I’d never seen Aisling as emotional as I had in the last few months. Growing up, she was always stiff as steel, like Father and Elaine. Then something happened, and now she was soft. She saidI love youto us every time she saw us and looked on the verge of tears right now, which I’d never seen before in my life.
“Ash, it’s me. The mostferalof all your sisters. I got this.” That got a grin out of her.
“What if you don’t bond? What if you get hurt?” she said.
“What if I bond a ruthless bear creature and don’t get a scratch on me?”
Aisling gave me a half smile. “You got my cockiness, and that is not a good thing.”
“I’m going to be okay,” I told her, my voice cracking a little. “I need this.”
I swallowed hard as the vision of my dead father in the morgue rose in my mind. One day, he was strong, mean, normal, and the next… gone.
Aisling seemed to be having a mental battle of her own. I could see it in her eyes. She didn’t want to let me go. She’d spent the past week in the countryside, flying in on Liana’s back early evenings and sparring with me, trying to train me while flying back to base to tend to the war.
I peered over at the flaming hills of Imbria.
“Did you love him?” I asked her, and she bristled, eyes going wide.
“I overheard you and Elaine,” I said.
Kohen, Father’s killer, and Aisling were once an item. He’d wormed his way into her heart in order to get closer to Father. But the way she’d been acting the past two months, I wondered if it had been more than a fling.
“I thought I did,” she said finally, but her voice was dead, devoid of emotion. She was shutting down, the Aisling I was used to.
“He or Maxim might get you next,” I said.
She chewed on her lip, flicking her gaze my way. “You’ve been eavesdropping?”
I winced. “You talk loud.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can rebirth.”
“Not forever,” I countered. “Ash, you gotta let me do this.” I pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.
I didn’t really know what love was. I’d once looked it up in the dictionary.An intense feeling of deep affection, a strong emotional bond. I had that with my sisters, with Aisling, with Elaine. I just didn’t verbalize it. Father told us not to, that it was a weakness. Now I wondered…
“I love you…” I tried the words out, surprised at how easily they came.
Aisling pulled back, shocked, grinning. “I love you too, little sis.”
I shook myself. “Okay, gross, that was way mushy.”
Aisling laughed. “You’re right. The little sis part went too far.”
I shot her a smile, loving this banter and how normal we were right now. I missed this part of my older sister. We used to go back and forth like this all the time. Now, she was never around, and when she was, she was so serious.
The two guards came to escort me to the entrance, and Aisling stiffened.
“I got this,” I winked at her, ignoring the terror ripping through me at the thought of spending two, possibly three, nights in the Wilds alone.
She just nodded as Tetra and Elaine flanked her, and their creatures stood behind them. Liana was behind Aisling and nodded once to me. I nodded back. My sister’s creature and I had grown close the past few weeks. She let me pet her neck and ask questions about the Wilds to her through Aisling. I think she liked me.
I took one last look over my shoulder, then sucked up every ounce of fear I had and shoved it deep inside of myself to a place I refused to deal with for the next three days.
It was time to bond a creature, byanymeans possible.
Chapter 2
