“I think…I think we’re fine.”
Almost as if her words set him off, his massive jaw opened and he let out a furious roar. My ears popped as the building shook, sending me stumbling backward. His talon reached through the bars snagging Kieran’s coat, and she screamed, backing away as the sleeve ripped off completely. She stumbled back, and I caught her against me, our view suddenly obscured as Niz appeared in front of us and shifted, blocking Qerson’s sight.
Qerson immediately backed up and curled away from us in his cage as Niz roared ferociously in his direction, the dragon pretending like he hadn’t just tried to fucking attack Kieran.
“Fucking bastard,” I cursed. “Good job, Niz.”
My praise had him shifting back as he flew upward, and I let out a frustrated noise before looking down at Kieran. I noticed two things at once. The first was that she was holding a dagger in one of her hands, a weapon I had never seen her use before…And the second, which was far more distracting, was her expression. Both distress and confusion filled her face, pulling her lips down in a deep frown.
“Fucking wonderful, that’s all I need,” she said as she slipped the dagger into her jacket pocket before running a hand over herface and letting out a shaky breath. The reality of the situation we were in settled heavily in my chest as I considered what the hell to say. She wasn’t a Beast Tamer.
I decided to not question my instinct and instead pulled her against me, walking her backward until we were against one of the stable walls nearby. I captured her jaw lightly, needing to see the full brunt of her gaze.
“I can see where you’re mind is going, I?—”
“It won’t change anything.” She closed her eyes, all of the determination from earlier seeming to slip away. “Iknowit won’t change anything. This isn’t my placement. I don’t have a place here, and I don’t have a place in our kingdom either.”
“Kieran, that's not true?—”
I refused to let that even be an option in my mind. Because Kieran not having a placement meant that she would have her wings stripped and be sent to live with the humans…away from me. Niz rumbled in my mind. Away fromus.
“It is!” she hissed, pressing a hand to my chest as her eyes filled with anger. “It is, Ronan. I’m not meant to be here, am I? It's why I don’t have a placement yet. It’s a fucking sign that I need to just…”
“It's not a sign,” I argued, shaking my head in disagreement. “We’ll figure out what’s going on. I don’t know what I need to do to help, but I will?—”
“No.” Her gaze darted down to my lips, as if she couldn’t hold my gaze. “I’m not putting that on you when there’s nothing that can be done to help. There’s only one thing that will fix this.”
I really didn’t like where this was fucking going.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
She swallowed and spoke so softly I had to strain to hear her, “Maybe…maybe I should leave before they can rip my wings off…Before they force me out.”
I was stunned by her words, staring at her silently for a long moment and feeling a sense of panic and desperation filling my chest all at once. Just the mere possibility of her enacting the plan she was speaking into existence filled me with hopelessness. I opened my mouth before closing it, but then I decided to just spit out exactly what I was thinking, sensing the direness of the situation. “You can’t fucking leave.”
She blinked up at me, “I mean I know it wouldn’t be easy down?—”
Shaking my head, I interrupted her, “No, I mean you cannot leave Kieran. You aren’t going to just leave and?—”
“Find somewhere I belong?” Her eyes began to glitter with unshed tears that felt like ice shards in my chest. “Find somewhere that accepts me?”
I accepted her. Niz accepted her. Could she not see that?
I closed my eyes and pressed my head against her forehead, our lips only a breath apart. “Iknowyou feel this between us, Beautiful. If you leave, what am I supposed to do with these feelings for you? They aren’t something I can just ignore.”
“Feelings,” she murmured the word softly and let out a small, sad sound from her throat as her eyes scanned my face. “I do feel something between us, Ronan. Of course I do?—”
Her words were what sealed my impulsive action, doing the one thing I could think of. Doing the one thing I had wanted to do since placement testing the other day. Hell, before that even.
I kissed Kieran.
It was a soft, experimental kiss that didn’t match the fierce hold I had on her. The way she melted underneath me hardened everything inside of me, and a primal need for her rose to the surface. I let out a low rumble, like a beast myself, as she broke away, her eyes wide and cheeks flushed.
“Wow,” she murmured, seeming a bit dazed and blinking repeatedly. When the darkness filtered back into her gaze,though, I had to fight the urge to do it again. “But…but none of that changes that in a few months, they will rip my wings from my body and cast me down, whether we want that or not.”
She was right. Of course she was right, and I knew at that moment that I wouldn’t be able to watch her wings ripped away from her any more than I could watch her struggle with not finding a placement. I just didn’t have a fucking solution. Grabbing her hand and pressing to my chest, I gently kissed the top of it as I examined the ripped sleeve of her jacket, glad Qerson’s claws hadn’t actually hurt her.
“We can figure this out—” My words were cut off, everything inside of me freezing. My gaze narrowed on her delicate wrist and the deep red marks there, a slight bruise forming faintly. I stared at it for a long moment before looking up into her hazel gaze.
