He found himself walking forward. One step, then two, and then his hand was pressed against the closed door. The suite was silent. He closed his eyes, ears straining to hear anything from the other side.
All he could hear was his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.
His dragon pressed him forwards, urging him to turn the handle even though he’d heard it lock, to call out to her. To dosomething.
Instead he turned away from the door and went out onto the balcony. Cool air wrapped around his face and neck, bringing with it the stale scents of the shifters who had been out on the deck earlier, or standing on their own balconies: rodents and mustelids, canines and lizards. And the lionesses.
All the lionesses but her.
He couldn’t ignore it anymore. When Francine had been only a means to an end—his way home—he had told himself that whatever lay behind the wild desperation he occasionally sensed in her eyes, it was nothing to do with him. He would ensure her survival—her safety—but that was all.
He had barely been able to convince himself of the lie then. Now it was impossible. He had to know.
Who she was. What she was. And what she wasn’t.
Julian grasped the railing and stared up at the sky. The storm blotted out the stars, but this was his homeland. He knew this season, this time of day, this taste of salt and ice on the wind and spray.
He had spent much of his childhood venturing out in the long winter darkness and staring at the stars. They were old friends, their movements a dance he knew every step of. Each individual speck a part of something greater.
During his time out in the world, it had been impossible to miss the similarities between his old friends in the heavens and the shifters he found himself moving among. Like the stars in the sky, like his own small clan, everyone he met existed as part of a greater group. Their instincts and powers granted by their inner animals determined their steps, and they danced together in concert, predator and prey, friend and foe.
But not her.
The Delacourts were lion shifters. He knew lion shifters. The importance they placed on their family—their pride—the protectiveness of the males, the pack hunting behavior of the females.Men and women,he corrected himself.
Francine was nothing like the other lion shifters he had met, here on the ship or elsewhere. She wasn’t a star whirling in constellation with her sister-lionesses. She had fallen from her orbit—or been thrown from it. Not a monster. A victim.
No.
Julian frowned. That wasn’t right. It didn’t fit with everything else he knew of her. Something in the heat that simmered behind her icy façade, in the golden eyes hiding deep inside her, told him—
He stilled. For a moment, the air tasted of ice.
Francine hadn’t fallen or been thrown. She had thrown herself. Torn herself from the heavens and become a shooting star, hurtling to Earth.
And she had chosen his home for her crash landing.
She has no idea what she is heading for.
His dragon would hide her from whoever it was who hunted her. He would keep her safe and stalk her enemies from the shadows.
But if she stepped into his home, he would not be able to save her.
The taste of ice on his lips was still there when he escorted her to dinner and left her there.
22
Francine
Dinner that night was in the ballroom. Francine remembered, too vividly, all the long nights she’d spent matching the ceiling to a particular color of the night sky, and lights that picked out the constellations above her favorite summer retreat.
Tonight, the whole room blazed gold and simmering white.
At least it isn’t silver.
She shivered with mingled dread and longing. She’d heard it described so many times like this. The mate bond an actualbond,visible to the two fate had bound together.
She never thought it was actually true.
