Logan’s eyes had widened with shock. Fury. Then scorn. ‘Mate? You’d let awomancloud your judgement?’ He bared his teeth and struggled. ‘You’re such a—’
Kyan broke the other Empyreal’s neck without his eyes ever leaving Nicole’s.
The sound was echoed by a crack of thunder as lightning lacerated the sky above the sacred trees like a stalk of divine power.
Logan’s body slumped, and rain began to fall.
It plastered Kyan’s shirt to his heaving body, starting to curl the longer pieces of his hair. She felt its cool patter on her face, on her head. But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t tear her eyes from the searing fire in his. The unleashed warrior, the son of a massacred civilisation.
Her heart still thundered in her ears when he rose. Nicole distantly watched him check Logan’s pulse, confirming him dead. But every step he took towards her was a prowl drenched in predatory instinct.
Then he crouched, and she realised she’d sunk to the stones. The dog, satisfied they were safe, jogged off into the darkening forest.
‘My binding present to you,’ Kyan said roughly, ‘is his head.’
A dark shiver ran down her spine.
She didn’t know how to form words. After witnessing how he’d put his body between hers again and again, how he’d now drastically endangered himself by killing one of the Wake’s Empyreals –noton their order.
Worry cut as deep as the blade Logan had used on him. It had taken everything in her not to get involved.
Just the memory of the arc of Kyan’s blood through green-hued light and the malicious drive of the knife—
‘He stabbed you,’ she managed, teeth clamped so hard she could feel a headache blooming.
His words were gruff. ‘I’ve dealt with worse.’
Her hands shook slightly as she lifted the wet cotton of his T-shirt to check the mess of wounds.
Red washed her vision and her stomach turned.
He pulled her close and she curled into him, cheek and temple against the hot tap of his heart, his sculpted arms wrapping around her.
A great, deep sigh left his body, as hers slowly began to calm.
He was all right. It was over.
He turned them, so he could see Logan in the grass as the rain began to fall. But they didn’t move. She’d always thought Kyan was in perfect control – but this had been a stark unveiling of the same protective urges that lived in her. The ones she’d been worried were too dark, too unruly, compared to all she’d read of her mother, and seen of Kyan.
She wasn’t sure how long they stayed there in the building rain, but once her heart had calmed enough and she was reassured he was all right, she shifted.
‘We should go home,’ Nicole said.
Kyan took a long moment. His hand had curled to cup her cheek and jaw, the thumb brushing a drugging, tender pattern. He paused and spoke to her in Irish, ‘Tá mé sa bhaile leat cheana féin.’
Instead of translating, he carefully unwound himself. She regretted the loss of contact as cool air swept in, prickling over her heated skin and the sweat and blood between them.
The forest had darkened. Blinking up at the rain, Nicole could feel the taut electricity of a building storm.
She could practically see him rearranging his mind, closing it off and returning to a pragmatic, hunter’s mindset.
He scanned the woods, the sky, then her quickly drenched form. ‘Get you warm.’
His incomplete sentence revealed that he hadn’t yet come down from the kill. His face was still fierce, eyes dangerous.
He went to scoop her up and she tried to stop him. ‘You’re injured.’
Kyan lifted his plastered shirt, revealing muscle, smeared with blood, but now healed.
