J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

Completion.

She opened her lips to speak, to tell him that she actually had meant what she said, but something stopped her, something strange and new.

It was a scent, the faintest hint of copper and salt carried on the breeze. She frowned, gazing up at him, trying to place it. She knew this smell, she knew that dark, metallic tang burning faintly at the back of her throat. And it was overlaid with something else, something sweeter, something floral...

Tea roses.

Tea roses...and blood.

Jenna gasped.

Leander reacted at once. She felt the way his body responded to the shock on her face, his muscles instantly tensed, his eyes honed in like a hawk.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

She blinked and felt a chill pass over her skin. The forest around them, moments before so welcoming and warm, suddenly pressed in, close and dark and dangerous.

“Daria,” she whispered. “It’s Daria. She’s hurt.”

He didn’t wait for her to say more. He grasped her wrists in his hands, looked west toward where Sommerley awaited, then turned his face back to hers, his eyes gone to stone. Wordless understanding passed between them.

They Shifted to vapor as one and twisted up through the canopy of boughs, out into the open sky.

They returned to Sommerley the way they left, filtering through the chimney that opened to the enormous fireplace in Leander’s bedroom. He Shifted to man just as Jenna funneled out its marbled mouth and dropped in a ruffled column to turn to flesh before him.

He pushed her toward his closet, their feet hardly touching the ground, and pulled a pair of his beige trousers and a white linen shirt from wooden hangers. He handed them to her without a word. She dressed quickly, rolling up the flopping sleeves and too-long pant legs, watching Leander as he pulled more clothing off hangers for himself.

She eyed the rumpled pile of coats still bunched on the floor from their lovemaking last night and watched his face grow tighter and darker with every passing second.

Jenna guessed he could smell the stench of spilled blood now too. It was stronger here, nipping the air like the sting of biting insects. She could find its source if he let her, if only he gave her a moment, but he was already pushing her out the door, down the curving staircase. She stumbled after him in bare feet as he dragged her along through the winding corridors of the mansion toward the sound of gathered heartbeats and strained voices.

They burst into the East Library through the carved mahogany doors, and the room fell into arrested silence.

All the men were gathered here, the leaders of the Ikati and his own Assembly. They sat in rigid shock around the long rectangular table, scattered throughout the room in small, staring clusters. For some reason, all the windows were open, thrown wide in their casements. The room was nearly frigid. Morgan sat alone in shadow in one corner of the room, her arms wrapped around herself as if for protection. She stared first at the floor, then up at them in relief.

Her look of relief was followed quickly by something like terror.

Christian was the first to speak.

“You’re safe,” he said, his voice cracking. He looked straight at Jenna. His gaze dropped to her hand, clenched in Leander’s fist, then raked over her tousled hair, her swollen lips. His face turned crimson.

Her face turned crimson as well when she realized that in addition to probably looking like she’d just enjoyed a thorough ravishment, she was most likely marked with Leander’s scent. Which everyone would be able to smell.

“We didn’t know where you had gone—no one could find either of you—” he sputtered.

“What’s happened?” Leander interrupted, hard. “Where’s Daria?”

“She disappeared sometime during the party, we’ve been looking for her all night. We tried to find you too. We thought you all had disappeared—”

“She’s been hurt—”

“We know! We found the blood and footprints leading away from the East Gate. Two guards were found, killed—”

“ How the hell did they get in !” Leander thundered, gripping Jenna’s hand so hard it hurt. “ I’ve got a hundred men on guard, we’ve got sensors, cameras—”

“Isn’t that your job?” Christian spat, breathing heavily. “Make sure no one gets in or out?” His gaze darted back and forth between Jenna and Leander, down to their clasped hands and up to their faces again. “Or are you a little too distracted to bother?”

“We need to focus on getting her back now,” someone interrupted. “We need to focus on securing the rest of the colony—”

The voices of the men began to churn over one another, rising in a chorus of noise that created a confusing wall of sound in Jenna’s head.

But one voice was mysteriously silent. Its absence drew Jenna’s attention like the pull of a magnet as a new scent began to bloom in her nose. It was a fetid, dark stink, like something had died and was rotting there among them.

She recognized it immediately.

Guilt. It was the cloying, tangible, awful scent of guilt.

Despair gathered into an evil knot in her chest as Jenna’s eyes found the source of the smell. Something clear and terrible dawned over her, sinking into the pit of her stomach. She felt as if she had just swallowed a vial of poison.

“Morgan!”

Her voice echoed off the wood-paneled walls of the room. Its tone of horror startled the gathered men into another abrupt silence. Leander’s fingers tightened into a vise grip around hers as thirty pairs of surprised eyes flickered to her, then over to Morgan, who sat frozen and whey-faced on her chair.

Jenna’s voice dropped to a hoarse, accusing whisper. “What have you done?”

Morgan was silent for one long, endless moment, her eyes wide and staring, her hair spilling in a lovely dark waterfall over her shoulder. Tears welled up in her eyes and began to track down her cheeks.

“It wasn’t supposed to be her ,” she moaned.

The room erupted into chaos.

A snarl of fury tore from someone’s lips, a tall man Jenna hadn’t seen before. He was pale and gaunt, eyes hollowed with worry. He leapt across the room toward Morgan and barely missed closing his hands around her throat as four other men caught him by his coattails. They pinned his arms and dragged him away as he howled in outrage and twisted like a madman in their hands.

“Kenneth! Get a hold of yourself, man!” someone shouted to the thrashing figure.

Daria’s husband, Jenna realized. Her heart pinged with empathy. How horrifying to lose your mate. How she would bleed if anything happened to Leander, how she would die if anyone ever hurt him...

Mate .

Her stomach did a painful, twisting freefall. All the breath left her body in a single, violent rush.

Her gaze shot to Leander. He stood taut and menacing by her side, emanating danger and barely checked rage as he stared in cold fury at Morgan. She was weeping openly now, her chair surrounded by a circle of men.

But Jenna couldn’t look away from Leander’s face. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

For one long, interrupted moment all she could do was stare at him, frozen, openmouthed. She felt her past and her future slipping away, felt her heart throb and twist as if in its death throes inside the confines of her chest.

If they ever find you...run . And now she was—what?

Not in love? She couldn’t be in love with him?

A chilled draft from the open windows stole over her skin. It prickled the hair on the back of her neck as if someone had walked over her grave.

She blinked and came back to herself just as two men picked Morgan up by her arms and hauled her out of the chair to her feet. She didn’t fight or protest as they began to drag her toward the door, spitting words like traitor and monster and whore .