Dark Wolf (Spirit Wild) - By Kate Douglas Page 0,96
he’s the one. We believe his father is the source of the darkness, but touch him. See what you sense.” She glanced at him. “Is that okay?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
Eve stepped closer and gazed up at him. She was tall and beautiful, similar to the Chanku he’d met so far, but there was such power in her aura that he felt as if he should kneel before her. A goddess. She really was a goddess. His knees actually trembled, but when she placed her hands on his forearms, a great well of calm filled him.
“Please?” She looked up at him out of those odd eyes.
And Sebastian realized he would give her anything. No matter what she asked. “Whatever you need.”
She smiled and placed her hands beneath his shirt so that they touched, skin to skin. Her touch was warm—sensual without feeling sexual—yet he felt as if his heart might beat right through his rib cage. She smiled, slowly shaking her head as if she’d discovered something unexpected.
“You’re right, Lily. The darkness is there, but it’s from association, not nature.” She stepped back and he pulled his shirt back down, but his skin felt all prickly, as if energy sparked over the areas where she’d touched him.
“Come. We need to talk. I have learned things, and you have experienced even more.”
Lily grabbed his hand again, and they followed Eve through a meadow that was too perfect, through a small forest much too lush to be real, and then to a grassy knoll beside a perfect stream.
Eve found a spot in the shade of a huge tree and sat. Sebastian hadn’t really paid close attention to his surroundings. As beautiful, as ethereal as was this part of the astral, nothing could compare with Lily. When she folded her long legs and sat beneath the tree beside Eve, Sebastian watched each graceful movement, losing himself once again in her beauty. Once she settled herself, though, she glanced up at him with one eyebrow artfully cocked, as if asking what he thought of the place.
He didn’t know. He’d not really looked, but now he took a moment to glance at the wonders around him, and the mystery of where he was, who he was with, washed over him with a sense of wonder, of indescribable joy.
He was really, truly here. Not as a spirit but as a man. He, Sebastian Xenakis, a man who so often felt totally inept and out of his league, was actually on the astral plane, the guest of a goddess and a woman who seemed to love him in spite of himself.
His skin prickled with a frisson of awareness, a familiar rush of power that caught his attention and dragged his avid glance to the tree sheltering this beautiful spot of ground.
It wasn’t the same tree. Not his oak, the one where he’d first drawn the power to shift, but he knew, without any doubt, that it held the same spirit.
His lady was here. Not a dryad. No, this was no simple wood spirit. Here, on the astral, she was more than spirit. More than an ancient power. Here, she was Power. She was his lady, and he knew her with a visceral sense of destiny.
Without hesitation, without any thought at all beyond giving her thanks and the obeisance due a presence of undeniable importance, Sebastian fell to his knees before the tree, bowed his head, and waited to see what his lady wanted.
Lily shot a quick glance at Eve and caught the raised eyebrow, the shock on the goddess’s face as Sebastian suddenly knelt before the massive tree and bowed his head.
Then Eve’s eyes went wide and she knelt as well. Confused, Lily opened her senses to the tree. The blast of power almost sent her reeling.
She was on her knees beside Sebastian before she realized what had happened. He reached for her and grabbed her hand, and she realized he was holding on to Eve as well.
The three of them, kneeling to a huge tree that, for some reason, felt as if it held the answers to all questions, the power for all worlds.
Eve was the one to speak first. She raised her head and smiled at the towering tree, and her face literally glowed. “Blessed Mother. I have missed your touch. Please? Tell us what we must do to right what is wrong.”
15
“Well, that could have gone a little better.” Alex held Annie’s hand as the two of them left her parents’ house and walked toward