Page 93 of Storm Echo

He heard her swallow before she said, “Choose to live with me, Ivan. Choose to love with me without boundaries and shields, whether that’s for a single day, a year, or decades.”

For the second time, she’d stolen his words from him. Overwhelmed by the enormity of what she’d said, the choice she’d made, he just kept on driving—but because he understood her now, he made sure to keep his hand in hers, and to squeeze it to tell her that he was still there, still with her, just needed time to process.

Lifting their clasped hands, she kissed his knuckles, and they drove on in a silence heavy with the choice she’d askedhimto make. The hardest thing anyone had ever asked of him … because it meant that when the abyss beckoned, he’d fall with her in his arms, taking her into the nightmare with him.

Chapter 44

Nzxt: On the scale from one to ten, what species of changeling is the most aggravating?

CC2: Oh, you trying to start a ruckus, Nzxt. I’m not getting involved.

Vixen79: That’s because you’re a panda, CC. Way more zen than the rest of us. I vote for wolves.

Nzxt: Disqualified. You’re just pissed at that last wolf boyfriend of yours. I say it’s cats. Ever tried to ignore a cat? They (a) either don’t care, or (b) refuse to be ignored. You can never win.

CC2: Aren’t you dating a cat? Tiger, right?

Vixen79: Ooooh,BUSTED! Disqualified for being a cheater pants! I think that meansyourspecies is the most aggravating!

—Forum ofWild Womanmagazine

SOLEIL DIDN’T PRESSURE Ivan. She loved his stubborn head and she was beginning to learn that her mate was a man who needed to work things through on his own timeline. So she’d give him that. And she’d keep on loving him.

Of course, if he tried to reject her, she damn well wouldn’t let him get away with lying to either one of them. Didn’t he realize she could feel his devotion to her through their bond? It was a thing of steel and ice and flame-kissed silver. If he tried to tell her he didn’t love her, she’d call him a liar to his face.

Would she keep her word if he pushed it?

Yes.

It would splinter her into so many pieces that she’d never quite be right again, but she’d honor his choice as no one had honored hers. Even the thought hurt, but she took her own advice and didn’t borrow trouble, instead choosing to live in this beautiful today where she had her mate beside her and they walked in a lush forest on the way to their new home.

Her feet crunched on the leaf litter as she followed the tracking on her phone to the exact GPS coordinates Lucas had given them … to find herself under the shadow of the spreading branches of a massive sequoia.

She gasped at the sheer beauty of the tree’s arms, the way it allowed the sun to peek through in glorious filaments while providing an umbrella of shade and protection at the same time. Its trunk was a thing of age and time, so wide around that it would take ten or more people to encircle it.

It took her a minute to spot the aerie. It was perched far higher than anything in SkyElm. Ocelots were, by nature, terrestrial, but aeries off the ground made sense for security reasons. SkyElm had, however, kept those heights down to a level where someone in an aerie could easily talk to a packmate on the ground.

That wouldn’t work here. A person would have to shout and hope for the best. God, it was beautiful, set solidly on one of the higher branches, and clearly designed to be reached by a cat. Though it did have what must be a hastily arranged rope ladder that had been unfurled so that it hung near to ground level.

A gift from her pack to her, she thought, her heart full. Because she had a mate who wasn’t a cat. “Do you like heights?” she asked the Psy at her side, a Psy who was looking around with an expression that said he wasn’t quite sure what to make of his new living situation.

“How am I going to climb that when I wear a suit?” was the cool question.

She laughed, delighted with him. “It won’t be that bad,” she said after leaning up to kiss his jaw. “Things only come out to eat you at night.”

No laughter, his attention on the space all around them. “I like it.” Quiet words, his hand sliding to stroke her lower back as if he couldn’t be with her and not touch her.

Her cat got all bashful while wanting to snuggle into him. When she gave in to the urge, he just curled his arm around her as if it was perfectly natural for her to nuzzle at him under a forest sky.

“I never thought about how cats like space, too,” Ivan murmured. “I would fit in a pack like this. I wouldn’t feel like an outsider.”

Soleil wanted to do a little jump at this sign that he was thinking about a future in which he walked beside her as her mate. “Come on, let’s go look inside.”

“I think it must be an old security aerie, from a time before DarkRiver extended its security perimeter,” Ivan pointed out as they neared the rope ladder. “Explains why it’s so high.”

“That’s why you’re the security genius and I’m a cat. Race you up!”

As a child, she would’ve shifted right then and there, not bothering about her clothes, but she loved her dress—the dress that Ivan had gifted her—too much to ruin it. So she stripped out of it as well as her shoes and bra. Convenient not to have to worry about panties, she thought with a grin.

---