She’d fallen silent, resting against my side, and I tightened my arm around her. “Whatever you decide,” I said, “will be fine with me.”
“Really?”
“We will work it out, regardless,” I promised.
She huffed a laugh. “I only hope your real self is as easygoing as your dream self.”
I pulled her close. “Of course it is. I’m an Aussie, Angel. We roll with the punches. Always.”
27
Sebastian
I sat amid the trees and lifted my face into the evening breeze.
My human nose be not as sensitive as my equine one, but I still detected the scents of death and rebirth—the rotting leaves mixing with sappy, bursting buds. The musk of a passing creature—the sharper scent of its manure—the damp warmth of overturned earth as it dug for grubs in the soil.
The wind danced through the leaves and carried scents and sounds to me as the exhalations of the living forest. It provided the perfect backdrop for the trance that would link me to the surrounding life energies.
For my people, this be more important than sleeping or eating—our ultimate recharge. We skimmed across the essences, drinking from them without doing them harm. A mere sip from the multitudes of life. Not enough that the life sources themselves even noticed.
The females of our race used it to heal. But for the Bellatis, such innocence be a matter of choice. It could change in a heartbeat. Because we be born with anger in our hearts, and be trained from birth not only to value life, but also to take it.
Life and death. The healer in balance with the warrior. It be the mantra of the Liberi.
I breathed deep and wiped such thoughts from my mind. In order to drink from the essences, I must drop the walls that not only protected life from me, but me from life.
It left me wide open and raw, but necessary to shore up my reserves. Which had been sorely tested, as of late.
Fighting the Dragons had taken much from me. With their resistance to my energy-manipulation power, I be reduced to merely the physical to survive. If Tyrez and his brother had not arrived when they had—but they had come. There be no point in debating possible outcomes when the vital one had prevailed.
Anna had been magnificent.
Remembering it now, my heart accelerated. As I spun and leaped and slashed, I’d caught glimpses of her evading the crossbow bolts. It spoke to training, and lots of it.
Her past be just one of the mysteries surrounding her. My attraction be a huge issue. And I desperately needed to resolve it.
The obstacle course had been revealing. I’d been fine so long as I’d kept my distance. But anything requiring close proximity to her ended up with me being a panting wreck.
Ithadto be the animal attraction thing at work. Nothing else be an acceptable explanation. But be that a Liberi talent? Many Watchers moved as one with nature and communicated readily with animals. But I’d never actually noticed them attracting animals like Anna could.
Even now, just thinking about her—my breathing accelerated, boosting me out of my trance. I slowed it down, grasping for the calm that training had given me. But I sensed how precarious it was.
It scared the hell out of me.
This woman had me out of balance. And a Bellati out of balance be a dangerous thing.
I breathed, and gathered the wisps of life essences to me, feeding it into my own energy. I extended my awareness outward—
It slammed into me like a diving Dragon and grabbed hold. A surging, pulsing presence that hooked into my very soul and carried me along for the ride.
I be dimly aware of writhing upon the grass, my body arching upward, helpless in its grip. Images flashed through me, of naked skin shining in moonlight—moonlight? The sun be only just setting—reality warred with what crashed through my brain.
But what I glimpsed be enough. Anna. Dreaming, she must be dreaming. And, once again, she be with Matt—
I saw him as she did, and then, with a twist that left me gasping, I saw her from his eyes, too. Felt her hands upon me, her lips—her lips, where only one other had gone before her... And then she squirmed away, and I bechasingher.
My brain screamed at me to fight, to break free, but my feet be with Matt, chasing that luscious figure through the trees, my heart pounding as I caught her—
