Through the Ether (Force of Nature Book 5) - Amber Lynn Natusch Page 0,4
tell me? Is it like guardian code or something?” The bear did not appear amused. “I really wish you could talk.”
With no promise of answers from Grizz in my future, I started off toward the warlock who could provide them instead.
“I didn’t think you’d call,” Reinhardt said softly. “Not that I’d have blamed you…”
“I don’t have the luxury of being angry right now,” I replied, my tone a touch too harsh. “The world is about to go to shit around us, and we need you to help stop that from happening.” His expression hardened, the mask of the man I’d first met in the basement of that abandoned building sliding into place in the blink of an eye. I let out a breath. “I want to not hate you right now, Dra—I mean Reinhardt. Fuck, that’s going to be a hard habit to break.”
“I’m sorry, Piper—”
“I know you’re sorry. I get that much. It’s everything else I don’t.”
“Will you walk with me? Allow me a chance to try to explain my mistakes—the many I’ve made?”
“We don’t really have time for that right now.” Grizz shot me a look that said otherwise. “But I guess we could make some?” The bear snorted, and the three of us (or four, if you counted the raven overhead) headed into the woods. The crunch of dead foliage beneath our feet sent a chill down my spine. I pictured a different kind of carnage underfoot—the kind made of the blood and bone of both our enemies and allies, their pale, lifeless eyes staring up at me as though I’d failed them.
And if that vision actually did come to pass, I would have.
“When you first came to me—tracked me to my place of refuge—I was not in a good spot mentally,” Reinhardt began, pulling from my spiraling thoughts. “I was still mourning the death of my brother, the destruction of our coven—and the loss of the child I’d never known.” I turned to him, prepared to cut his logic into a thousand pieces with my words, but he stopped me with a placating gesture. “I know what you’re about to say, and yes, you’re right. I should have scooped you up in my arms that day and thanked the gods that you’d survived—that you’d returned. But something in the back of my mind whispered dark thoughts to me. Warnings. It all seemed too convenient that you could find me so easily—”
“I wouldn’t say it was easy—”
“—and that the one thing that could have pulled me from the growing darkness had just strolled into my hideout, bringing with her everything that I had lost.”
I pulled him to a halt, his words echoing in my mind. “What does that even mean, Dra—Reinhardt?”
He looked at the bird circling above us and exhaled hard. “How did you come to find me that night, Piper? How did you and Kat track me down? I know it wasn’t her werewolf skills, because she had nothing to work from and my glamour was too strong for her to override…”
I followed his gaze to the raven. “A little birdie told me—or showed me, as it were.”
Reinhardt looked down at me, and my eyes shifted to him. “I know.”
“Then why did you ask the damn question?”
“Because I need you to see the importance of the answer when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.” I stared at him expectantly and held my breath. “I’d never seen that bird before that day.”
“Um…say what, now?”
“He was not my guardian.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“The raven that helped you is now, but was not then, my guardian.”
“I don’t…then how did…what the fuck does that mean?”
A ghost of a smile stretched his lips. “It means there was a separate power that drove us together.” As he said those words, the raven swooped down to land on his shoulder. It stared at me as though willing me to see what was so obvious to him. “Your uncle Drake had an immense connection to nature and its creatures, just as you do, Piper. It runs somewhere in our DNA. It was not until after I’d pushed you away and blocked your memory of having ever met me that I realized the raven’s role in our meeting—and what it meant.”
“Can we get to that part? Because I’m still feeling behind here…”
“The raven came to you for a reason, as it did me.”
“To bring us together?”
“Yes, but to also serve me. To guide me through the darkness.”