“Where would you go? Half the country will be looking for you by morning.”
“I don’t care,” she cried, her power rushing through her, as if now that it had been unleashed it was too much to control. Fire tipped the ends of her fingers like the tiny flames on birthday candles. She looked at them, surprised and yet somehow comforted at the evidence of her power, too. It was that other her, she assured herself. The one who had stood in moonlight and called on shadows. The witch who had opened something dark and embraced it with welcoming arms.
That wasn’t her.
“I just need to think,” she shouted, willing the flames on her hands out and then staring at them as if she couldn’t believe what was happening to her. “I need to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do.”
“You’re supposed to mate with me,” he told her flatly, grabbing her other arm and pulling her to him.
Yes, her body shouted, arching toward him, her breasts aching for his touch, his kiss. She could almost feel the warmth of his mouth around her nipple and she groaned with a need that was primal. All-consuming.
She wanted him. Needed him. But she’d had him in the past, she reminded herself, and nothing had changed. Nothing had stopped her from opening herself to the dark.
“According to my vision, we already tried that a few hundred years ago. Nothing happened.” Not true, her mind whispered slyly, reminding her of what she had found in his arms. The glory. The pleasure. The soulshaking orgasms.
Oh, God.
But she had not experienced a huge growth in her magical abilities.
“It’s different now, damn it. Don’t you see?”
She whipped her hair out of her eyes and fought back the hungry whispers in her mind. “How? How is now any different?”
“It’s the Awakening, Shea,” he said, his voice lost in the burst of something wild and fierce she felt at his words. “In all those other lives, we were working our way toward now. Toward this lifetime. The end of the spell cast so long ago. At last it’s begun. The time of atonement is here and you’re the first—we are the first . . .”
“What are you not telling me?” She could hear the unspoken words waiting to be acknowledged.
“Nothing.” He let her go, took a step back and shoved one hand through his long, dark hair. “It’s nothing. Another witch. When I was trying to find you. She said she was the first. Her name was Kellyn, but it can’t be so.”
“Does it matter who’s first, for God’s sake?” She laughed and didn’t like the sound of hysteria she heard.
His gaze speared into hers. “No. It only matters that you’re here. With me. And we have a chance to end what was started so long ago.”
She scrambled backward a few steps. “I talked to some of the witches in prison. They told me that a chosen witch and her Eternal share power when they mate.”
“Not a sharing, more of a merging. You will be stronger with the mating.”
Stronger. That could be good. Or terrifying.
“And what do you get out of it?” she asked, though she already knew she would go through with the ritual. She had decided that while she was in the camp. She was never going to be helpless to defend herself again. Not if she could prevent it. She would learn. She would remember. And she would become powerful enough to protect herself and any others who needed her help.
“I get you, Shea.” His gaze locked on hers and she felt the fire inside him burning all around him, like a halo of power and strength, wrapping him in its intensity until it had no choice but to burn outward, enveloping her as well.
“I’ve wanted you for lifetimes. Through all the years, through the centuries.” He took a step closer to her and his gray eyes swirled as if lit from within. She saw shapes and colors and shadows playing out in their depths. Sensed that he was feeling as tightly wound as she was—that his hunger was more than a match for her own. Something inside her woke up and stretched its arms, eager to accept him, to ease this soul-deep need Shea had never known before.
“You’re mine,” he said. “You always have been. As I am yours.”
They were alone on a darkened hillside, standing beneath a small slice of moon. and she could see him as clearly as if