Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,64

that hid the cave he found. Safe enough to rest in for a night.

His reawakened mind tried to sort through the convoluted jumble of thoughts, a mix of past and present, truths and lies.

At dawn, they would need to make up for lost time. Though he’d done his best to cover their tracks and create a diversion with the crashed helicopter, it wouldn’t take long for their enemies to pinpoint their location and come after them.

The moment he destroyed the navigation and communication systems, the tech master must have switched to high-alert, activating asset tracking protocols. Dalair had flown the copter as low as he could, using trees, utility poles, and other cover-rich terrain to camouflage the flight path.

He’d gradually turned inland away from the coast, where they would be more visible. But in case there was an auxiliary GPS on the aircraft, he didn’t want to suddenly veer off course, on the odd chance that his departure from plan hadn’t already been flagged.

He rotated his tense neck muscles and winced.

The downside of feeling was the undiluted agony that now flooded his brain. Though his wounds were mostly healed, as in externally knitted with internal bleeding stopped, his organs and bones were still regenerating. Without his program to compartmentalize and shield his consciousness from the soreness throbbing throughout his entire body, the accumulated pain was staggering.

The Creature—Erebu—must have stabbed him close to a dozen times to put him out of commission. Wrecking his physical shell as much as his soul had been beaten into submission. Only then, when body and soul were on equal footing, both weak as fuck and clinging to survival by a thread, in other words, did the latter have a chance to retake the former.

Crazy bastard.

A corner of Dalair’s lips twitched with morbid humor. He bet Ere enjoyed stabbing holes into his body even if the shapeshifter did it to give Dalair a fighting chance to recover his soul. After all, Dalair had stolen Kira from him in their past life together. When Erebu had been Cambyses, the Crown Prince of Persia.

But now that Dalair knew who he really was, what he was, that he could transform into any humanoid form, he doubted the man that he knew, the brother he grew up with and came to love, was the real Cambyses. The history books would never know the difference.

And then Dalair quickly sobered.

Could what Sophia said be true? Had Ere forgiven them? Forgiven Dalair for betraying his trust, despite the fact that Cambyses had requested the subterfuge?

But Dalair recalled the haunted, torn look in his brother’s eyes when he made the request. He’d been furious, frightened, and most of all, hurt. He hadn’t wanted it to happen. Perhaps he even expected Dalair to decline, as any brother would do when the other asked him to impregnate his wife.

Dalair had done it anyway.

Against his own honor. Betraying his brother’s love. Making Kira an adulteress. And forever shattering his own heart in the process.

He’d always believed that she didn’t know it was him during the two best and worst nights of his short human life. When he came into her bed chamber, she called him Cam. And after he’d given all of himself to her, she called him “her prince.”

He’d been devastated by the words he thought could only belong to his brother. It had felt as if he’d been flayed then smothered in salt.

But now he realized…she’d shown him with her own memories and thoughts…that all along, she’d known it was him.

In her heart, she’d always chosen him.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the mossy edge of the pool, the pains of his flesh and bones numbed by the brilliant warmth spreading throughout his chest.

I love you.

I choose you.

Kira.

Sophia.

Whatever other incarnations she might have, as long as there was breath in his body, he would always choose her too.

And then, as if his thoughts conjured her, she came.

The scent of Lady of the Night orchid on the breeze, and the small splash of water on the opposite side of the pool alerted him of her presence, though he kept his eyes closed.

“Dalair,” she whispered, her voice so soft anyone else would not have heard.

But his hyper-senses picked up on the raspy sound. And even if he hadn’t, his heart would still have thumped with intense awareness. It was always this way between them. As if they were connected by invisible strings.

He didn’t trust his voice, so he didn’t speak. He didn’t trust his thoughts,