Page 277 of The Dryad Storm

Fern Hawthorne-Za’Nor has never looked as heart-expandingly lovely as she does right now. For a moment, nineteen-year-old Valen Ulrich can barely pull in a steady breath, his wits thoroughly scattered, his heart on purple-moonfirefor her as he meets Fern’s gorgeous pink-amethyst gaze.

She’s hanging back at the edge of the large, lilac-grassed Forest clearing with her friends, her eyes boldly fixed on Valen where he stands in the clearing’s center facing Rafe and Diana. The whole Realm is awash in purple from Vo’s Xishlon moon, a sizable crowd of family and friends surrounding Valen.

On this momentous day.

His Lupine Change Day.

Fern is eyeing him with that entrancing mix of flirtatious mischief and shyness that never fails to quicken Valen’s heartbeat, dizzying love spiraling through him when he considers his outrageous luck to have had her as his Xishlon’vir for a full year now.

He’ll never forget that first intoxicating kiss under last year’s purple moon.

And another kiss, only a few days past, in the darkest, stillest hours in the Voloi kitchen of Mora’lee’s rune-ship restaurant, Fern’s back pressed against the counter, Valen’s tongue twining with hers, their bodies fitted so enticinglytightagainst each other.

His desire for her pressed so heatedly against her warm, curvaceous figure.

And oh, she noticed. Shyly and then boldly running a hand over him as he fought the urge to peel off her clothes and take her right then and there.

“Xishlon is only a week away,” she’d managed that night, her breathing as uneven as his as he ran his lips down her rose-hued neck, pressed himself more urgently against her, wanting to get closer than ever before.

Wantingallof her.

But Fern drew herself back a fraction, her hands coming up to cup his cheeks, her face flushed a wild rose. Valen could barely stand the beauty of her, the two of them best friends since they were twelve.

And then, years later...more.

Their friendship blossoming into a connection that suffused his dreams and caused him to wake in heated sweats, murmuring her name, his desire as stiff as steel.

“It’s a great blessing to take each other fully on Xishlon,” she offered, swallowing, her gorgeous amethyst eyes bright with desire, the two of them so enticinglyalone.

Valen grew serious as he took what felt like a leap off a cliff, swept up in their shared intimacy. Swept up in his love for her. “I’m going to Change on Xishlon,” he confided.

Fern’s breath caught on a surprised inhale, her hands on his cheeks stilling.

“What does that mean for us?” she finally managed, a quaver in her voice.

Valen leaned in and kissed her with great care before resting his forehead lightly against hers. “It means,” he said, a tremor now coursing throughhim, “that I’ll want to take you to be my mate on that same night under the Xishlon moon.”

Fern drew back a fraction, her gaze wide as she looked closely at him, and Valen knew she understood what he was asking. They had enough Lupine friends and family for it to be clear.

He was asking for a forever bond.

“You know that I don’t want to become Lupine,” she reminded him, an emotional vibration in her tone, both of them poised on the edge of a beautiful precipice. One they’d been headed toward for years with reckless abandon.

He nodded. Of course he knew that. He knew Fern was attached to the Natural World in a different way, through her geomancy and affinity for rose-hued crystals and stones. Her love of cooking dovetailed with her attraction to agro-geology, his beloved widely sought after for her intuitive grasp on which rock powders could best replenish the Eastern Realm’s Shadow-depleted soil with vital minerals, enhancing crop yields.

Fern held out her palm to him, displaying the image of IV emblazoned there, and Valen calmly took the gesture in, his own palms bare, since he’d decided on a different type of bond to the Natural World.

The Lupine bond to Erthia’s Great Wilds.

“I love you, Fern,” he responded in her Uriskal tongue, his heartbeat thundering. “I want to take you to mate under Vo’s moon as your beautiful geomancer self. And my pack is ready to accept you as family just as you are.”

Fern blinked, tears glimmering in her eyes, before she gave him a dazzling smile.

A whoosh of joy swept through Valen, everything in him bowled over by the happiness in her smile. Hard-won happiness. He knows this, all too well, from their countless late-night conversations when he held a weeping Fern close as she confided her struggles as a young child in the East, orphaned at a young age when her parents were killed by the Mages. Tears flowing, she told him how she was raised by her beloved grandmother, Fernyllia, who was eventually executed by the Mages for a feat of heroism that ultimately allowed Fern to escape from the Western Realm, along with so many of their friends and family. Like Valen, Fern became a child refugee in the war-decimated Eastern Realm.

Decimated by what happens when so many groups are bent on hating each other and have forgotten their tether to the Forest and to Vo’s love.

“All right, Wolf Boy,” Fern tossed out in the Common Tongue, beaming at him as tears streaked down her cheeks, her grin filling with flirtatious mischief. “Accept the Xishlon moon as a Lupine. Then bring it to me.”

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