking again. Iolani, will you claim me and mark me as yours?”
Her answer was to throw herself into my arms, toppling us backward onto the floor.