Page 62 of Taken for Granite
“These last few days, I have been searching for the right words to convince you to abandon your home and everything you know so this one male will not spend the rest of his days alone.”
Her heart swelled. “All you have to do is ask.”
“Juniper, my pebble, return to Duras with me. You are myHondassa, my mate and my heart. I would be a male with clipped wings without you.”
“And Chloe, too?” She wouldn’t leave her sister.
“Of course. I would not insult you by suggesting otherwise.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes!” She pressed eager kisses to his mouth while he grinned. Her bottom lip caught on his fang, nicking her and forcing her to pull away. The pain focused her thoughts. “I’ll have to discuss this with Chloe. We’re a team, after all.”
His wings ruffled. “Ah. She may have informed me that I was to make an honorable female of you.”
“She did what?” Juniper asked, unsure if she should be mortified or amused.
“She wanted to convince me to bring you home, but my mind had already turned that way. I have been waiting for the right moment to ask.”
* * *
tas
She loved him.
He soared on the knowledge as surely as he did on the wind.
Tas realized at that moment that he had always been planning to bring Juniper with him. Life on Duras would be difficult for her, but he would carve out a place for them. His parents were traditional and held narrow-minded ideas about aliens. If they rejected hisHondassa, he would reject them.
He wanted to bring her to his family’s aerie, though. He wanted to stand at the highest perch with her after a storm and enjoy the peace of a clear violet sky. He wanted to hold their younglings in his arms and take them on their first flight. All her laughter, her grinning moments of joy, her frustrations and to share her worries, he wanted every moment and cursed himself for being a blind fool to believing that he could go without.
No matter what stars they sat under, no matter what sun warmed their faces, he was home with her. Juniper would always be his home.
21
Juniper
Things going her way made Juniper nervous. Call it conditioning. Luck never broke her way and life never gave her lemons, it tried to crush her under huge freaking boulders. So when the plan to reach the pick-up location actually worked, she worried.
Cross the border? Why had she even been worried? Exchanging US dollars for Canadian? A breeze. The drive to Calgary? Totally relaxing. Then on to Edmonton, Fort Nelson, and finally Watson Lake? The most beautiful scenery Juniper had ever seen in her life. The mountains appeared as a purple smudge against the horizon, growing larger until they crowded out the sky. If she hadn’t been planning on leaving the planet soon, she’d come back for a nice long vacation.
The only thing throwing shade on her optimism was the cranky teenager in the passenger seat. The morning they left the motel in Watson Lake was the start of the sixth day stuck in the car, which was one day too many without a break. Juniper could hear the hum of the engine and feel the vibrations of the tires on the road in her sleep. She saw pavement when she closed her eyes and felt thoroughly sick of driving.
“It’s only six hours to Tungsten,” she said. Using paper road maps and topographic maps for hikers, they determined the pick-up location to be Mount Nirvana, in the Northwest Territories. Amazingly, it sat just to the east of Gargoyle Ridge, another mountain peak.
“How about we check out the Northern Lights Center?” Juniper said, folding away the maps.
Chloe made a face. “I guess. Sounds kinda lame. Doesn’t it have to be dark to see the northern lights?”
“I’m sure it’s not lame.” Juniper pulled out her phone and pulled up the attraction’s website. The pay-as-you-go plan did not extend to Canada, but the motel had wi-fi. “It has a state-of-the-art panoramic video and surround-sound systems,” she read. “How can anything panoramic be lame? It’s umpossible,” she said with a grin, purposefully botching the word.
Chloe appealed to Tas. Usually, it worked. He seemed inclined to spoil, which could be a problem down the road but for the moment Juniper was glad they got along. “Tas, don’t let her make us do that. Tell her gargoyles are too cool to be seen in a tourist trap.”
“It seems like a fine opportunity to expand our education about your planet,” he replied.
“Fine. We’ll be lame together as a family,” Chloe said, flopping onto the bed in a fit of teen drama.
“It is the Bouvet way.”
Out of habit, she scrolled through the notifications on the phone. She paused at a text message, dread sliding down her spine like icy water. “Chloe? Did you text Amelia?”
