He embraced her fully, caressing her, savoring this moment in time when they’d truly come together with one mind. “I want to do things differently, Alesia, and I’m wondering if you’d be interested in joining with me.”
She pulled back, her brows raised. “What do you mean?”
He chuckled. “I guess I didn’t make myself clear. I want you in the field. I want you to join me in the field, at night, when I battle wraith-pairs.”
“You want me to become a warrior? Battle like you?”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re not making sense. For one thing, I’m not warrior material.”
“Actually, yes you are. You just don’t know it.”
He could see that she meant to argue, but he lifted a hand and said, “Hear me out.”
“Okay.” But she looked extremely doubtful.
“You’re fearless, you fight when you need to, you don’t hesitate once you make the decision, and you have a lot of power. I’ve trained dozens of recruits in my day and you’ve got what it takes.”
“Maybe you’ve misunderstood, but I have no intention of going out and killing wraith-pairs.”
And here was the biggest change for him. “And I’m not talking about killing them. I’m talking about doing the very thing you’ve been pushing me to do since I first met you.”
“You mean capture-and-rescue followed by rehab?” Lips parted, she looked stunned as she stared back at him with unblinking eyes.
“I mean exactly that. The vision I have is that we’d work in tandem, as a team, but we’d be selective about which wraith-pairs to try to bring in.”
Alesia’s eyes went wide. “But how would we do that in the field?”
“With great care and I think I’d want to talk this over with Ethan, the Mastyr of Bergisson Realm. His blood rose, Samantha, has the power to separate the wraith-pairs, to sever their bonds, and I know they’ve been working to train his vampire Guard to assess which pairs to save.”
She shook her head slowly. “I never expected this. I never thought it would be possible. But, I trust you, Zeph. That’s the one thing I learned tonight, just how thoroughly I believe in you, that you’ll do what you say. And not only do I think this could work, but I want to be part of it. I mean, maybe that’s been my purpose all along. I’d want a lot of training, though.”
“Absolutely.”
She searched his eyes. “I never thought to see this level of compassion from you, at least where wraith-pairs were concerned.”
“Well, that’s because of you, that you’ve consistently pushed me this direction. More than anything I want to move out of warrior mode enough to start developing a rescue operation. I suppose until now, I never thought such a thing was possible and I was too lost in my fighting ways to see anything else.” He took a deep breath. “But there’s one thing you’ll need to be prepared for before you decide to take this on.”
“What’s that?”
“Things don’t always go as predicted in the field and there will be times that I’ll have to choose between your life and the life of a wraith-pair. I know myself well-enough to say with certainty that I will always choose you, which means I won’t hesitate to destroy an Invictus pair if it means I can save your life. Do you understand?”
She grew somber. “I do. I get it now. Before tonight, I’d never been up close to a battle before. And when I realized I had to choose between you and my mother, caught as she was in her vicious killing mode, well, it was probably one of the worst experiences of my life. But my choice seemed so simple. It had to be you. So I’ve already proven myself in the situation you’ve just described.”
He relaxed a little in that moment. His biggest concern about bonding with her, about engaging in a different kind of war against the Invictus, was over that issue. But it was clear she did understand what might be required as they moved together down this road.
He kissed her then, slanting his lips over hers, savoring that she tasted of berries soaked in wine. He slid his hands down to her waist and surrounded her fully, then squeezed.
She drew back. “I love it when you do that.”
His hands dropped to caress the luscious curves of her bottom.
“And that.”
He chuckled softly, but sobered almost as quickly. “And you’re sure you want to bond with me?”
She hugged him. “With all my heart.”