It was anyone’s guess as to what she was trying to tell me. But I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with flying free.
I gritted my teeth and embraced my wings.
44
Rafael
I followed the passageway that went up from the walkway across to the tree that housed the guest quarters.
My heart was heavy. I’d expected to die facing Isobel on that rooftop, and since my rescue, I’d been adrift. Wanting, needing, but knowing that I could never have what I craved.
Never haveher.
But it seemed that Fate was not yet done with me. I may not be able to have Riley, but Fate had given me a family. A twin sister, and a half-brother.
Two someones to live for.
I hadn’t expected that. And now that I had them, I wasn’t sure what to do with them.
They were connected to me on a visceral level. Nikolai’s power seethed beneath the surface, but I could touch it. And between Anna and I, with Lucas as a conduit, we might be able to use it to bring Isobel down.
If Riley could get us there. I didn’t doubt she could do it.
The stairs I climbed fed me out onto a branch grown broad enough to form a platform.
I paused, uncertain. This was clearly where Cara retreated to recharge, and I didn’t want to intrude on her private space. It sat nearly three hundred feet up from the forest floor, and as the sunlight shined down upon the golden wood, I recognized the life that flitted and soared and hummed around me.
Then the sunlight vanished so fast that I peered up through the branches overhead. Dark clouds roiled across the sky, and thunder rumbled.
Nipping teeth and tangled tongues, dark scales rippling over smooth skin…
The lust swept through me, and as lightning forked across the sky, everything else—every thought, every sensation—vanished.
Marcus and Riley.
I gasped and dropped to my knees, hopelessly entangled in the two of them. My body moved in silent pantomime to every touch, every breath… One moment, Marcus, the next, Riley. I writhed, stretched out on the platform, my hands ripping at my clothing until I was as naked as them. I’d always needed the touch of another to connect me to the energy, but with these two—it flooded into me, and the fiend within drank it all in. Their lust was more powerful than anything I had yet experienced, feeding into the storm that crashed around me, the lightning scorching through the leaves and branches to mark the trunks.
I shuddered and groaned and thrust with them, and when Marcus sank his teeth into her, I exploded right with them, without having to lay a finger on my pulsing shaft.
I lay on the platform, heart racing and body on fire. And then—they started again.
And again.
By the time they finally lay quiet, I was a complete mess. With shaking arms, I pulled myself away from the edge of the platform, and pulled on first my pants, and then my tunic. I sat with my back to the trunk as the sky slowly cleared, and my breathing eventually returned to normal.
Mymates.
If I’d ever had doubts before, I didn’t now. They had fed me without effort, and without direct body contact.
They were a part of me.
If only I could be a part of them. I longed for it. It was a soul-deep thing.
But there were only two. The risk was too great.
I’d die before I did that to them.
Something huge and blue rose from far below, to soar past me with fast-beating wings. Talakai. And a moment later, he returned.
