I waited a beat, knowing I couldn’t force her to listen. I admired how much she’d grown though, in strength, in courage. A queen stood before me, forged from pain.
“Okay.” I nodded once. “For the record, I’ve added Lucien to our ‘must save’ list after he comforted me in those dark moments. I will be forever grateful for that little pugron.”
Her eyes lightened before I signaled for her to continue as we made our way through the trees.
My mind spun, and when going over the plan for the hundredth time made my head throb, I finally settled, allowing myself to think about Raya.
My mate.
She’d scarcely looked at me once I’d returned from the Southern Forest. Between planning with Storm and the few hours of sleep here and there, there wasn’t much time to pull her aside and talk. The few moments I did have, she made sure she was nowhere to be found.
She avoided me, dodging the very necessary conversation we urgently needed to have. When the knowledge had snapped into place that she was mine, my mate, it reshaped everything inside of me. There would be no one else. I’d assumed she had felt it happen too.
But what if she didn’t? What would I do if she never felt the same?
“Lan?” We were almost to the open wildflower field we’d crossed so many times before during Hidden Henchmanmeetings in the forest. “Would you have chosen Kade if we had gotten to the end of the marriage trials?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, “I think I’ve always known we were connected in some way on a deeper level. There was an undeniable pull toward him, unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Clearly, now we know why.”
“To think, you were right about mates all along,” I teased, brushing against her shoulder. “I should have believed you from the start. We could have spent far less time arguing about love matches and mates and more time training.”
Lana huffed. “You loved reminding me it was the last possible thing that could ever happen to any of us in our lifetime. Ever.” She smirked before her brow raised in suspicion. “What are you getting at here?”
I drummed my fingers against my thigh, shifting my weight, unsure of how to continue.
“Ian?”
I ran a hand along the back of my neck. Fates, saying it to Lan would make it real. “I feel that. Sometimes.” I swallowed. “No, that’s not true. All the time now.”
“Feel what?” she pressed.
“A pull.”
A smile spread over her face. “I’m going to need more than that.”
I knew she absolutely didnotneed more information than that.
“I know you and Kade have your mate thing going, but perhaps I might have found mine too.”
I’d only said it in my head, but once the words escaped my lips—fuck, it felt so right.
Thinking of Raya sent a warmth into my heart. The second I’d touched her in my mind, I longed to be closer to her. Even though I knew she barely wanted to be in my presence—she’dmade that much abundantly clear—the desperate need to be near her, to just breathe the same air as her, was enough to break my concentration more times than I could count.
Lana grinned and drew me into a hug. “Maybe when this is all over, we can finally live the lives we always dreamed of. We just have to make it out alive first.”
“You know who I’m talking about?”
This time, instead of hugging me, she slugged my arm. “Everyone would know who you mean. Come on, Ian. She can only appear in your mind. That alone is obvious enough. Besides, the tension is so thick, you’ve made everyone around you nauseous.”
“Don’t even start with me on tension, with you and Kade eye-fucking every minute of the day,” I grumbled.
Lana gasped, holding a hand to her chest in mock outrage. “Noteveryminute.”
The tree line ended and we stopped, halting our progression. Once we crossed the field ahead we’d be close to our well-used hidden entrance into Ellevail. “We’re getting closer. We’ve got to make it to Dukes Pub by daybreak without being seen, even if the likelihood of us not running into a dark one is slim. Which means we have about an hour left if our plan is going to work. Are you ready?”
Lana took my hand, squeezing it once before she donned her hood, hiding her hair. “It really is like old times.”
Moving silently through the fields, we ran in tandem. Even with the likelihood of failure and death, in this moment I could see Lana free. Running, her arms out beside her, feeling the flowers as she passed, I watched in awe as they leaned into her. How we thought she didn’t have magic with nature’s responses to her was beyond me. We’d all been idiots.
