Earth's Requiem(39)
“Okay.” Aislinn came to her feet, hands on her hips. “What do you think we should do?”
A surprised look spread over the wolf’s face. “You have to take me with you. Metae already knows we are bond mates. She would think it odd if you showed up alone.”
Aislinn hated to admit it, but Rune had a point. “I was just trying to keep you safe,” she snapped.
“We are safer together,” the wolf replied in a patronizing tone. “You have much to learn, bond mate.” His sarcasm escalated with the last words.
“It’s true,” Fionn concurred. “Part of the magic cementing the bond is a synergistic energy that’s more together than its individual parts.”
Aislinn hunkered next to Rune. “Just don’t disappear on me again,” she muttered. “I’ll have my hands full, and I don’t know if I can pull this off if I’m worried about you.”
“Then don’t send me away.”
From a nearby branch, Bella squawked an unintelligible opinion. Aislinn assumed the bird agreed with the wolf.
“Okay.” She stood and spread her hands in surrender. “I know when I’m outnumbered. Let’s strategize. What are the most important things we need to know from the Old Ones?”
Morning came all too soon. She’d slept wrapped in Fionn’s arms with Rune against her other side. It felt right somehow. Like she belonged between the two of them. She was tempted to simply retreat. It was unlikely her gambit would pay off, and she would have put herself and her wolf in harm’s way for nothing.
“They know we’re here,” Rune told her. “You have to go. The Old Ones would think something was very wrong if you came all this way, only to turn around.”
She eyed the wolf. “I’d forgotten you could read my mind.”
“Good thing.” He met her gaze, tongue lolling. “Someone has to keep you on the straight and narrow.” Surprised he’d know about human idiomatic expressions, she asked how he’d come by it. Pain flickered behind his eyes. “Marta used to say that.”
“Wolf has a point.” Fionn crouched by a nearby creek, making them breakfast out of crushed pine nuts and some berries he’d located the night before. “Your plan depends on the Old Ones thinking you still trust them.”
“So I have to act like I do.” She squared her shoulders. This was going to be hard. She’d never been a very good liar. “Is the food ready?” She didn’t feel much like eating, but she’d need energy.
“Bring your cup over here.”
She was just cleaning the dregs of pine nut flour paste out of her eating mug when Fionn reached into one of his many pockets. He handed her what looked like a piece of river-washed quartz, clear with green flecks in it. “You want me to take that?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, and he nodded. “Why?”
“It is linked to my magic. If you get into trouble, lay your lips against it and breathe my name into the stone.”
“Just Fionn? Or will I need a last name, too?”
Leaning close, he whispered to her.
She drew back, her mouth rounded into an “o.” Breath caught in the back of her throat. “B-But you aren’t really,” she stammered. “It’s not possible. I mean, that just happened to be your father’s last name. Right?”
He looked at her. Flickers of green danced around his sea blue irises. “Time for you to get going.” He paused a beat, added, “lass,” and winked.
This just gets stranger and stranger. I feel like Alice without the white rabbit. She lurched to her feet, located her rucksack, and started stuffing things into it. She felt the heat of him behind her before he touched her. It sat like a living thing between them.
He circled his arms around her. “Turn about,” he said.
Maybe because she was listening for it now, she heard the faintest of Irish lilts in his voice. It reminded her of her mother. If she hadn’t grown up fed on Celtic myths, she wouldn’t even have recognized his last name. Pivoting in his arms, she looked up at him.
“I took a bit of a risk, telling you what I did,” he said.
She stammered, “Ah, not to worry. I won’t—”
“Sshh.” He closed his mouth over hers.
The kiss was sweet, not demanding a thing from her, but it still made her knees weak. When she opened her mouth for more, he drew back.
“Uh-uh.” The tiny creases around his eyes deepened as he smiled. “No more today. There are other things for you to focus on. Don’t be thinking about me or Bella. Get what you can from those bastards who see themselves as rulers here. Maybe we can find a way—”