“I don’t have my things,” she began.
“You have things at the cottage, enough to get you through. You can think of it as us taking turns. Stay tonight, Meara. Share my bed.”
“Are you asking because you want me to share your bed, or because you’re worried about me being on my own?”
“It would be both, but if you won’t stay, I’ll be sharing your bed.”
“That’s a fine answer,” she decided. “It works well for me. I’ll stay tonight.”
He took her hand, leaned toward her when he stopped the lorry in front of the cottage. And could already feel the kiss moving through him before their mouths met.
The lorry shook as if from a quake, jolted as the wolf pounced.
It snarled, eyes and stone gleaming red, then with a howl echoing with triumph, leaped off. And was gone.
“Holy Jesus!” Meara managed an instant before Connor shoved out of the lorry. “Wait, wait. It might still be out there.” She yanked at her own door, shoved, but it held firm against her.
“Goddamn it, Connor. Goddamn it, let me out.”
He only flicked her a glance as Roibeard landed light as down on his shoulder.
In that moment, in that glance, it was like looking at a stranger, one sparking with power and rage. Light swirled around him, like a current that would surely shock to the touch.
She’d known him the whole of her life, she thought as her breath backed up in her lungs, but she’d never seen him truly, fully until that moment when the full force and fury of what ran in his blood revealed itself.
Then Branna rushed from the house, with Kathel thundering out with her. Her hair, raven black, flew behind her. She had a short sword in one hand, a ball of hot blue fire forming in the other.
Meara saw their eyes meet, hold. In that exchange she saw a bond she could never share, never really know. Not just of power and magick, but of blood and purpose and knowledge.
There she saw a kinship that ran deeper, wider even than love.
Before she’d caught her breath again, Fin’s fancy car spun up. He and Iona bolted from either side. So the four of them stood, united, forming a circle, one where the light undulated and spread until it stung her eyes.
It died away, and it was only her friends, her lover, standing in front of the pretty cottage with its blaze of flowers.
Now when she pushed at the door, it sprang open—and she sprang out.
She marched straight to Connor, shoved him hard enough to knock him back a step. “Don’t you ever lock me in or out again. I won’t be closed off or tucked away like someone helpless.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clear. It was wrong of me, and I’m sorry for it.”
“You’ve no right, no right to close me out of it.”
“Or me,” Boyle said, his face ripe with fury, when he strode up beside her. “Be grateful I don’t break your head for it.”
“It’s grateful I am, and sorry as well.”
Meara saw for the first time Alastar had come—he must have all but flown from the stables. So there was horse, hawk, and hound; the dark witches three; and the blood of Cabhan, with his own hawk standing now with Roibeard on the branch of a nearby tree.
And there was herself and Boyle.
“We’re a circle or we’re not.”
“We are.” Connor took her hands, gripped them only tighter when she started to yank them free. “We are. It was wrong of me. I jumped straight into the fury of it, and that was wrong as well. And foolish. I shut you out of it, both of you, and that showed you no respect. I’ll say again, I’m sorry for it.”
“All right then.” Boyle shoved at his hair. “Bloody hell I could do with a beer.”
“Go on in,” Branna told him, glanced around at the others. “Help yourself to what you want. I need a moment with Meara. A moment with Meara,” she repeated when Connor continued to grip Meara’s hands. “Go, have a beer and open the wine Fin should’ve brought with him.”