Besides, that crazy hypothesis wasn’t even certain.
I was basing all of this on my overactive imagination and the fact that a few of the girls had mentioned Snowflake Corp wanted to kill him. They hadn’t said my company were the masterminds behind his condition. Merely that they wanted to slaughter him—just like every other crazy assassin that’d been thrown into Cinderkeep.
God...
Rubbing my eyes, I did my best to erase my headache.
Whisper nudged my knee with his nose, begging me to keep touching him.
With a sigh, I scratched behind his ear. “It’s okay.”
“Copy. If we require any instructions, we’ll ask,” the pilot’s voice crackled into my ears, returning his attention to flying and leaving me to gawk at yet another incredible view.
The Gaoligong Mountains rose on either side of us, funnelling us into a valley. Dark stone soared skyward, frosted with moss and bleeding with waterfalls. Water crashed into the flowing river below while the peaks were so sharp, they looked hand-carved by the gods.
We followed the natural contour of the valley, swooping with a flock of tan-feathered birds over the forest and past milky-white plumes that made it seem as if the trees were alive and breathing.
Whisper snarled as we soared out of the valley and over an endless field of barren, volcanic rock. The landscape stretched an endless black, glittering as if diamonds were trapped within. In the distance, a lake of iridescent turquoise shimmered so brightly, it didn’t look real. It looked mythical and powerful, andI expected any moment for a murder of dragons to descend for a bath.
In all my travels, I’d never known somewhere like this existed.
This enchanting and wild andmagical.
No wonder Lucien didn’t fit in anywhere.
No wonder he seemed sodifferent.
Risking another look at him, I jumped as my gaze met his.
He didn’t hide the fact that he’d been watching me. His eyebrows furrowed as if he had a million things that he wanted to say—the fire in him burning hotter, slithering around his eyes like a serpent ready to strike.
The closer we got to his home, the worse he became. I couldfeelhim. Feel the pressure in his blood just like I could feel the pressure of my incessant migraine. That invisible tightening pulled us closer together, filled with wrongness, suspicion, and heat.
My skin prickled as his hands rested on his thighs, fingers flexing and releasing in a slow, brutal rhythm, as if he were physically locking down every flame within him.
I wanted to say something.
To apologise for not rehearsing how to tell him who I was. To assure him I would do my best to put his mind at ease when we landed but...he looked away from me—tore his eyes away from me was more like it.
Whisper chirped, his usual powerful growl cracking with panic as the helicopter added yet more speed, rocketing across the volcanic fields, racing toward the cliff up ahead.
A lifetime of comforting his pet had Lucien reaching out instinctively, planting his burning hand on the panther’s head, directly over mine.
He froze.
I froze.
Whisper glanced at both of us.
Glowering at our touching fingers, Lucien stiffened as that undeniable web of connection snapped tight,tightaround us.
It’d never been any different.
Even from that very first moment we’d met, our bodies had acted like a conduit for the other. In-tune and in-sync, tumbling into the same heartbeat as if we’d always belonged and hadn’t been fully whole until we’d found each other.
With a soft snarl, he wrenched his hand from mine and balled it.
I straightened, unable to hold my tongue anymore—
