“Wakefield. Can you imagine?”
“Bonded.”
Ash sits at the table up front with Josephine. Mags is beside them. Her eyes find mine first. Then Eliza and the faint echo of my marks beneath her skin.
Mags’s expression shifts. Surprise mixes with something deeper—understanding.
Eliza and I close the distance to the table, moving like one thing. There’s no denying the union we formed in the wilderness. Nothing could make me do that.
“You quit fighting it,” Ash says, standing to shake my hand.
I nod once.
Josephine reaches across the table to hug Eliza. “Are you okay?” she whispers, empathy and joy etched in her features.
“Yes,” Eliza beams. “I have so much to tell you.”
Jo nods, eyeing me confusedly.
“They’re awake,” I say to Ash, nodding toward the mass of dark clouds hovering over the Starborn Range.
A murmur ripples through the group, others straining to hear our conversation, probing with their minds. But I push them back.
It’s none of their goddamned business.
Their faces harden, threatened all over again by my psychic abilities. Strong but undisciplined—potentially dangerous in their eyes.
“They were always awake,” Mags counters quietly. “Just not looking at us.”
I step forward. Feel it again. That pressure. Not the hum. Something else. “That you could tell,” I say drily.
Those gathered exchange sullen glances, as if they don’t know what to make of my words or the meaning behind them.
“They came in daylight,” I say. “Didn’t hide. Didn’t wait.”
“And you survived?” someone asks from the crowd behind us, voice incredulous.
The question’s reasonable.
But I don’t look at him because I don’t have answers anymore than he does.
“Never happens like that,” another voice rises from the table. My eyes meet Clay, a member of the council and third-generation Wildblood.
I glare at him. “You a sudden expert on the Ancients? When’s the last time you or anybody else here saw one?”
The crowd shifts, murmuring among themselves.
Mags looks away with a flash of guilt. My mind presses against hers. Can’t help it.
Her mouth works, but she doesn’t speak. She knows more than she’s saying.
Clay’s gaze narrows. “Don’t have to see one to know they’re killers. Just ask Ash and Josephine.”
I fix my gaze on the blond cowboy. Eliza’s eyes dart to Jo, wide and questioning.
“Couldn’t tell you more before,” Jo says, an apology in her voice. “Because you would never have believed me.”
Eliza’s eyes cloud, then she nods, admitting softly, “No, I wouldn’t have. But now we have to talk.”
