Page 23 of Jacinth

The sense of foreboding stopped me in my tracks.

A moment later, the sensation subsided, and I turned to see a man dressed all in black with shaggy hair turning a corner and disappearing out of sight.

Familiarity flared.

With a rough shake of my head, I dismissed the feeling. The last thing I wanted right now was my ability to flare up and keep me from my mate any longer than it already had.

I walked purposefully through the field of headstones, past copses of trees, until I found her clearing. Niko lay comfortably on her grave, waving his arms through the air beside him as though touching someone.

Which, of course, he was.

In my desperate need to get here, I had forgotten one major complication.

I couldn’t actually see her at the moment. With a deep sigh, I moved to leave my lucky bastard of a brother to our mate. Maybe I would go jump Orion for his amulet. He wouldn’t do anything too bad to me in retaliation. He was still under the idiotic belief that I was mentally unstable.

“Wait. You don’t have to go.”

Pure sunshine.

Her voice warmed the corners of my soul and erased any lingering chill from my earlier encounter. I didn’t want to ruin the illusion if I had fallen into a vision, so I simply closed my eyes.

“Speak again. Please?”

The brush of skin on my shoulder, the warmth of a body close to mine. A breath stirred a too-long lock of my hair that had fallen over my eyes.

“Open for me. Look at me, please?”

Weren’t we both well-mannered? I cracked one eye at a time and found her perfect baby blues focused on mine. I reached tentative fingers to stroke over the lengths of her honey waves.

“How is this possible?”

She grimaced. “It takes a little concentration, but the mating bond gives me something to hold on to.”

I turned and locked eyes with Niko, where he sat, watching us.

“Is this hurting her?”

“Just saps her strength. Nothing too bad,” he said with a shrug.

I nodded and steered Jacinth back toward my brother. Clearly, they had spent a good deal of the previous day together. The comfort level between them made me equal parts happy for Niko and outrageously jealous for myself.

Niko eyed me curiously.

“I thought you would have been here first. It honestly surprised me when you didn’t turn up last night. I mean, even Birdie visited at dawn, and I didn’t expect Orion at all, but you...” He let the sentence hang.

For a moment, I considered letting it all out. My power, the real complications, the things that I had borne witness to. Instead, I kept it vague.

“Cock-blocked by fate. Nothing I could do. I came as soon as I was able.”

They both nodded, pretending to understand, with almost identical expressions on their faces. It would have been comical if I wasn’t so done with all the secrecy. Niko frowned and looked over his shoulder a moment later.

“Why do you look so satisfied with yourself, Harley?”

Silence.

“How the hell could you have had anything to do with that?”

And they thought I was crazy.

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