He’d barely braked when I launched myself out of the car, not an easy process in my current state. I staggered into a field and dropped to my knees amid a crop that passed over my head.
I was kneeling amid them, but in my mind, Anna stroked me. I knew it was Matt she touched, but it made no difference. My body leaped as though it was for me alone.
When she pushed down on me, my head dropped back as I became lost in sensations that were not my own. She brought me to the brink, and then held me there, white-hot and aching, while I ceased to breathe.
And then, she released Matt. But, realms away from her, I was still held in her helpless thrall.
Because I needed something more.
In desperation, I pulled the scales back from my thigh, and sank my talons home.
Glorious pain. I cried out as my body pulsed, shuddering with the power of it, far stronger than anything I’d yet experienced. As the waves faded, the last of the connection with Matt went with it, leaving me kneeling, bleeding, in a farmer’s field, having just fertilized the plants in a rather unique fashion.
The faces pushed at me, penetrating my fragile new walls with judgment in their eyes. The ones I hadn’t managed to save...
I rose on shaking legs, and took three steps toward where Haki waited, leaning on the vehicle...
You will give, as well as take.
Before I had time to wonder why Matt’s voice was echoing through my head, I was hit again. This time I dropped to my hands and knees so suddenly that Haki ran toward me. Humiliated, I had no control as my body reacted, and I couldn’t breathe as I renewed the wounds on my thigh. I barely got my scales retracted in time for another offering to the harvest gods.
“Talakai—” Haki stood over me, his energy flaring wildly.
Humiliating to have him as a witness. That we’d been intimate in the past was only a partial salve for my embarrassment. I hadn’t needed the pain, then.
I shoved back hard on Anna. On Xumi. On the faces. And answered him. “I’m okay, Haki.”
“What the shards was that? It was so powerful.”
I regrew my scales and pushed myself to my feet. “That,” I said, “was my soulbondeds.”
He frowned at me. “Plural?”
“Apparently. They pulled me in—”
“Ah.” There was a world of understanding in the word. His eyes fell to my thigh. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah.”
His eyes met mine, and I looked away.
He cleared his throat. “Kala just told me she is very interested in the plural aspect. Mindsex can be every bit as good as the real thing. And multiples add a whole other dimension.”
“You don’t say.” I glanced back at him, relieved he’d moved on from the bleeding wounds in my thigh. I’d never considered the possible fringe benefits of telepathic soulbonds. “Yet another excellent reason you shouldn’t be driving.”
He grinned. “Kala would never distract me while I’m driving.” He tilted his head. “Well, almost never.”
I didn’t find that exchange reassuring. As I followed him back to the vehicle, I wondered how I’d ended up linked so powerfully to Matt.
There was more than a bite at play here.
It only added to my determination to avoid him and Anna. I wasn’t in any shape to embrace a soulbond. Particularly between two others, or possibly even three.
As soon as we got back in the vehicle, Haki asked, “So tell me about your soulbonds. Is one that gorgeous woman I saw with Jacques? Her eyes are different colors.”
He’d seen Anna with Jacques? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I nodded. “Yes.”
“And the other? Who is he? That big Dire with the funny accent?”
