Page 6 of Moth to Her Flame

One powerful downstroke lifts him into the air. Another carries him past my security lights into darkness. Within seconds, he’s just another shadow against the star-strewn sky.

My legs give out. The gun clatters to the floor as I sink down beside it, staring at my hands. I can still feel where he touched me—a lingering warmth that refuses to fade.

The moths around my porch light seem mundane now, their wings dull and ordinary. Everything seems dull and ordinary compared to that impossible display of living light.

“This isn’t happening,” I tell the empty night. “This can’t be happening.”

But my arm still tingles where his fingers brushed it, and somewhere in the darkness, a pair of wings are shimmering like captured starlight.

My carefully constructed reality has just sprouted antennae and taken flight.

And I’m not sure there’s enough whiskey in Colorado to deal with that.

Chapter Five

Riven

The night air feels wrong against my skin. Everything feels wrong. Like the world has shifted on its axis, leaving me stumbling through new laws of physics I don’t understand.

My wings. My treacherous, glowing wings that couldn’t have picked a worse moment to confirm what the ancient texts only hinted at. Those cryptic passages in the mountain library’s books about “luminescent mate bonds” suddenly make terrifying sense.

She’s the one.

The thought rings through me like a bell, clear and devastating. Of all the females in all the world, my mate had to be thestubborn, gun-wielding human radio host who just ordered me off her property.

The universe, it seems, has a sense of humor. Just not a very good one.

Banking around a pine tree, I try to focus on staying airborne. But my usual grace has abandoned me, replaced by a clumsy urgency I’ve never felt before. Every wingbeat that carries me farther from her cabin feels like I’m fighting against a tide. Like swimming upstream through molasses.

The old texts were very clear about this part. The growing weakness. The need to stay close. The way distance becomes its own kind of poison.

What they didn’t mention was how it would feel. How the empty space between us wouldachelike a physical wound. How the memory of her touch would burn even as her rejection freezes in my chest.

She must be protected.

But how can I protect someone who won’t even believe she’s in danger? Someone who looks at me and sees a monster?

The ground sways beneath me, or maybe I’m the one swaying. My wings are heavy now, their glow dimming to a faint pulse that matches my increasingly erratic heartbeat.

I should have waited. Should have found a better way to approach her. Should have—

The world tilts sharply left.

My right wing catches a draft wrong, sending me into a spiral. Muscle memory kicks in and I manage to level out, but I tremble with the effort. The forest floor seems much closer than it was a moment ago.

Have to land. Have to…

The clearing ahead will have to do. My legs aren’t responding properly as I aim for it, and my wings feel like they’re made of lead. The landing is going to be rough.

Very rough.

The ground rushes up to meet me in a tangle of wings and limbs. I manage to twist at the last second, protecting my wings from the worst of it, but the impact still drives the air from my lungs.

Somewhere above me, stars wheel in impossible patterns. Or maybe that’s just my vision going dark around the edges.

She’s in danger.

She hates me.

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