Page 24 of His Curse
Bella has to wear lead lined gloves. Basically they’re driving gloves with silver coated iron chains around the wrist because her magic, her power, is channeled through her hands. As a sorceress—not a witch like most people think—her power lives inside her at all times, totally active and ready to go, but since Bella has to touch or at least have her hands free to do what she does, keeping them contained like that is the only way to stop her.
Wes, on the other hand, it's a little different with him.
Being a banshee means everything pretty much comes from his ability to scream, so he has to wear a mask that covers his nose and mouth with little holes punched into the metal so he can breathe, and there’s a panel that can be opened so he can eat and kinda brush his teeth, but it is literally locked on his face and only allows his jaw to move a tiny bit.
It's a modification of the mask Kentworth designed for the sirens he used to have, the last three—Sonny, Marnie, and Julian—that died about twenty-six years ago now.
Before he worked out all the kinks, the three of them were gradually driving the guards mad with their songs and were even able to get them to open up all the cell blocks to free everyone. Then all hell broke loose. That was the lastbigpurge Kentworth did and it was horrible.
So, with their powers restricted, Bella and Wes pose no other threat to Kentworth or anyone else, and it's why they aren't maximum security like the vampires and shifters. Benefits of mostly non-physical abilities, I guess.
"Zitkala,” Hotah says as he bows his head toward me, averting his eyes while he tries to offer me his neck in submission before he sits next to Chumani and immediately pulls her into his lap. “How do you feel, Mani? Are you well? How is the young?"
And because they hardly get any time together, time that makes me feel like the fifth wheel for sure, I decide to let them have their reunion. So, I barely nod in return before I get up from the table.
"Oh don't go, Lark,” Bella says between the many kisses she's planting all over her man's forehead and neck, his ears, anything on his head that isn't covered by the mask. And Wes takes a seat at the table with his female still wrapped around him, probably grinning like an idiot behind his mask. "Stay with us."
"We'll try not to be too gross,” Wes mumbles through the metal on his face, his dark eyes smiling.
But I just give them a soft smile and step over the bench. "You four are always gross, and I don't need to see it. When you're done dry humping in the yard, come get me, but until then I'm going to take a walk."
"Luna?" Hotah, the gentle giant looks to me in question. "You'll be ok alone?"
I'm always ok alone.
I've been alone too long to not be ok with it.
But because I do care for the four of them, and Hotah seems to fancy himself my Beta, I nod. "Spent a lot of time in a five by five room. It feels good to stretch my legs and feel the sunshine. Plus, when I walk along the back wall I can smell the sunflowers and the trees. It'll do me some good."
They all stare as I head toward the back of the yard. I can feel them looking at me, and what's weird is the way it frustrates me.
None of them know what happened to me, know nothing of Colton or my pack, but I swear it's like they think I'm grieving all of them, mourning over some great loss or some shit.
When it comes to my mate there is nothing to grieve except time apart, time lost that we could have had together, and in terms of the rest of my life? Yeah, maybe I could grieve over my mother's death, grieve over my father exiling me, grieve for my pack that wound up extinct thanks to some whack job with yellow hair.
I guess there's a lot I could be grieving but I'm not—not at all. I made peace with my parents and my pack long ago, made peace with everything that's happened in my life, and that's why I started hunting for Colton in the first place. He is thewhy.The sole reason I decided to track him down and help him. My mate is why I want to figure out what the fuck happened to us all those years ago, and I hope he'll take back his rejection so we can be together when I do. If he'd still have me, anyway.
I know he loves me, I can still feel that. I feel it so strongly despite the states between us and maybe the fact that our love has survived an attempt at rejection and over one-hundred-and-thirty-years is enough for him to still want me when I get out and find him.
Then again, maybe it won't be.
I don't care about my scars, but he might.
My steps are easy, almost light, as I make my way to the back wall, thoughts of my mate always seem to do that, and regardless of the uncertainty, they manage to bring me some hope.
He was so handsome, so damn sexy, my mate.
Long brown hair, a deep mahogany color so dark and so shiny it looked like ebony shellacked in a glossy red.
Whiskey colored eyes with lashes longer than I've seen on any female.
Skin like a deep honey kissed by the sun. His markings, the ones for his tribe, pack, and status as Alpha snaking up the left side of his neck and all the way down to the tips of the fingers on his left hand. I didn't see much of those but I'm sure they're beautiful.
Colton was even more gorgeous than the way I'd always pictured my mate, more rugged but with a touch of class, and all male but refined.
So tall, taller than my father and his, taller than most males in my pack, and he was wide, grizzled, that body definitely testing the seams on his vest and dress shirt. And when he spoke, when Colton introduced himself, my gods, it made me flutter in all the places that count, that deep rumble rich and full of gravel.
But his scent? His scent was intoxicating, so goddamn delicious, and sometimes when I focus on the image of when I first saw him, I can still smell it.
