Page 18 of Fae Reckoning

The warm glow of his lumoon seemed to illuminate only him. My friends and my concern for them faded from my awareness.

I’d frozen in place as I studied him, drawing Saffron over to one hip. Crusted blood clung to a knot on his temple. Additional thin dribbles of blood streaked his forehead, marring his silver hair. A growl tore out of me that was so vicious it took me several moments to recognize it as mine.

It was nothing, however, compared to Rush’s. Had I not been staring straight at him I might have guessed the sounds coming from him belonged to a bear, or perhaps even a dragon. Based on the volume of his fury, I guessed I looked as beaten and bruised as I felt.

He wore his usual tunic, breeches, and boots, but his weapons belt, always hanging from his hips, was glaringly absent. His tattoos, like the pale silver of moonlight, glowed as brightly as his lumoon as they crept along every inch of his exposed skin. His hands, neck, and face—oh, his beautiful face!—were covered in thorny vines that this time bloomed with prickly roses—also silver. They matched his eyes. I could get lost in his stare forever. It steadied on me, transfixed.

Rush’s chest heaved as he snarled and grumbled and growled, his eyes blazing.

I raced toward him.

He opened his arms and I crashed into them, my many tender injuries be damned.

Our embrace was awkward until I guided Saffron around to my back, where he clung to my neck, well-practiced in the move. Then I succumbed to the need to press my body along the length of my mate’s. Careful of the dragonling, Rush’s hands skimmed all across mybody. His lips kissed my face ever so tenderly, cautious of each of my cuts and scabs, before moving on to do the same to my neck. When he smelled me, I stilled, finding the act strange until, emboldened, I sniffed him back. Then I understood perfectly. The bonded beast deep inside me, where my base instincts lived, began to settle.

He held me flush against him, as if even air separating us would be a travesty. “By a dragon’s essence,” he murmured against my neck, causing a shiver to descend the length of my spine. “I feared I’d never see you again. That you might have died when you went through that doorway. What Ivar said he found when he followed…” He shuddered so hard I experienced the tremble as if it were my own, making me realize that in his embrace I’d ceased my shaking.

“I worried not even you would be able to survive that,” he said.

I swallowed thickly. “I very nearly didn’t. I came really close.”To dying, I left unsaid.Almost dyingwas the main thing I seemed to do often since meeting the queen.

He pulled back only enough to study my face. I watched his eyes harden as they took in the extent of the damage. It probably didn’t help that a killer flower had recently attempted to devour me.

Rush’s mouth was a hard, unforgiving line. “I’m going to hurt her so badly for what she’s done to you.”

Trying to forget the queen and the looming threat she posed for just a few moments, I smiled at him. Itwas tenuous at first. I barely dared believe he was truly holding me. “You remember me now?” I asked, uncomfortable with how vulnerable the question sounded to my own ears.

Storm clouds shadowed his moonlit eyes. His mouth pinched; his brow furrowed. “By the Ethers, El … I am so, so, so incredibly sorry I … I…” His shoulders slumped. “…forgot you.” He frowned morosely. “And so soon after I promised I never would, too.”

He sighed heavily. “I hope you know it wasn’t me and that I would never?—”

I smiled sadly. “I know.”

“I will spend the rest of our lives together making it up to you.”

“There’s no need, Rush, really. I understand.”

His eyes searched mine, and I knew he saw what I hadn’t admitted aloud: just how much his rejection had hurt despite my rational understanding of the reason behind it.

“I love you,” Rush insisted. “So much more than I think maybe you’ll ever know.”

“Uhhhhhgh,” someone groaned far behind us, and this time it sounded like a different kind of pain, an emotional wound—Xeno, I was guessing. It served as a sharp reminder that we had an audience.

And that the queen was still in pursuit.

When Rush leaned in to kiss me, I hesitated.

Immediately he pulled back to study me some more. “Do you not forgive me? I know…” He glanced around us before lowering his volume to a whisper. “I realize it must’ve been … difficult for you to be there with me when…” He gulped so that I could see his throat bob through the faint scruff covering his neck. “When I was … withher.”

I closed the gap he’d opened between us, ignoring Saffron’s hot puffs of breath along my nape. I placed a gentle palm against Rush’s cheek. “Of course I forgive you, if there’s even anything to forgive. It’s the queen.”

He stiffened. “What about her?”

“She probably won’t be far behind. We have to figure out what to do and where to go next before she finds us. Which pretty much means,right the hell now.”

Before I could pull my hand away, he leaned his cheek heavily into it. “The very first chance we get, I want time alone with you. I have a lot to make up to you.”

“You don’t. But yes, I want that time with you too.”

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