Darkness Bound (39 page)

She gazed up at him, smiling, her eyes soft. “Did we not just establish that I was properly wooed? Home is wherever you are, Hawk.” She spread her hand over his chest, above his heart. “Home is this, right here.”

He closed his eyes briefly, gratitude rising up in a wave that overwhelmed him, along with a flare of love so violent he felt burned. “Things aren’t safe at the colony for you. In fact, they’re not safe for any of us. If I hadn’t been voted the new Alpha, I’d probably—”

“Alpha! Voted! What happened to fighting to the death?” She’d jerked upright, was staring at him with unblinking eyes.

“Oh? You’d rather that than a nice, civilized vote?”

“Of course not!” she huffed, shoving his chest. “But—how—”

“I’ll give you one guess. It involves a dragon.”

Jack stared at him, the light of comprehension dawning in her eyes. “The Queen.”

He nodded. “Looks like democracy finally made it to the jungle. Our new Queen is proving herself quite the reformist. So far she’s overturned pretty much every Law we ever had.”

Jack smiled. “I knew I liked her.”

He drew her down against his chest again, combing his fingers through her hair. “And she likes you. God help us if the two of you ever put your heads together: we’ll end up living on the moon.”

Jacqueline grew solemn as she trailed her fingers over his arm. “Is that the only place that will be safe for us, you think? The moon? Do you think your species and mine will ever be able to live together in harmony?”

He thought about it for a long time, looking out into the sky.

He finally said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Hearing her dark sigh, he teased, “Look at the lengths I had to go to just to change your mind about us. Seducing you was a hell of a lot of work, sweetheart. I don’t know any other male who would be up to the challenge.”

“Oh,
really
?” She bit his nipple, and he yelped in outrage, throwing her onto her back. “And by the way,” she said as he returned the favor but with fewer teeth and a lot more tongue, making her arch her back and her voice go breathy, “if I recall correctly, it was
I
who seduced
you
.”

He lifted his head and gazed down at his love, her face flushed, her smile so beautiful. He said, “We seduced each other. That’s what happens when you fall in love.”

“Hmm. So it’s a fairy-tale ending, then?”

Hawk slowly shook his head. “It’s not a fairy tale, but it’s real, and it’s good. And it’s everything I could possibly hope for. It’s more than I deserve.”

Her smile grew dazzling. “Look at you, an expert in wooing already. You just earned yourself a gold star, buddy.”

He smiled back at her. “I see a lot of those in my future.”

She whispered, “Me, too.” Then she drew him down and kissed him, and he forgot about gold stars and democracy and fights to the death, and just let himself fall deeper and deeper into her.

The only place in the world he ever wanted to be.

Jenna bolted upright in bed.

Her heart raced. Her hands shook. She was sweating, gulping deep breaths as if she’d been running. It was very late, or very early, only an hour or so before first light. Beside her in bed, Leander sat up, and cupped her bare shoulder in his hand.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice low.

Jenna looked around the shadowed bedroom, watched the sheer white curtains that enclosed their bed billow and shift in the night breeze. In the air hung an unpleasant smell, sour as a rat’s nest.

“The comet,” Jenna whispered. She sat still upon the bedcovers, listening hard into the darkness. “I dreamt about the red comet. And everything . . . everything everywhere was on fire. The whole world was fire. There was nothing left.”

She looked at Leander, saw the fear in his eyes, the same fear he undoubtedly saw in hers. He pulled her against him, wrapped his arms around her, and didn’t say a word.

There was nothing to say. They both knew what her dream meant.

Mama.

From the darkness beyond the bed, Jenna’s babies called to her.

She rose quickly, donned the robe left on a chair beside the nightstand, glanced at Leander as he rose and pulled on a pair of loose drawstring trousers, watching her all the while. His expression registered his knowledge that she heard what he could not, and he simply followed silently behind her as she made her way across the room to the bassinette.

In it, the twins were standing up. Waiting.

Tottering on unsteady legs, Hope and Honor cooed happily when they saw her. They raised their arms, wanting to be picked up. Jenna moistened her lips, felt her heartbeat flutter, her hands grow clammy. Inside her head, their voices murmured in the Old Language, the latest addition to their burgeoning Gifts. She wondered what unlucky soul had recently lost his ability to speak his native tongue.

“They want to go outside,” she said quietly to Leander as she lifted Hope from the bassinette. He lifted Honor, tucking her into the crook of one strong arm.

“Why?” In the darkness, his eyes shone vivid emerald, intense with emotion.

Jenna whispered, “Because it’s time.”

Above the babies’ heads, their gazes locked. She thought she’d never seen him look so beautiful, bare-chested and tense, holding their child, his hair an inky mess around his shoulders, those eyes so full of love and anguish.

He said her name, a low, fervid entreaty, but she only shook her head, her eyes filling with moisture. “Don’t wake anyone else. There’s no need.”

