Page 340 of Primal Bonds

The iron seared his palm and fingers. His breath hissed in. It was like grabbing a hot poker. He quickly transferred the knife to his other hand, this time careful to touch only the mother-of-pearl handle.

He straightened, and they stared at each other.

Rosana’s chest heaved. Blue eyes seared into his.

He forgot about his burned hand. He forgot that a river fada shouldn’t be able to locate his den so easily, Seer or not. He forgot that in the morning he was leaving for Virginia.

And most of all, he forgot that Dion had warned him away from her.

All he knew was that Rosana was here, and he craved her with a hunger that ate at his insides. It felt like it had been two months, not two days, since he’d had her.

His jaw set. Because he did not need a distraction, tonight of all nights.

He shoved the stiletto at her, handle first. “Stay away from my den, and I won’t have to threaten you.”

She snatched it from his hand and slid it into her back pocket. “So.” She reached for her backpack. “Where’s your den?”

“This way.” He closed his fingers around her upper arm and marched her around the back to the small brick hut that concealed his den’s entrance. He’d never actually lived in the house, preferring instead to rent it out to the locals as a smokescreen. No one expected the Baltimore alpha to have a couple of drug dealers living above him.

He muttered an incantation, and the look-away spell lifted, revealing the heavy oak door that led down to his den. As he tapped his quartz to the door lock, Rosana jerked her head at the purple sportbike propped against his shed.

“What about my bike?”

“I’ll put it in the shed.” No one around here would touch it—they knew better, Shawn excepted—but there was no sense advertising she was here. “Don’t move,” he added as he crossed to the bike.

“I asked to come in, remember?”

But she obeyed, arms crossed over her chest and a scowl on her pretty face, while he locked the sportbike in the shed with his own motorcycle and then opened the heavy steel door to his den.

“After you,” he said with a mocking wave of his hand. He reset the spell and followed her in.

They were on the landing at the top of the steps his dad had cut out of rock. Set into the rise of every other stair were quartz-powered amber lights. As they started down, the tiny lights glowed on, illuminating the carvings that his dad had chiseled into each step—a leaping manticore, a fierce griffin, a soaring dragon. After his dad’s death, Adric had doggedly continued, working the stone with a combination of chisels and magic, until only the bottom few steps were still unadorned.

“Wow.” Rosana shot him a look over her shoulder. “Who’s the artist?”

He shrugged. “Me. And my dad.”

“You’re kidding.” She crouched to trace the raised outline of a phoenix bursting into flames.

“My dad did the first four, and we did the next few together. Then things…changed, and he was always gone. He was a soldier, although he really wanted to be a stoneworker.”

“You must miss him.” Her voice was sympathetic.

He gave a hard swallow. “Yeah.” His father had been one of the first slain, executed by his own brother, Leron, over some trumped-up charge. Adric and Marjani had been forced to watch.

“And your mom, too. I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not that long. And you never really get over it.”

“No,” he agreed.

They exchanged a look. He recalled that until a few months ago, she hadn’t known herself if her own parents were alive or dead.

And she was right, you never really got over the death of a parent. The wound scabbed over, but it never really healed. You just tried your damnedest to live your life the way they’d have wanted.

“I guess you know how it is.”

---