She squeezed him and pressed her face to his chest. His arms tightened around her. She felt the kiss he placed on the top of her head in every cell of her body. A feeling of lassitude weighted her eyelids and limbs. She still sensed Saint’s turmoil, but it seemed distant…a storm brewing on the horizon on a lazy, sunny day. She reminded herself to take heart in the fact that he hadn’t walked away this time.
That was progress, wasn’t it?
But she wondered about that when he tensed and gently pried her arms from his body. Christina’s heart froze.
“If you walk away from me again, I can’t be responsible for what I might do, Sain
t.”
He grimaced as he glanced back at her from a sitting position. “I’m sorry. It’s not what you’re thinking. Kavya is here at Whitby. He’s speaking to me with his mind…asking me to meet him.”
“What’s wrong?” Christina asked as she watched him lunge off the bed. “You seem upset. Surely he’s requested a meeting before, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. But never once in my living memory has he indicated the summoning was urgent.” He froze in the action of reaching for his heartluster.
“What is it?”
“Kavya indicates you should come as well,” Saint said warily.
Chapter Sixteen
Whitby was a three-story, granite, Romanesque-style mansion. A fifteen-foot-wide balcony stretched along the length of the front of the house, couched between two cupolas. Mahogany French doors opened to the balcony from a library, the dining room, and the entertainment studio.
Saint led Christina by the hand through the entertainment studio and out onto the balcony. Her eyes caught movement. It was as though the shadowed granite wall had shifted and sprung to life.
“Christina. It is my greatest honor to meet you.”
Christina shivered when Kavya took her hand. She didn’t think it was from fear…more like awe. His hand felt cool and dry when he squeezed her hand in greeting. Wonder reverberated through her flesh when she realized she touched a being from a different planet.
An alien.
“Yes, in the truest sense of the word,” Kavya responded immediately. “I’m forever bumbling about your lovely planet…forever an interloper. We are much more similar in genetic make-up to humans than different, but alas…the difference is telling.”
“You’re not telling me anything new,” Christina replied with her mind. It somehow didn’t seem strange at all that she carried on the conversation with Kavya telepathically. She’d always possessed the skill, but without the company of truly adept telepaths, her talent had never been prodded into full expression. Aidan and Saint were both mind readers, but Kavya’s sharp, blazing clarity of thought was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
“Saint is so strange, sometimes. I can’t believe other humans don’t notice it,” she said.
“Humans don’t notice many things. The richness of their planet, for instance. The vibrancy of their souls. They are forever wasting their vitessence—allowing others to rob what is theirs by right. They respond to the theft by draining another’s energy, and the cycle proliferates. Shame, really.”
She peered at Kavya’s lean, angular features in the dim light cast from the entertainment studio. The strange hat he wore covered his hair, but his thick sideburns were light brown in color. His face was arresting—stunning, even. It was so perfectly proportioned, so elementally masculine, that she had the impression she gazed at a god. She stilled when she looked into his striking blue eyes. She turned her hand in his hold, gripping his wrist, absorbing his energy more fully.
“You’re Saint’s father.”
He laughed aloud, the joyful sound making Christina start in surprise. He’d been so sober before, so formidable. To see two sets of lethal-looking fangs set amidst that genuinely beautiful smile certainly underlined the difference of Kavya to an exponential degree.
“Yes. Saint has my genes, in addition to those of a particularly fierce human-wolf shapeshifter I once knew.”
“Human shapeshifter? You mean creatures like that actually exist outside of Hollywood—I mean, aside from Saint and the Iniskium, of course,” she finished awkwardly.
“Oh, yes,” Kavya replied matter-of-factly. “Many things exist here on Earth that apparently only a few chosen humans can see. But, in regards to Saint’s true creation, you are as much responsible as I.”
“Excuse me?” Christina whispered out loud.
“What are you two talking about?” Saint asked, his tone sharp with irritation. Christina realized he was even more perplexed by what was going on than she was. Kavya must have blocked him from their telepathic exchange.
“I need to speak with you both about the boy,” Kavya said aloud.
Christina slowly withdrew her hand from Kavya’s.