She turned and made her way quickly through the dark house, slipping from room to room as she listened to the sound of his footsteps close behind. The night air was soft and fragrant on her heated skin when they crossed the suspension bridge that led away from the massive Brazil nut tree, the wood planks smooth beneath her bare feet.

Finally the four of them stood on the rise of the bare rock at the Well of Souls, the stone funeral pyre a hulking black shape in the moonlight.

Jenna stood still a moment, watching the sky, her robe shifting around her ankles as a warm draft caught in its folds. Then Leander pulled her hard against him with one arm, his hand wrapped around the back of her neck, and kissed her.

It was hard, passionate, and desperate. It felt like a goodbye.

The tears she’d been holding back broke free and streamed down her cheeks. She pulled away and they stood with their foreheads pressed together, breathing hard, looking down at Hope and Honor who stared up at them solemnly, quiet in their arms.

“Don’t say anything,” Jenna begged, her voice breaking. “Please.”

“Only that I love you. And I always will.”

Jenna heard the shaking he couldn’t control in his voice, and when she looked up into his eyes, his were wet, too.

“I love you, too,” she whispered. “And I wouldn’t change a thing. Not a single thing, Leander.”

They stared into each other’s eyes until finally he nodded, swallowing.

In Jenna’s arms, Hope made a small sound. Jenna looked down at her to find her arm outstretched, her little pudgy finger pointing at the horizon. She and Leander lifted their heads, and saw far, far away in the early dawn sky, the glimmer of lights. A long, wavering line of pinprick white danced above the black outline of the treetops. Just as she felt the first, faint tremors run through the ground beneath her feet, a whiff of something sharply antiseptic hit her nose.

Jet fuel.

“All right, you sons of bitches,” Jenna muttered. “You want to play? Let’s play.”

Leander took her hand, clasping it firmly in his. She allowed herself one last look at his profile, handsome and hard, then she turned her attention back to the sky, not bothering to wipe the tears from her cheeks. The two of them stood there shoulder to shoulder on the bare rock, their children tucked into the crooks of their arms, holding hands, waiting.

As the lights came closer, Leander said in a horrified whisper, “There are a thousand of them!”

“More,” was Jenna’s grim reply.

A gust of wind whipped her hair into her eyes, swirling it wildly around her shoulders. Leander’s grip on her hand tightened. Far off in the forest, a flock of birds took flight from a tree with a haunting cry.

Then Honor lifted both her arms, reaching out to the horizon. Hope mimicked the motion, and Jenna felt a fear unlike she’d ever known sink with cold, serpentine darkness down into her soul.

When the first of the military planes were close enough for Jenna to glimpse the white helmets of the pilots inside, Honor let out a loud, delighted squeal of laughter.

Over the roar of a thousand jet engines, Jenna screamed, “Mommy loves you, girls!”

And so it began.

This is the part where I always get weepy, because it means I’ve come to the end of the story. Also because I take a moment to breathe—the first moment in months—and recognize how many people producing a novel involves. How many people are necessary to helping me get to the final page, and to whom I owe thanks.

As always, I thank my team at Montlake Romance and Amazon Publishing for their support and professionalism. You make it look so easy! Maria Gomez, my editor, my dear, you are wonderful. The copyediting and proofreading teams deserve shout-outs, as do the merchandising and PR teams. Thank you for your hard work. And special mention goes to the Duke of
Montlake and the Dude (who, of course, abides) for just being cool.

I am eternally grateful to Marlene Stringer for picking me out of her ginormous slush pile, and advocating for me. I’m also eternally grateful to Eleni Caminis, for many reasons, none of which can be mentioned here.

Melody Guy. You.
Rock
. Thank you for always making my books better.

To my Street Team, I’m so happy you have decided to join me on this journey and help spread the word about my work. It means so much to me. Thank you also to the many book bloggers who have been incredibly supportive, and said such kind things about the Night Prowler world. I so appreciate it. To my readers, I owe a special debt of thanks because without you, there wouldn’t be any Night Prowler world!

Thanks to Shannon and Scott Smith of SS Media Co. for being web designer geniuses. It’s been over ten years we’ve worked together, can you believe it?

Thank you to my book club “ladies,” who give me more entertainment in one evening than most people do in one year. Here’s to decades more of drunken debauchery . . . oh, and reading, of course.

To my parents, Jean and Jim, thank you for believing in me even during those hellish teenage years, and for your general greatness. I love you.

And last but never least, thank you to my own personal Alpha, Jay. I can’t believe married people are allowed to have so much fun together. (I won’t tell if you don’t.)

J.T. Geissinger’s debut novel,
Shadow’s Edge
, was published in 2012 and was a #1 Amazon US and UK bestseller in both fantasy romance and romance series, and won the PRISM award for Best First Book. Her second book in the Night Prowler series,
Edge of Oblivion
, was a finalist for the prestigious RITA
^®
award for Best Paranormal Romance from the Romance Writers of America. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and is currently at work on book six in the series. Visit her online at
jtgeissinger.com