Nikolai frowned at him. “Funny business?”
Lucas gestured between Aria and Nikolai. “Whatever that last bit was.”
Aria still had a slightly gobsmacked expression. “It was—wow.”
Lucas held up his hands, palms out. “Right. No wow.”
To be honest, wow seemed like an understatement. Aria appeared dazed. He ripped his gaze from her and stepped toward Lucas.
He stopped when Lucas backed away. “I have to touch the collar to remove it. I don’t trust that I’ll stay connected otherwise.”
“No wow?” Lucas asked.
Nikolai sighed. “The wow came with the healing. I can’t promise it won’t happen with you.”
Lucas searched his face. “You didn’t do it deliberately?”
“No.”
The Morph seemed to consider, then he sighed. “Okay. Just get the damned thing off.”
Lucas flinched as Nikolai stepped close. The man might not have agreed at all if he’d had any idea what was about to transpire. At least, not if Nikolai’s experience with Aria was anything to go by. He was about to get a very personal tour of the Morph’s life. Nikolai braced himself and reached for the collar.
18
Aria’s entire body tingled. She sat upon the cold stone, but the sensations coursing through her were something she’d never before experienced. Even soaring beneath the moon couldn’t compare to the way her heart leaped and fluttered within her.
Nikolai’s eyes had gone from gray to black as he’d worked on her collar. At one point, wisps of the black fog had drifted around him. They came directly from his skin, as though he steamed dark smoke.
But at the end there, his eyes had seemed to glow, gray with hints of blue, and the emotion pulsing from him had fired her every nerve. She still trembled with the force of it.
And she was wonderfully, gloriously free. She kicked the collar off into the dense bushes at the foot of the rock ridge. Nothing and no one would ever collar her again.
She glanced to where Nikolai stood before Lucas.
“It’s delicate work, and once I start, I might not be able to stop—if you try pulling away, it might do damage that I can’t repair. Do you understand?”
Lucas glared up at Nikolai. “Is this the only way?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
Lucas stood very still as Nikolai reached for him. The big man touched the Morph’s collar, and his hands began to glow.
Aria watched in rapt fascination as the glow extended over Nikolai’s entire body. It started out blue, but darkened through to red.
Then Lucas went completely rigid. His eyes popped open—they flared pure green—and he tried to wrench away. Nikolai grabbed him by the arms and held him.
Aria moved closer, but she was afraid to touch him. “Don’t move, Lucas.”
Nikolai’s fingers turned white with the effort of holding the struggling Morph. Wisps of black fog drifted off his skin, and his eyes had turned to ink. “Almost,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Just hold on. I’m almost there.”
Sweat beaded on Lucas’s brow and poured in rivulets down his face. His lips were pulled away from his teeth, and his fingers—which still had Dragon talons grown from the tips—were curled as though ready to rip into something.
What was going on between them? True, Aria had shared things with Nikolai that she hadn’t really wanted to share, but it hadn’t been that bad. Lucas’s experience seemed much worse.
She tried coaching him through it. “Lucas, breathe. Just ride it out.
