Page 106 of Mark of Love (Love Mark 3)

My eyes suddenly went wide. “Was he a basketball player?”

“Yes!” Indigo laughed. “He tried to teach me how to play once.” With a wince, he added, “I didn’t get the hang of it.”

“So that’s what happened to him,” I realized. “He and his girlfriend and their boat’s skipper replaced Taiki, Questa, and Quailen here?” I shook my head, dumbfounded. “His disappearance was all over the news after we arrived. Everyone thought his brother killed him.”

“Well…” Indigo shrugged. “I supposed he might have if Bison hadn’t been replaced here instead. He always told me he and his brother hadn’t been getting along too well.”

I shook my head. “That’s so weird. This world and that one are so vastly different from each other. I could never connect them in my mind. But hearing about other people who have been to both places, makes it…” I blew out a long breath. “I don’t even know.”

“More real?” he guessed.

“Exactly.” I looked at him and confessed, “I hated coming back here. It was hard to adjust and fit in there, yes; some things I never understood. But after experiencing electricity, indoor plumbing, automobiles, telephones, televisions, computers, books, and so much more, it was like traveling back in time and going to the dark ages or something when we returned. I hate calling it the old world, too. What we’re like here, with horses and carriages and castles, it’s what they think of as old and outdated. We’re more like their medieval, dark ages. Everything there is so much newer and faster than what we have here. Yet we’re just infants compared to how long they’ve been around. It’s all so strange and backward.”

“No wonder why you want to go back so much,” Indigo murmured almost sadly, as if I was already leaving him behind.

A strange pressure filled my chest over the idea of never seeing him again. But then I realized that even if he came with us, he’d lose his mark once we reached Earth. He’d lose all those feelings he thought he had for me.

“The hardest thing to adjust to was how nothing magical can follow people to Earth,” I told him. “None of us could use our gifts there. They just disappeared. But the curse can’t follow us there either. My mark disappeared completely until I returned.” I flipped my wrist around to display the tattoo from my Graykey curse. “And all Melaina’s emotions that were restrained from her by Uncle Pallo returned to her. I’d never seen her so nice. Or happy.”

Indigo gazed at my mark a moment before lifting his gaze. “Since you magically sealed your womb, does that mean you could have children on Earth, too? Without worrying about them being possessed by bloodlust?”

My lips parted as I considered the possibility. “I—I don’t know. I suppose,” I finally murmured.

He opened his mouth to reply, but Melaina trotted up next to us, interrupting. “I’m starving and sick of sitting in this damn saddle. Besides, the pace you set today is outrageous. There’s an inn showing on the map, not too far ahead. I say we rent a room for the night and—”

“No,” Indigo said sternly. “Not while we’re this close to Tyler, and especially not when an entire posse of Graykey hunters know Quilla’s in the area.”

Melaina’s mouth pinched into a flat line, but after a sharp glance toward me, she sighed in disgust and muttered, “Fine. But I’m not cooking supper.” She pointed at me. “You hear that.”

I glanced toward Indigo as an idea bloomed. “That’s fine. I know just what to make, anyway.”

Chapter 25

Indigo

After helping set up camp a good clip away from the main roadway, I scouted the area for over an hour to make sure we’d picked a safe enough spot to bed down for the night.

I spotted two other camps within a three-mile rad

ius of us, neither of which appeared to be hunting parties.

The first was a young family: husband, wife, and three children. I stopped and talked to them, learning they were off to visit the wife’s mother, who was ill. When I gave the little girl and her two brothers a sweet treat each, Holly growled low in her voice, sounding like a jealous and disgruntled cat. And since she was still in her horse form, the family sent her some very leery, uncertain looks, so I went on my way soon after that.

I shared my entire flagon of ale with the second party, which consisted of four men, all brothers. They were out camping in the woods because the oldest brother was in love and wanted to propose to his lady by building her a house. So they were chopping down enough wood to build her a sufficient home, hoping that would get her to say yes to him.

When the sun began to set, however, I wished them good luck with their endeavors and returned to my own camp, where Melaina and Quilla were sitting near the fire, working together to pull a long-handled covered pot from atop the campfire.

Inhaling deeply, I wandered closer, wondering what smelled so good. “What did you make tonight?” I asked, which made Quilla jump and let out a yelp, causing the pot to crash the last few inches to the ground and the lid to tumble off.

“You’re back!” she stated in a winded voice, gaping up at me with wide eyes. “You were gone so long, I began to think—”

“Sorry.” I winced, even as my gaze strayed to what was revealed in that pot. It was some kind of unleavened bread on top, crisscrossing in latticed strips and covering what looked like bits of fruit underneath. Whatever it was, it smelled absolutely divine. “I started out scouting the area but got a little carried away talking with everyone I crossed.”

After telling her about the family and group of brothers, her aunt snorted. “Damn, you just make friends with everyone you meet, don’t you?” Rolling her eyes as if that was a bad thing, she muttered, “How pathetic.”

She picked up a knife as if to cut me for being friendly to others, but instead, she cut the food into triangular pieces, then dished the biggest piece onto a plate where she immediately began to fork the steaming cuisine into her mouth.

“What is that, anyway?” I had to ask, my mouth watering. I was fully prepared to eat my stale hardtack for supper, but that didn’t stop me from hoping they might invite me to taste whatever this was they had prepared.

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