“Me?” He blinked at her, slow and sure. Andcatlike,something he must be doing specially to make her lioness purr. Which it did. “I have something to live for at last. A future where I thought I had none. A family. A lover.”
“What about you?” she said, swatting his earlier question back at him.
“Me?” He gave a wry smile. “It’s been so long since I had so much to look forward to. I have to relearn who I am. I look forward to it.”
“I do, too,” she said.
“I think a good place to begin,” he said with slow, careful consideration, “would be to kiss you again.”
She agreed.
46
Julian
He almost had her on her back again when a faint look of alarm passed over Francine’s face.
“What’s the matter?”
“Mathis,” she said at once. “He says they’re having trouble keeping Maggie distracted, and are we—”
She almost choked, her cheeks flaming red. “Are wealmost done?”
“Are we?” he asked innocently.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “No,” she informed him coldly. “This is an intermission. There’ll be more later.”
Before he could catch her in another kiss, she swung herself out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
Some time later, he made her admit that this had not been a sound strategy. There was only one bath to wash in; what else was he meant to do but join her?
Clean, dry, and dressed, and much later than the others must have been expecting them, they joined their rescuers in the gathering room.
He looked around at the no-longer-strangers who filled his home. The strangest of all somehow seemed most at home amidst the magic of the shadow dragons. Lance had brought with him not only his teammates but also a small army of chimeric shifters unlike anything Julian had ever heard of: men and women who melded human forms with eagles whose feathers were made of living metal. They communicated telepathically, a language that was more image than word, except for the few among them who had begun to learn English.
The shark-eyed woman, Carol, acted as interpreter for them. Julian gathered they pre-dated the war that had bound his people to the fortress by thousands of years. Lance and the others referred to them as ‘Stymphalian birds,’ though from what he understood, their name for themselves translated more accurately as “Normal people, unlike the rest of you modern-world weirdos”. They remembered a different Soul-Eater. A different Weaver of Souls. But always the same story: the fight between life and death, hope and despair, in a never-ending cycle.
And the others. Mathis and Chloe. Lance and his mate, Keeley, whose warm heart had welcomed little Maggie into the world when she didn’t even know shifters existed, let alone dragon shifters. Carol, the shark shifter who wore her shark’s features in human form as naturally as though she’d been born with them.
And her fated mate. Moss. The kraken. Another remnant of the ancient pact their ancestors had made. He and Julian had exchanged a few words while Julian waited for Francine to wake. Moss’s duty had weighed on him as heavily as Julian’s, a weight that had almost broken them both.
They had both survived, and their fated mates with them. But at what cost?
They were about to find out.
Francine frowned when they explained the next step to her. “What do you mean, no one’s checked the prison yet?”
“What do you remember from before Moss rescued you?” Lance asked.
Francine’s expression didn’t change, but a frisson of uncertainty traveled from her to Julian down the mate bond. He took her hand. *Nobody here blames you for your decisions.*
*That’s their mistake.*
*Certainly not. Their mistake would be doing anything to endanger their welcome here, including behaving poorly towards the mate of the person whose magic allows them to walk these halls unharmed.*
She stilled. And then, just as he had expected, she did not take the bait. *I don’t want them hurt. And—you wouldn’t harm any of them, anyway.*
*Of course not.*
