“I want you to swear that you’ll be his winikin, but not his lover.”
“You…” The air leaked from her on a vicious hiss. She wanted to lash out at him, but knew that wouldn’t make a dent. Logic might, though, and she still needed to get his support somehow. Not this way, though. There had to be another. “You’d risk going against the nahwal’s message?”
“It said you needed to join, but didn’t specify how. The aj winikin bond is the obvious answer.” He plucked the index card from her fingers, folded it once, and tucked it into her jacket pocket.
She swatted at his hand, but the damn thing was, he had a point. The magic had come through the bloodline mark… or had it? “Zane said there was mage blood in the coyote winikin. What if the magic is coming through that connection instead. What if…” She trailed off and pressed her lips together, not wanting to say it aloud. Words like “mates” and “destiny” didn’t have any place in her and Sven’s relationship… but that didn’t mean she was going to give up that relationship to buy her father’s vote, especially when every instinct she possessed said not to.
Her father looked disgusted. “You’re reaching, saying anything you can to keep him as your lover.”
“And you’d do anything to stop us, wouldn’t you?” She breathed past the tightness in her throat, her chest. “Why is that, really? Is it because you see it as your failure as a winikin, or is there some real reason you don’t want us to be together?” As a woman and a daughter she was trying not to care. But as the leader of the winikin, she had to ask.
His face hardened. “You risk him, risk tainting his magic.”
“Bull. His magic is stronger when we’re together. Ask him yourself.”
“He needs to focus. Sex is a distraction.”
She couldn’t argue that one, because she was coming to learn that it certainly was—especially the way Sven did it. But she shook her head and drummed up a weak smile, trying to defuse things a little. “By your logic, nobody here should be getting any until the zero date. Good luck selling that idea.”
His expression shifted, but not to one of amusement. Instead, he looked almost wistful. “Can’t you trust me to know what’s right?”
And for a moment, she saw him as he used to be, back when the four of them had sat around the card table as a family, betting chores and pretzels. Back then, she might have gone along with anything he said, thrilled to be included. But that was a long time ago. “Your version of ‘right’ is outdated.”
“Perhaps. But everything I know, everything I’ve experienced in twice as many years, says that you’re talking yourself into this, and that’s going to get you in trouble.” He paused, and for a second she thought she might be getting somewhere. But then he said, “If you two are meant to be together, truly meant, then your feelings will still be the same three months from now. If you take the mark, stay out of his bed, and fight the war, you’ll have the winikin behind you.”
Her stomach knotted into a tight ball, and she didn’t want to look too closely at the reasons why. “But—”
“I’ll support you as Sven’s winikin… but not his lover. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
If she hadn’t been convinced that her and Sven’s relationship was connected in some way with the gods and the war, she might have taken the deal… at least she wanted to think she would have. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be. So she shook her head. “No deal.” She was going to have to win over the winikin without her father’s support. She headed for the door, saying over her shoulder, “Meeting’s in the training hall in an hour.”
He didn’t call her back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
From the shelter of the cacao grove, Sven watched the winikin file into the training hall. Mac sat on his haunches nearby, with a confused whine ghosting in the back of his throat, not getting why they were hiding from the good guys.
“It’s complicated,” Sven said, because he didn’t think there were enough thought-glyphs in the world to cover what was going on in his head.
He didn’t want to go in there alone and cause a scene, but he hadn’t been able to make himself wait up at the mansion for Cara. And that was a problem—while part of the twitchiness had come from knowing that she was talking to Carlos, the rest came courtesy of a familiar itch that said, Get out, get moving, get some distance. And although for a long time he had embraced that itch, now he wished he could take a damn pill and get rid of it. Or maybe a spray or something. A bug bomb. Whatever.
He didn’t want the restlessness. More, it worried him that he’d awakened that morning from a bright, vivid dream of running through a closely growing rain forest, searching, always searching, though he didn’t know what he sought. Part of the time in the dream he’d been himself, but the rest of the time he’d had four legs and tough-padded feet that flew across the soft earth.
He’d had the same sort of visions in the weeks leading up to Mac’s finding him and the two of them becoming linked through the familiar bond. But he already had a familiar, and that was an exclusive partnership, so these dreams and vision flashes had to be something else. And the only thing he could think was that some part of his coyote magic was coming to the fore, telling him he needed to move on, that a true coyote mage didn’t stay in one place—or with one mate—for long.
But he didn’t want to leave Skywatch, damn it, and he didn’t want to leave Cara. She needed to know he was capable of sticking around.
And he was sticking, damn it, would continue to stick, no matter what it took.
He must have muttered something under his breath, because as the last few stragglers jogged up the stairs to the hall and the door banged shut a final time, Mac cocked his head and rolled an eye back in inquiry.
“We’ll go down there in a minute. I’m just waiting for… There she is,” he said as he spotted Cara coming down the path, stalking stiff legged with her hands jammed in the pockets of her studded jacket. “Uh-oh. I’m guessing things didn’t go so well with Carlos. Come on.”
They slipped out of the cacao grove and angled to intercept her near the picnic area. Up close, Sven caught the snap of anger in her eyes as she glanced at him, then watched her try to shove it behind a calm facade. “Hey, wait up,” he said, catching her wrist and drawing her into the lee of the huge ceiba tree. “Give yourself a minute. You don’t want to go in there looking like that.”
She glared up at him. “Looking like what, exactly? And are we really hiding behind a tree? Seriously?”
“You look like you’re about to rip a chunk out of the first person who crosses you, and I’m pretty sure the goal was to keep this meeting as calm and controlled as possible. As for the tree thing, yeah, but only because it means I can do this.” He drew her into his arms, but when she shot him a don’t even think about kissing me right now glare, he tucked her head beneath his chin, wrapped his arms around her and held on tight. “Give yourself a minute, okay? Just breathe and remember that he’s not going to change.”
She stayed tense for a moment, then exhaled a shuddering breath and relaxed against him. “Damn it, don’t be nice to me. I need to go into this meeting a little pissed off.”
“How about calm, focused, and ready to kick some ass?”