Page 80 of Curse of the Wolf
Finally, Duncan stirred under my hand. His head turned toward me as his eyes opened.
Relieved, I smiled, though more tears also came to my eyes. Tears of relief, this time. I wiped them away and tried to keep the smile on my face for him.
“My lady,” he whispered. “Are your lips twitching?”
“Yeah, probably so.”
“Ah, lovely.” He puckered his.
I laughed and kissed him. We were both too weary for it to turn into anything heated, and Duncan paused to point toward the wrecked SUV. “You’ll be delighted to know that he stabbed me with something familiar.”
“Oh?” I asked.
Duncan lifted his naked leg, showing a puncture wound, though it already appeared to be healing. Because of his regenerative abilities or because the medallion was taking care of him? Maybe some of both.
“Radomir had your sword.”
“Oh, isthatwhat he stabbed you with?”
“I would have been alarmed if it had been anything else.”
“I would think a sword would also be alarming.”
“I suppose that’s true. But if we search a bit, we should be able to find it in the wreckage. Then coming up here won’t have been a waste of time.”
We’d defeated one of the enemies who’d been vexing us all winter. I didn’t think this had been a waste and meant to say so, but the light of the medallion brightened again. I pulled back, eyeing it warily. It beamed upward, flowing around Duncan’s head.
“What…” I started to ask, but the light faded again.
“I feel like someone dropped me into one of those tanning beds.” Duncan lifted a hand to his face, as if checking for a sunburn, but his fingers drifted to his forehead.
My lips parted in surprise.
“The scar is gone,” I blurted.
“Gone?” Duncan probed the area in wonder. “I’ve had it my whole life.”
“Your forehead is smooth now. The medallion…”
“I think… Yes, I’m quite sure, since I’m feeling rather good for a man who pitched off a cliff, that it lifted the curse.” He nodded with certainty.
“It found you worthy.”
“That’s a relief.” This time,hislips twitched.
“I should think so.”
Duncan pushed himself into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around me. At the bottom of a ravine, with the wreck smoldering behind us, we finally kissed each other without interruption.
EPILOGUE
Dawn came and went,and Duncan barely stirred on my couch.
After climbing out of the ravine, putting his pillaged van back in order, and finding clothes to wear, we’d had to hunt all over to locate his keys and my phone. We’d been lucky they hadn’t disappeared into the ether during our unplanned changes. For a while, I’d thought they had. Between the explosions, the partial collapse of the building, and the dead bodies that the bipedfuris had left behind, it had been a difficult and gruesome scene to search. At least, that far into the wilderness, nobody had reported the noise to the police, so we’d been able to poke around undisturbed.
Well after midnight, we’d driven home and finally arrived at Sylvan Serenity. After a quick bite to eat, we’d both passed out. I would have offered Duncan a spot in my bed, but he hadn’t asked, simply collapsing on the couch, unconscious before he fully settled.
This morning, he lay in the exact same position. I might have worried about him, but his aura was stronger to my senses than it had been before the medallion’s healing—than it had been in more than a week. Besides, he’d fallen asleep with his headscrunched sideways against the armrest, resulting in snoring. I believed them to be the hearty snores of someone who wasn’t dying.
