CHAPTER16
Gunner looked at Cate,the shifter glow vivid in his amber eyes, turning them to gold. She’d expected to see so many things this far into the ritual.
Hunger.
Need.
Lust.
But what she saw instead caused her stomach to flip.
Gunner looked at her like she washis.
Her heart lurched in her chest, and she had to fight the surge of emotion within her at the sight.
Gunner closed the space between him with the softest kiss.
It wasn’t a kiss of fire, or ice.
It wasn’t something purely for sexual gain, either.
Instead, it was the kind of kiss that destroyed empires. The kind of kiss that got scribbled on papyrus or on ancient walls, the kind that playwrights and musicians wrote about.
A kiss of absolute love.
Cate knew as she kissed Gunner, tasted the remnants of herself on his tongue, that if all the time they had was this fleeting moment, she would savor what she could.
Because she knew in the thousands of years she’d lived, and the thousands she would live thereafter, no one would ever kiss her like this. Not again.
Her magic prickled against her skin, this time much more vibrant, and Gunner’s wolf responded in tune. They sat there in the marked dirt, glowing tendrils of blue and green and yellow dancing like ribbons around them, bathed in the light of the full moon.
Dawn would be approaching before too long.
The night would cease, and with it Gunner would go.
To his home, his family.
To his life.
The life he’d been living before she stumbled upon him, drunk in a bar at a speed dating event.
“Give him permission, Gunner. Let go,” she whispered the words against his lips, and though she spoke the truth, somehow the words were something else in her brain.
What she’d longed to say was, “Don’t go. Stay.”
Gunner shifted his body forward, his large arms circling her waist, fingers splayed at her back as he pulled her close once more. The touch was firm and wanting, and Cate wanted to melt into a puddle.
Which wasinsane.
No woman or man had ever managed to breach her defenses quite like this, let alone so quickly, but Cate could not deny it felt right.
Her eyes caught a bright, blinding light sparkling not far from where they sat twisted together. The low hum of magic buzzing in her ears felt most noticeable to her, although she was certain Gunner could not hear it. Though he was a shifter, he was still mortal. Her kind created it, after all.
The Diviner sang its whistling tune, and the power beneath the earth hummed along with it. In the moonlight her own magic echoed with the symphony around them, joined by the vibrations of a caged spirit that longed to be part of the band. As her eyes fixed on the glowing moonstone, the conductor in this magical orchestra, she understood completely why she felt this way.
Because the Diviner did not lie.
It told the truth.