Page 27 of Heart of a Dire Wolf
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Nic paced, holding the satellite phone tightly to his ear. “No change. She’s still unconscious, and I still feel magic coming from those goddamn talismans.”
He blamed himself for not recognizing sooner that Skyla was in trouble. He’d assumed she was just wrung out from three days of survival living and talking to the unrestful dead.
He hadn’t realized how many until he’d found her collection of stories. He was crying by the fifth page and couldn’t read any more. He’d carefully put her mismatched pages in his waterproof bag for safekeeping.
“We’ll be there in thirty minutes,”said Pendragor.“Turn on Oskar’s locator.”
“Thank you.” He shut down the phone and put it in the pack, then went back to check on Skyla. He’d stripped her out of her filthy clothes and snuggled her into the blankets on the thick, soft mattress. She was lovely, serene, and out like a light.
He’d planned to stay and make love with her all night and beyond, and when they both agreed, mate with her. It was only after the returnees had finally left for the afternoon and he couldn’t wake her that he’d begun to worry. The medical charms he’d brought all said she was as healthy as a wolf. Then he’d remembered what the auction house had done to him and called the Kotoyeesinay sheriff’s office to ask them to find Pendragor.
The tracking talismans charged themselves with power stolen from shifts. Some shifters couldn’t do full shifts more than once or twice a day, much less the partial shifts usually the purview of alphas, but Skyla’s extraordinary talent meant she’d probably shifted often in the last three days. Once the talismans recharged, the auction house could control her, hurt her, or kill her.
He kissed his sleeping beauty on the forehead, then went out into the evening twilight to ask Oskar to turn on his beacon. Nic had begun to think of Oskar as a younger magical version of Mauk, the sentient technology hybrid. He should introduce them.
Back inside the storehouse, he rehydrated a calorie-rich soup mix and ate it fast. Remembering Skyla was uncomfortable with casual nudity around strangers, he wrestled her into the long underwear he’d brought for her. Her floppy body made it worse than trying to dress a full-sized, feels-like-the-real-thing blowup doll in hose, garters, and corset, complete with stripper pasties. Not that he had any experience with that, or had anything to do with placing one in the bunk of a drunken drill-rig manager and taking compromising photos.
He readied disinfectant ointment, sterile gauze, and skin tape for the minor surgery, checked on Skyla, straightened up the gear, checked on Skyla, ran a quick outside patrol, checked on Skyla, and cursed the time gods for sleeping on the job.
At last, he felt the close surge of Tinsel’s portal magic.
He opened the storehouse door just in time to see Pendragor stepping out of the faintly glowing oval ring of a portal, wearing a swirling Cossack-style coat and tallushankahat made of what first looked like fur but was actually feathery brown moss.
Nic led the way inside to where Skyla lay unnaturally still in the tent. Pendragor pulled out his wand from an inside coat pocket and pointed it at Skyla. Magic flared.
“Two talismans, neck and hipbone, fully charged, with the beacon spell activated in both.” He tilted his head. “The remote vision and control spells are blocked, so why didn’t she block the recharge and the other two?”
“Ask her after you remove them,” said Nic. He carefully turned Skyla to expose the back of her neck and pushed down the long underwear to bare her hip.
Pendragor mouthed words without sound. Two talismans burst from Skyla’s flesh. Pendragor made a quick circle with his wand, and captured them together an iridescent sphere, just like he’d done for Nic’s talismans.
Skyla didn’t twitch at all. Nic used the gauze to clean the rivulets and stanch the blood at the wound sites. Shifter magic would ordinarily heal them completely in an hour, but her energy was low.
Pendragor’s lip curled in disgust as he eyed the talismans. “Change of plans. These are too dangerous. I’m taking these through the portal while Tinsel still has it open. You stay here. We’ll come back for you in an hour.” He strode out of the tent.
Nic cleaned Skyla’s wounds and applied the bandages, then arranged her clothing again. The sensation of fairy portal magic winked out.
He should be loading up everything to go back to Kotoyeesinay. Instead, he listened to advice from his rarely talkative tiger and stripped down to his long underwear, then got into the bed with Skyla. He eased himself under her so that she rested on top of him, her head on his chest.Share our strength with our mate,said his tiger.
He closed his eyes. In his mind, threads of gold from his tiger brushed against threads of warm black from Skyla’s wolf, weaving together for a moment, then sliding apart and drifting loose. With each weave, his tiger showed him how to pulse magical power into the wolf threads. As more of the weaves began to stay together, Nic pulsed more magic through them that he hadn’t known he had. Two weaves twined together, then joined with more, swaying to soundless music.
Skyla stirred in his arms. He ignored the siren song of sensuality and kept pulsing magic through the warm and shiny connection between them. He coaxed more threads into the complex pattern that made Celtic knots look simple.
Nicolas...
He grinned when he heard his name through their strengthening bond. His real name.
Skyla, I love you.He’d been wanting to say it since she’d surprised him with her words earlier. When he’d finally gathered his wits enough to tell her, company had interrupted.You’re everything to me.
I love you, too. I was afraid I’d told you too soon.Her words came with a deep pulse of resonating magic that made every part of him want to dance, especially the part of him in his pants.
She rolled off of him onto her side. “Yeow!”
He opened his eyes and saw her hand rub her hip, then slide under her hair at the back of her neck to touch the bandage. “Has Mauk been here?”
“No, a fairy named Pendragor. I called him when I couldn’t wake you. The auction house talismans siphoned your magic to recharge themselves and phone home.”
