Regulus rushed over to the boy and held his gaze. “I forbid you from feeding until we return to the plane. The witches are poison to us, and the rest…they are family. We will go together, and after you have fed, we will bring back clothing and medical supplies.”
“Do not leave. Any of you,” Regulus ordered. “No magic bearer remains alive in this structure, but there may be some of the Thirteen’s supporters close by. Ewan and I will return in less than five minutes. Stick together, and should trouble arise, Eli? I trust you understand this new power inside you enough to defend everyone?”
Eli, with Farren’s help, sat up and held out his hand. A luminous, glowing teardrop hovered above his palm, and he sent it drifting towards Sameen. It found her shoulder, spreading out to form a gauzy film over her right side. And before Peter’s eyes, it soaked into her jacket, into the soft skin of her neck, into the tight black pants that clung to her slim frame.
For ten seconds—he counted each one—nothing happened, and then her heart started to beat. He made an inquisitive sound, and when he raised his head, her eyes were open. A deep, dark brown greeted him, and she blinked hard. “Peter. I…see you. All of you. Oh, God. And the fire…what I siphoned off from Mara’s baby…it’s at peace.”
Peter shifted back into a man, even though he hated taking even a single, distracted second away from his mate. But he needed to hold her. Talk to her. Tell her he loved her.
“Sameen? Is this really true? All of it?”
She didn’t answer in words, but by throwing her arms around him and kissing him. No hesitation. No fear. And though every one of their past kisses had been nothing but perfection in his mind, this one…this one was so much more.
Chapter Twenty
Peter
Regulus and Ewan were as good as their word, returning in under five minutes with a large duffel bag full of clothing, bottles of water, and a fully stocked first aid kit.
Sameen hadn’t stopped staring at him since she’d opened her eyes. A few locks of hair had escaped her braid, and Peter reached over to tuck one behind her ear.
“How did you know?” he asked. “About Paddy?”
She settled closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder as Livie—the only one of them to have a clue what to do after giving birth—tended to Mara. The water elemental had been drugged before they’d found her, and was mostly out of it, with Cade cradling their newborn, a mixture of awe and terror in his eyes.
“I listened,” Sameen said quietly. “All those years trapped by their magic...they never let me sleep. I was awake the whole time. Not always aware, but awake.”
“Fuck, sweetheart. So the night I found you...”
“That was the first time I’d slept in twelve years.” Wiping away a tear, she shook her head, as if banishing yet another demon from her memories. “They talked in front of me. Never bothered to hide their plans. Why would they? I couldn’t escape, couldn’t speak. I never paid much attention. My mind was too broken. All I wanted was to die. But some of their ramblings stayed with me.”
“Still...Paddy being the blood of the stone? Or bloodstone? I don’t even know what the hell that means.”
“Bloodstones bring unity. I could never form Spirit for the Thirteen. Every time they tried to use my body as the vessel, they failed. Earth...that was the one element they could never force into me.”
“And they thought they could force it into Mara’s baby?” Peter didn’t understand anything that had happened since they’d left Regulus’s mansion beyond the fact that his mate was in his arms, whole, and every member of their family had miraculously survived.
“Rachel isn’t just an elemental,” Sameen replied. “She’s fire born of water and a werewolf too. That makes her stronger than any of us.”
“Then why didn’t she become Spirit? Why did it have to be Eli?”
Glancing over at Cade, Mara, and the baby, Sameen smiled. “Because Rachel wanted her mother. The two of them...they’re linked. They always will be.”
“But Paddy...?”
The old man chuckled. “What was never meant to exist will be the salvation of all.”
Peter narrowed his eyes at Paddy and scowled. “Is that supposed to clear things up for me?”
Getting to his feet with a groan, Paddy shuffled to the center of the room. “What was hidden will be revealed.” He closed his eyes, and burst into flames. The fire consumed him in the space of a breath, but no heat spread through the room, no smoke, no scent of burning flesh.
As quickly as it had started, the swirling conflagration disappeared, leaving a slightly younger version of Paddy behind. His clothes hadn’t changed—the tweed jacket not even singed, and his hair was still pure white, but when he smiled, he had a mouthful of crooked teeth and his eyes held every color of the rainbow.
“Fuck me. Hurts every time,” he said.
“Wait. That wasn’t a riddle.” Farren leapt to her feet and stalked over to the old man. “Ya’ mean to tell me ya’ could talk like a normal human bein’ this whole feckin’ time? What in the bloody hell are ya’? And don’t start spoutin’ more nonsense.”
Regulus passed Paddy a bottle of water. “He is the lone offspring of the Fae Queen Titania and the first Phoenix shifter.”
