Nicole turned back to Logan, but the body was gone, half swallowed up by the forest.
Kyan hauled her up, and Nicole gripped his shirt.
‘Kyan—’
‘I want to carry you.’ The words were rough, deep and near razored, but there was something vulnerable in his hunt-darkened eyes.
She wasn’t made to watch and be saved, but she knew how much he needed to do this and she wanted that connection, that closeness, to reassure herself that he was all right. That it was over. At least for tonight.
‘Okay. All right.’
He lifted her with one hand, then scooped his other under her legs as her arm went around his neck. As he carried her through the emerald dark, she remembered how he’d carried her to her family after her first transformation. She only recalled that night in fevered snatches: the thousand searing hurts and the bite that felt like it had punctured her soul. The deep stab in her abdomen, and every electrified slice and whip from tree branches and sharp nails. The sticky spread of blood, the scent so strong it made her dizzy.
And the despair.
She had done the most extreme thing in the world: allowed herself to transform, to kill. She hadn’t been able to see how it wouldn’t end their lives as she knew it.
Then Kyan had been there. Holding her. Talking her through the process. Promising that if he left, he’d come back.
He had honoured that promise.
Tears burned in her eyes and she turned her face into his shoulder so he didn’t see. She was grateful. She was so fucking grateful, and feltso muchthat she nearly couldn’t breathe.
How could he be this? This man she was supposed to have run from? Been afraid of?
She peered up at him, stroked his rough jaw and soft mouth.
His arms tightened around her, head turning slightly to brush his lips over her fingers.
She nearly said the words.
Those three words that scared her more than the Wake. Because saying them felt like it damned them both. It went against everything she had ever ingrained into herself about Empyreals.
But they were there anyway, like a forbidden kiss.
So she tucked her face into his shoulder as he started to run through the rain and storm, like there was still a dangerous amount of energyhumming through his body, until he was striding up the steps to Callum’s cabin.
Its wards closed around them and, after typing in the access code, Kyan carried her safely inside and shut out the night, the death, and the divine revelations that had changed the scope of this fight, forever.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Nicole
WATER DRIPPED TO THE GLOSSY WOOD FLOORBENEATHthem.
The first room was dark, a tiny rectangular kitchen with a few counters to their right, a sleek fridge, and two floor-to-ceiling cupboards.
Kyan set Nicole down gently with a grunt of approval that she was now inside. ‘I’ll check.’
The place, he meant, seeming unable to form a longer sentence.
Every word he’d uttered haddonesomething to her. She forced herself to ignore how the vibrations of his voice stroked her every nerve ending, but couldn’t fight the shiver.
Her clothes were soaked, her shirt clung to her chest, and her hair was plastered to her head and neck. It was warm rain, but the great boom of lightning outside sparked a bolt of fear in her stomach.
She turned and looked up to find Kyan so close that the connection between them hummed, steady and present and hot.
He knew. She could feel it breathing off him. See it in the eyes that darkened at the sight of her.
