Synnr's Hope - Kate Rudolph Page 0,30

needed.

Exhaustion led to mistakes. He was just waiting for one to happen. She wouldn’t listen to caution until there was a cost.

After the first three days of training she’d managed to hit three targets, and now they were working on hitting the targets together.

She had a sharp look of concentration on her face while he explained the mechanics of the exercise, and Solan tried to ignore his body’s response to her presence.

He was having his own concentration issues. And it wasn’t thoughts of training keeping him up at night.

He wasn’t going to let anything happen between them. He refused to be ruled by his primal urges and become like his father. But while he slept, his mind wasn’t under such strict control. And Lena joined him in his dreams. Under him, on top of him, kissing and caressing and leaving him hard and panting for more every morning.

The intensity of the dreams had him questioning his resolve to keep things professional. Did she have the same attraction? Could they balance a working relationship with something more?

They’d never find out. Solan refused to cross that line. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

Things were working out fine. With a little more practice they’d be ready for the field, and then his mind would settle. It had to. Or he’d need to find someone to relieve the desire he was feeling.

His spark cracked in him, sending a shot of pain down his spine. He jolted. “Was that you?”

“Was what me?” Lena was on the ground stretching. For the first handful of mornings they’d trained together, he’d walked in on her doing the same things. Then he’d decided to arrive early enough for them to use her warm up time to get prepared for the rest of the day.

“Did you reach for my spark?” It had never caused him pain before, but the momentary discomfort was already dissipating.

She shook her head and got to her feet. “No. Do you want me to? I think I’m ready today.”

He hoped she was. Once they conquered this obstacle, they’d be ready to really begin their training. He could almost envision the two of them outside fighting the Apsyns, who were gearing up for war while they were stuck inside doing target practice.

He took a calming breath to get his spark to settle. “I want you to reach for my power, just like you did when we bonded, and use it instead of your own to aim for the target. Once you’ve done it, I’ll do the same to you.”

“What’s the point?” She rolled her shoulders a few times until her wings came out. They’d need to work on that before it became a habit. She needed to be able to call her wings without moving at all.

“Our power combined is stronger than either one of us alone. There may come an instance where one of us is using the spark while the other is busy with something else.” There were a hundred scenarios where it could happen, but he didn’t want to spend all day talking about it. They’d get to it when they moved to the next phase of their training.

“Makes sense.” Her fingers flared out before curling into fists. “Let me try.” That was all the warning he got before he felt Lena reach deep inside him and wrench his power toward her. She took enough that he could feel his energy draining, and still she was taking more, molding it into a perfect line of energy that she shot off towards the nearest target, incinerating the paper like it was nothing.

If Solan could pull in a deep enough breath, he would have congratulated her, but his vision was going blurry around the corners and he stumbled forward.

Lena took aim at the next target and shot out. Solan tried to close off the connection, but their bonding made it impossible. He didn’t know what would happen if he lost consciousness, and he didn’t want to find out. He tugged on the line of power between them and Lena tugged back. She was trying to draw even more. Way too much.

“Stop!” he gasped. He fell to one knee and reached out, dragging his hand across her leg.

Lena looked down and sank to her knees. The drain on his power stopped as if it had never happened in the first place and she looked horrified. “What did I do? I’m so sorry!”

Already things were better. His vision was clearing and his limbs stopped shaking. He stood and