She presses her palm flat to my chest and leans up to kiss me, slow. I don’t pull back. I never do. When she lowers off her toes, her hand stays on my chest.
“When you understand someone,” she says, “it’s a whole lot easier to help them.”
I smile down at her. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
She grins, and her tail comes up and brushes soft against my chest, right next to her hand. “Once or twice.”
“How’d it go with Ebony?”
The grin dims a little. “She understood. I think it hurt me more than it hurt her, honestly.” She drops her hand and we start walking again, and I take it in mine. “I really wanted to be a teacher, Aaron. I loved it. Every part of it. I’m grateful I got it at all.”
“This isn’t forever, baby. We come back to it when this is done.” I mean it. But she gives me a small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and looks back out at the trees, and I know she’s already made her peace with losing it. I don’t push. Not tonight.
We cut into the forest from the far side, taking a path that won’t bring us anywhere near where my mother’s waiting. I lean into Mara’s nose and let her lead.
Then she stops at the base of a wide old oak, hands flexing until her claws slide free. She goes up the trunk in one smooth pull, climbing for a better vantage, and I tip my head back to watch her go. Her tail flicks down on the way up, stealing a touch across my cheek. I adjust myself in my pants, because I’m only so strong.
Her head snaps down and she hisses at me.
“Focus.” Her amber eyes catch the moonlight up in the branches. “There’s no time for you to be getting aroused right now.”
“Oh, please.” I scoff up at her. “Stop acting like I’m not mated to a lioness. Your backshots are lethal. I’ll get aroused from you breathing on me, baby.”
She giggles, the sound of it dropping down through the leaves, and then she turns her face forward and goes still, listening. I shut up. Then even I can hear it.
The fallout.
“Ma, please. Just understand. I don’t want it.” Seth’s voice, carrying through the trees.
“Boy.” My mother’s voice, and Mother Fate help him, I know that tone. “This is the wrong time to play with me, Seth.”
“Jacob’s with them,” Mara whispers down. She unhooks her claws and drops, landing in an easy crouch beside me, all of it silent. “Both of them.”
I look at her. The argument keeps climbing in volume off through the trees. “I don’t like this. Any of it.”
“I know.” She rises out of the crouch. “But it gets you into the Glen. Doesn’t it.”
I groan, because she’s right, and I hate it.
Off in the dark it breaks apart. I hear Seth take off running, his feet tearing through the brush, and then my mother’s voice goes up to the pitch that used to snap all four of us to attention.
“Goddamn this boy. Seth! Seth! Get your ass back here right now!”
“Angie.” Jacob says, trying to gentle her.
“No, Jacob. No. He cannot give up his magic. That is not happening. Not while I’m breathing.”
Mara takes my hand and pulls me to the side, careful, edging us toward the tree line where the dark thins out. And there it is. The chained cottage squatting in its clearing, and my mother in front of it, the stick already forgotten and falling from her hand as she throws open a portal and steps through after him.
Jacob doesn’t follow right away. He turns and finds me through the trees in one look, fast and certain. He’s had me marked this whole time. He holds my eyes, and he doesn’t say a word.
I wince. I know that look. I know I’m in for it when I come back out, and there’s no portal deep enough to save me from a conversation with him.
He holds the look another moment. Then he shakes his head, slow, and steps through the portal after my mother. It snaps shut behind him the instant he’s clear, the air sealing over the spot where it was.
Mara looks at me and shrugs. “Well. It worked.”
She grabs my hand and we break from the trees, running for the cottage across the open grass. She pulls up short at the chained door and turns to me, her tail lashing. “What now?”
