Page 20 of Power of Five
13
Leralynn
“Get off him.” I shove River’s chest with all my might, which has absolutely no effect on the male except for a curious twitch of his eyes as I stumble backward into Shade, who keeps me from falling on my ass. Regaining my footing, I step right back up to River and glare into his gray eyes, meeting that thunderous storm inside him head-on.
Oh, heisfurious. Furious enough to let the anger slip through the cold of command.
Back at the stream, he promised not to lay a hand on me, but plainly that didn’t apply to the other quint-bonded under his command. To his real warriors.
That quickly, that stupidly, I don’t want River’s promise. Just as Shade’s touch soothed a jagged loneliness inside of me, the intensity of River’s icy, dominating energy also finds a mate inside my soul. A fire inside me that I didn’t know existed.
Ice and flame. Our wills meet in a clash of power and fury that is as terrifying as it is irresistible. “I said,” my voice sounds too vivid to be mine, “get. Off.”
River’s dark eyes flash. He isn’t used to being challenged, it appears. And likely with good reason. A small growl escapes his chest.
An answering growl sounds behind me, but I shake my head at Shade without ever breaking River’s gaze. The newly born essence inside me doesn’t want Shade’s protection—it wants to dance with River. Welcomes it. Longs for it. Because that part of me senses that beneath River’s impenetrable wall of muscle and order is a spirit worth tangling with.
River’s chest expands with deep, still-panting breaths. He is shirtless from the sparring match, a thin sheen of sweat covering his sun-kissed skin and glistening enticingly. His short dark hair spikes off his head with moisture, and as he cools off, his nipples grow as taut as the carved squares of his abdomen. He steps toward me, each movement filled with a lethal immortal grace that should frighten me but does not.
“You don’t understand fae,” River tells me, centuries of knowledge and training backing each of his words. The commander’s sheer size is overwhelming. Made more so by his ethereal beauty and the fact that my face barely reaches his sternum. “You’ve no notion of what this can do to us. But this village idiot does.” This time, River bares his teeth at Tye, who has quietly picked himself up and now watches from the sidelines.
“Then maybe you should growl a bit less and talk a bit more,” I tell River, raising my chin while the other males exchange glances ranging from amused to worried. I step closer to River, though it means tilting my head back to keep our gazes locked. “If you want me to understand, thenexplain.”
River’s brows flicker, and to my utter shock, he tilts his head to the side, considering my words. “That... that is a fair request,” he says with a curt nod. Turning to Coal, River holds out his hand for a second practice sword, which Coal obediently tosses to him. “Will you join me in the paddock, Leralynn?”
My eyes narrow and I’m about to explain the difference between talking and beating me to a pulp when River shakes his head.
“I’m not going to spar with you,” he says, dismissing the others with a short jerk of his chin. “I simply wish to occupy my hands with something while we speak, and it is polite to offer you a blade as well if I have one.”
Accepting Coal’s blade, I follow River into the empty ring and watch quietly as he swings at a rope-wrapped post that I’d originally dismissed as something to hang feed buckets on. One strike. Two. Five. Each a dull, clean thud that the post swallows without protest. “Do you imagine we are like humans?” River says finally. “Just with pointy ears, longer lifespans, and a bit of magic in our veins?”
“I don’t know what you are,” I confess. I don’t know what I am either. Not anymore. I twirl my sword—River was right, itisnice to have something in my hands while we talk.
“We are predators,” River says with no hint of apology. “Our instincts heightened—our senses, our drive to hunt, to protect, to mate. A bonfire of need and desire, compared to a human’s mere candle.”
I nod my understanding. The bond with the males has woken something primal in me as well, though I’ve not worked out what or how.
River attacks his target, his movements fluid. “We control it, the aggression and emotion, but it’s a constant, simmering battle against the animals that our instincts scream at us to be. If you were... to become Tye’s female, the territorial predator in him would not abide the threat to his claim that the rest of the males in the quint pose.” River strikes the training post again, and the wooden target wavers in the earth from the impact. Again. Again. River’s grip on his practice sword is hard enough to bleach his knuckles. “Shade, Coal, me,” River punctuates each name with a blow, knocking the post further from its deep hole, “none of us would dare come near you for fear of the consequences. Until we damn the consequences to hell and it tears us all apart into shattered bits.” River spins, his blade an extension of his powerful body as he rips the training post free of the ground.
He stands heaving, his eyes on the downed target as his chest and shoulders rise and fall with each gasp of cool air. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he says finally. “Your very presence, it—”
I’m moving before I can think, my hand reaching up to clutch River’s sweat-slicked shoulder, twisting the male around to face me. My eyes meet River’s gray ones, and for one split second he allows me to see the caustic fear in them.Me, I realize. This powerful immortal is afraid of me, of what I could do to his quint—to his world.
My heart tears. Placing my free hand against River’s face, I press my palm tightly against his cheek. “I am not Tye’s female,” I say firmly. “I belong to me. And I am the quint’s too, just as the quint is mine. Until this Citadel of yours severs our tether, we are anus—no matter who kisses whom.”
River’s whole body stills, the tension singing in his coiled muscles. “You... you can’t possibly mean that,” he says, trying and failing to check the budding hope in his voice.
Rising onto my toes, I brush my lips against his cheek. “I claim you as mine, River,” I tell him softly. “You and Tye and Coal and Shade. Whatever comes, we will face it together.”
