My gut twisted painfully. Surely, he was wrong. “You shed them with every shift,” I said. “Are there any others?”
He grew very still.
“There must be others, Sebastian. Where are they?”
“They turn to dust over time.” He hesitated, and I sensed he knew something.
“You know where there is one, don’t you?”
He straightened. “The dust be valuable. I gave one away recently, as payment.”
“Who did you give it to?”
But he shook his head. “It matters not. I be better off accepting my fate.”
“Well, I do not accept it.” Before he could move, I stepped straight into him and laid my hands on his face.
He tried to pull away, but I said, “Hold.” My alpha power sank its hooks into him and held him in place. “You are mine, Sebastian. And no one messes with what is mine.”
His eyes widened as I pulled his face down to me, and kissed him. For the first few moments, he remained rigid as a board. But then his lips moved over mine, and he shuddered.
I’d never felt his energy so depleted. I grabbed from my own, and fed it to him. Pumped it into him. He pulled back, but I kept my hands on him. I looked up into eyes whose edges now glimmered with silver.
“What be you?” he whispered. “How do you have such power over me, even in a dream?” Then he fastened his hands on my shoulders. “That be enough, Anna. You cannot give so freely of your own energy, or you will suffer for it.”
“You cannot die,” I whispered back. “We are fated to be together.”
He snorted. “Fate be a fickle bitch. She has interfered much in my life. With Isobel. And Galeran.”
To my horror, his outline was blurring. I fisted my hands in his hair, but I could barely feel the strands beneath my fingers.
“Don’t go,” I pleaded.
“I cannot stay,” he said. “Those around me be too sensitive to energies, and I cannot risk them discovering our connection. But I will find the realm where Galeran hides. And I will tell you.”
I could see the stars clear through him now. “I will find your horn, Sebastian. You have to hold on. Promise me you will.”
He looked down upon me, and he smiled. His first true smile to me, and it possessed a sadness that twisted my heart. But I’d been right about him—it took him from cold and handsome to damned near angelic.
Beautiful.
And mine.
“For you, my Anna, I will try,” he said, and then he was gone.
* * *
The bell went off.
I hated that thing.
Matt’s arms tightened around me. We lay on his bed. Much more comfortable than the old gazebo’s mossy, rotten floor.
As the last echoes of the bell died, my mind groped for my dreams. I thought they’d involved wings before I’d seen Sebastian.
Was he really there?Matt sounded groggy, but he’d picked up on something from me.
Yes, I think so.
