Page 4 of Lera of Lunos
“Fine.” Tye flicks his hand again and the collars of fire around the guardsmen’s necks disappear. The two males fall to their knees as Tye turns on his heels and strides away.
Standing beside River, I watch Tye’s departing back, a chill seeping into my bones. “It’s my fault,” I whisper. “I wanted to understand why he’d shifted, and I rushed in head on. If I hadn’t tried to move the tiger myself, if I’d listened to the guards, if... Stars, River, if you want to yell at me, I don’t think I’d mind. Maybe I’d even feel better for it.”
Taking my shoulders, River turns me to face him, his earthy scent filling my nose. Despite my worry, my belly tightens when I look up into his storm-filled eyes, high cheekbones, and strong jaw. He’s so handsome it hurts.
“Stars take me,” River whispers after a moment, drawing me against him. My face presses into his hard shoulder as he rests his head atop my hair. “You’ve no notion of how fortunate we are that this ended with only a few gashes.”
“That doesn’t sound much like yelling.” I try for humor but my voice trembles as images of could-have-beens fill my thoughts. “Aren’t you furious?”
“I am.” River’s arms tighten around me, pulling me closer. “At myself, not you. I’ve never seen Tye so angry, Leralynn—never even imagined seeing him so close to losing control. Coal, yes, but not Tye. It’s my job to know when one of my own stands on a cliff’s edge, and I missed it. I... I’m worried. I can’t even tell you why Tye’s tiger was in the middle of the square to begin with. That isn’t like him.”
I tilt my head away, studying River’s face. Around us, the group is dispersing, the captain of the Citadel Guard clearing away both his males and the spectators with a veteran’s proficiency until it’s only River and I left by the burbling fountain.
River rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“It’s okay, River.” I pull his hands down and hold them tightly in mine. “You’ve had a few things on your mind.” The weight of responsibility that River carries on his shoulders makes my heart ache. “Working out a way to save Lunos from your father and Emperor Jawrar, for starters. Even you can’t be everywhere at once.”
“That isn’t an excuse. Whatever this is, whatever’s happening with Tye, I can’t take him into battle this way.” River exhales, shaking his head.
“He’d tear you limb from limb if he heard you say that, you know,” I murmur softly, the pit in my stomach growing heavier.
“Your faith in my self-defense skills leaves something to be desired.” River presses his forehead to mine then runs his lips softly down my cheek, ending at my jaw. A trail of heat follows in its wake. “Come. If we’re leaving here as quickly as it appears we need to, we’ve some planning to do.”
“Right.” I force a smile onto my face. “The small matter of staging a coup. We better get to it—the Slait throne won’t seize itself.”
3
River
River surveyed his quint, all finally gathered in the suite’s common room. Despite Leralynn’s attempts to locate Tye, the male had stayed away until just a moment ago, when he strolled in wearing that mask of familiar cockiness. As if he hadn’t come within a hair’s breadth of killing two guards that morning. As if the shift into a wild predator in a place that could get him put down for it was no more serious than a pilfered bottle of wine.
Just another of the many petty crimes River had tried for centuries to punish out of the male, all without bothering to discover why Tye did any of it in the first place. Three hundred years of fighting together, of living together, weathering triumphs and sorrows, and it wasn’t until now that River glimpsed the demons lying in ambush behind Tye’s easygoing demeanor.
Something that seemed to have taken Leralynn, on the other hand, only a handful of weeks.
River wondered whether the girl had any notion of the power she had over them. How deeply she opened their souls. How bloody frightening it was.
Pushing all thoughts of Leralynn firmly to the back of his mind, River waited for Tye to find a seat. Instead of his usual spot on the couch—and as close to Leralynn as possible—the male took a chair for himself, balancing it precariously on its hind legs. Ensuring that no one could come near. In addition to the five of them and Autumn, Kora was in the room too, standing with her hip braced on the couch’s far armrest.
The female warrior’s dark brown hair was in its usual cropped style, one emerald stud glinting in her ear. Now that Kora’s quint had passed all their trials and were free to do as they wished—and go where they wished, which seemed to be never far from Autumn—River noticed that Kora’s air of confidence and command grew stronger by the day. She wore a finely tailored black tunic with pale green trim, leather pants that showed off her leanly muscled legs, and a thin silver chain around her neck that disappeared below her shirt collar. River would bet money it was a gift from Autumn—an expensive one, if Kora’s nervous toying with it was any indication.
“I understand that by this time tomorrow, we’ll be done with our remaining trial and on our way from the Citadel,” Shade said. Snatching up Leralynn mid-step—and in the middle of braiding her hair—the wolf shifter pulled her onto his lap with an ease that made River’s cock twitch in jealousy. Her thick auburn hair spilled over her chest, making her brown eyes narrow in exasperation. Shade leaned back against the cushions, snuggling the girl firmly against his bare chest. “What happens next? We go after Griorgi?”
With the smell of a fight filling the air, Shade fell into his role as River’s second with practiced ease. Clear, calm, ready to enforce orders.
“Almost.” River nodded to him. “Regarding the trial, yes, it will be tomorrow. It was Tye’s request to expedite it, but we can’t stay here much longer anyway, not with Griorgi advancing his plans with Mors. As for going after him and Jawrar—that is a bit more complex.”
“We don’t know where they are, do we?” Leralynn asked.
River frowned at the vulnerable curl of her shoulders, the tightening around her eyes. “No,” he said carefully, watching her. All of a sudden, she seemed a million miles away. Despite the ongoing conversation, the need to discover what was happening in that gorgeous head of hers hit River like a thunderstorm, rousing every protective instinct inside him. And while he was exploring her head, he wouldn’t mind discovering more of her body too. With everything going on, it’d been three days since their coupling after the Karnish battle—which was three days too long.
Bloody, burning stars. They were speaking of battling Jawrar and dethroning Griorgi, and here River’s mind was plummeting into his suddenly too-tight trousers. His cock hadn’t roused this impertinently since River was a colt. He cleared his throat. “Autumn’s people report that he’s not been in Slait since escaping Karnish. Autumn and I have tapped every resource at our disposal to find him, but”—he looked at Autumn, who burrowed deeper into her iridescent silver wrap—“our father is slippery.”
Leralynn flinched, covering the reflex quickly.
“I believe Jawrar is back in Mors, at least,” Autumn said, reclaiming River’s attention. “If he stepped into the Subgloom when Karnish collapsed, which must be how he disappeared so quickly”—Autumn looked to Kora for confirmation before continuing—“then he’ll only be able to exit in Mors. Unlike the Gloom, the Subgloom is strictly Mors’s territory, which, with our wards, makes it a one-way passage no matter where you enter it. This means he must now wait for Griorgi to open a new portal before he can return to Lunos.”
“Should we go hunting?” Coal asked from his customary place against the wall by the door—just in case anyone should come barging in to murder them.
