ELIZA
His fingers go to the buttons of his shirt. Then, he shrugs out of it, filling the cave with a startling blue luminescence.
I stare, awestruck, falling in love with his unearthly form all over again.
He arches an eyebrow. “No gasps? No fear?”
“I’ve seen these before,” I confess. “The night of the bite. My fingers danced in the spaces between them, though I know that sounds crazy.”
His voice drops. “The meaning is in the spaces. Just like the hum between us.”
“In every cell of my body.”
He looks down, fingertips chasing the pulses and lines. I lean forward, drawn to him, no longer able to stay away. My hand comes up, replacing his.
He lets out a soft moan. The pulse passes between us, ripening my body. Tightening the spot between my legs until I feel like I’ll explode. My mind wanders back to the ride. To his fingers sliding over my mound, giving me what I longed for, for one hair’s breadth.
I need to feel him there again. “Kael, please.”
That’s when I see it. My bracelet glows now, too, little tendrils of light shooting from it, mixing with the light of his marks.
“Never seen nothing like it,” he says, eyes focused on the same spot. “What should suppress reinforces, binds. Like an exclamation point to fate.”
“But how?” I whisper.
“The metal is an alien alloy. Stolen Sentinel tech—taken by Wildblood hunters.”
“You mean the aliens on the mountain?”
“Sometimes. But humans, too. Like Alistair Wakefield.”
I gasp, covering my mouth.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “But there’s no nice way to say it. That’s my father’s tech, stolen by your ancestor.”
“What did Alistair do?”
He shakes his head, face tense. “Punished sin. Made my brothers and me orphans.”
“Wakefield,” I say bitterly, things finally sliding into place. “You must hate me.”
“Hate the name,” he growls. “But not you. Not possible.”
“But every time you’ve seen me wearing it, you had to think about the past, about whathedid.”
“Theydid. It was all of Raven’s Ridge. Why I avoid that place… people in general.” He scrubs his eyes with his palms. “But your bracelet also reminds me of my father. Somehow strangely fitting.”
“And the tattoos? They’re from him, too?”
“Not real tattoos. Marks buried in code and flesh. Like a language of sorts. Don’t know the individual words,” he confesses. “But it’s a plea from my father back to his people. The Ancients. The Sentinels. Telling the story of his transgression.Making the case for his descendants. A love letter and a defense buried in flesh. His light mixed with humanity.”
My eyes flick around the cave now, seeing glimmers and radiance among the mineral veins. “They’re moving and swirling like your glyphs.”
He nods. “Everything that’s alive vibrates. But two things that hum on the same plane at the same frequency are resonance.”
My fingers dip into the light, heat building at the base of my spine.
“Youaremy resonance,” he rasps. Like the words take something from him.
