Page 28 of Bear Protector
“Just tell me. I’m already pissed.”
“Two years ago.”
“Two years? You have been keeping this secret from me for two long years?”
“Dammit, Kiera, will you just get over it? I am sorry. It was an accident, really. Do you remember that day Aleena had forgotten to reopen your bedroom window after she cleaned it?”
“Yes. And you screamed at her for ten minutes straight because—”
“Because I had to find another open window in the fortress, and I was tired as hell after sneaking off all night.”
“Right. Yes. That was when you found out?”
“Yes. I flew in through the Chamber of the Sacred. I saw their crypts, Kiera. Every one of the Chosen and every familiar. Sixteen fucking tombs in a massive room, with space for a hundred more. It was horrible.”
“Oh God. We’re going to die, Coco.”
“Yes, we are…you should be glad now that I did not tell you.”
“Why?”
“Could you live any kind of life, knowing for all that time?”
Kiera suddenly realized the burden Coco had been carrying for two years. Alone. Come to think of it, that was about the time her familiar would sulk in her room next door for days at a time, not eating, unwilling to speak, and had even refused to take on her human form for over a month. “God…you are right. I am so selfish, dear. I did not think about what you had to have gone through. I am sorry.”
“I think I liked it better when you were angry just now. Then we could get to theactualbetrayal.”
“How do you mean?”
“That son of a bitch Minassus. He needs to pay.”
“Goodness, I am not sure I’m ready to go there. I will be in a day or two, but I am tired of all the ups and downs of the last few days….well, everything except for one.”
“Let me guess. Does it start withXand end withOh my effing God?”
The two of them fell back on the bed, laughing hard.
“He was unbelievable,” Kiera admitted when the giggles slowed down, still looking up at the ceiling.
“I sensed it the second Aleena and I saw you. Actually before that. As soon as you left the shifter camp, your scandalous thoughts hit me like a brick. Thank God I was not in mid-air, or I would have crashed… or worse.”
“I did not want to leave.”
“There is always tonight,” she cooed.
Coco’s suggestion already overwhelmed her. She was out of breath and wrapped up in the idea of being with Xander again, of giving herself to him completely. He had unlocked something inside her she didn’t know was there. Yearning, need and pleasure all rolled into the same primal urge.
“But how? It is so late already.”
Coco got up and threw off her robe. She stepped over to the window and took on her bird form. “Leave that to me. You should freshen up before dinner. Oh and find Reena before your meal. She wanted to show you something.”
* * *
When Kiera entered the laboratory, four spikes were laid out on the floor beside the counter where Reena worked. They were just like the ones she had seen while touring the shifter camps today. The tabletop was piled high with old grimoires on one end, and had green and orange liquids in beakers placed at about two-foot intervals along the countertop.
“It is all beginning to make sense,” she said to her friend.
Reena woman looked up from the two thick notebooks in front of her. “Well hello there, Kiera. What are you talking about? These experiments?”
