Then, without waiting for clarity to return to the Demon mother, the Mistral turned into the mourning dove and flew out the window, reeling away on the wind as if sheer joy lifted her wings to the heavens.
Legna was smiling when she became aware once again. Forgetting everything else, she leapt from her chair, knocking it over heedlessly as she raced to find her husband and tell him everything she could remember.
Elijah woke to the sparkling sensation of a warm, lush mouth rubbing against his.
He opened his eyes, and then opened them quite a bit more when he saw the familiar golden gaze of his mate glowing with life and mischief in her gold-and-pink splotched face.
A face healed of all blisters, only new skin that would soon fade to normal, luxurious, beautiful gold once more in what promised to be no time at all.
"You look like hell," Siena remarked, her voice muffled against his mouth, but its usual rich tone was otherwise free of defect and injury.
He felt glorious.
Elijah reached for the covers and yanked them down, tumbling her off his body as he sat up and inspected her from head to toe, his hands tracing where his eyes went, affirming her healing state with tactile, as well as visual, proof.
"Are you trying to turn me on?" she asked, arching one shiny gold brow with a distinctly lecherous humor.
The last thing he reached for was her glimmering, springy, and oh-so-lively hair, sifting the tightly sprung curls through his fingers as a huge grin spread over his face.
Siena sat up, bumping his nose with hers.
"Is that a yes?" she asked, crossing her eyes as she tried to focus on him.
"You are…amazing," he breathed, his hands framing her face eagerly, the rough warmth of his palms becoming so familiar, so wonderfully necessary for her happiness, that she smiled wider.
"I think I look like a leopard," she remarked, pulling back to inspect her spotted arms and legs. Then that mischievous smile blossomed over her gorgeous lips. "Want to play connect the dots?"
Elijah threw back his leonine head and laughed from deep in his belly, dragging her into his embrace so tightly she gasped for air with a laugh even as he covered her mouth with a soul tattooing kiss that made her feel light-headed and joyful.
The sound of the door opening made them jump apart, and Elijah instinctively jerked the covers back over his wife's bare body as she wiped a guilty hand over her damp mouth. He reached under the covers to pinch her for that, making her hello to her sister and her General come out half squeaky.
"Siena! You look great!" Syreena gushed happily, rushing to hug her sister from one side while Anya rushed at her from the other. Elijah had to lean back to avoid getting crushed by the tangle of females.
"Hey! You've had this fantasy before!"
Elijah laughed and turned to look at Bella, immediately opening his arms and beckoning her to them. She jumped into his embrace with a delighted bounce, hugging him as tightly as he hugged her.
"Thank you," he murmured softly into her ear. "Thank you for what you did. But as your teacher, I should tell you to never do that again," he said with fierce scolding.
"You have a deal," she said intensely as she practically strangled him with grateful affection.
"And I thought he would be boring once he got married," Jacob remarked dryly to Gideon and Legna, who crowded the doorway with him.
"Absolutely not," Gideon said suddenly, locking his arms around his wife when she went to rush into the room with intentions of joining the love fest.
"That, I believe, is my line," Jacob said with a chuckle as he moved to retrieve Bella before her chokehold on Elijah deprived him of oxygen any longer.
Women tumbled off the bed on all sides, everyone chattering and exchanging their side of the same story at once.
Until Noah cleared his throat from the doorway and said one soft statement: "Ladies, gentlemen; I believe we have a hunt awaiting us."
CHAPTER 17
"This is where you tracked them to?" Siena asked softly, squinting her eyes so that her keen vision focused on the forest below their perch on the mountainside. "This is not one hundred miles from my castle."
"And barely twenty from where I was attacked," Elijah added.
"I don't know about you guys, but this looks like a staging ground to me," Isabella remarked, holding up her binoculars again. "Jacob, move back, you're making this thing blurry."
She reached behind herself to push him away, and the Enforcer, who needed no such devices to see at a distance, backed up as ordered. He continued to peruse the same area she did from an added distance.
"Ah, better," Isabella said, clearly pleased to be able to use the human invention.
"I think Bella is right. Magic-users so close to Siena's seat of power? Risking being so deep in 'Thrope territory?" Elijah shook his head. "What else could it be?"
"A search party."
That remark made everyone look back at Gideon, who was leaning back nonchalantly against the rock face, his feet casually crossed at the ankles.
"Look back farther, beyond the encampment," he instructed. "See the ground? It has been churned up like a farmer's field, even deeper than that in some places. You know, I once spent well over a century of my life pursuing the ancient histories and cultures of medicine. I do not claim to be an expert on excavation, but those grids of twine in the field look very much like those in an archaeological dig. It appears to me that they are looking for something and they are going about it very carefully."
"Looking for what?" Siena queried. "Goddess, just look at the size of that dig. It's enormous. It would take years to properly excavate anything of that size." She turned to look at Gideon. "Why are they in Russian territory, in winter no less, digging in near-frozen ground?"
"Yes. In winter. When the usual traffic in this territory is almost nil because the only beings who could present any possible danger to them are all settling down for a nice, long nap," Elijah speculated.
"Yes, of course! A third of us are already in hibernation. More than half of the remaining population probably went to the caves right after the Samhain feasts!" Syreena spoke up in a hushed voice. "Let me fly over and take a look."
"No!"
The chorus of voices and hands that stopped her from rising made her crouch back down immediately.
"There are wards all over the place. You cannot see them, but I can," Jacob told her. "They make unnatural currents in the wildlife and vegetation."
"And before you say it, they are in the air as well," Elijah added before she could point out that she intended to fly, not walk.
"Oh." Syreena felt more than a little foolish for her unthinking haste, and her skin flushed. "How is it that you see this, yet we who are of the forest, we who live here constantly, cannot?"
"Do not sell yourself short," Gideon said quietly. "We do not see them easily either. You have to be looking for them, and the signs are almost impossible to sort through without centuries of experience. Even so, Elijah no doubt tripped a few of those wards the day of his original attack. That is, after all, what brought their attention to his approach. It was also quite likely the motivation behind their attempt to murder him."
"Don't remind me," Elijah said wryly. "Some warrior I am. I walked smack into the ones on the ground."
"You could not expect to see them. The rhythms of the wildlife and the forest are not your area of expertise," Noah countered him, dismissing the warrior's self-recriminations. "On the contrary, I think you just happen to be a little too good at your job. I don't think they meant to attract you. I also do not believe they set out to trap you in specific, Elijah. Just anyone who came too close to uncovering their clandestine proceedings."
"The purposeful trap came later," Siena mused aloud. "They probably cast wards around the battle area shortly after, setting the trap for anyone who came looking for Elijah's body. Only they didn't realize that he had been rescued before they had even stopped running away from the cougar's scream."
"So close," Anya said softly, the bitter edge to her voice attracting their attention better than a shout would have. "These are my woodlands," she explained, her sleek eyes glittering with hard anger. "My territory. My responsibility is to guard and protect them exactly as I guard and protect the Queen who rules them. I should have at least set a territorial perimeter of guards after the Battle of Beltane. This is an unforgivable lapse in security."
"And I should never have taken Legna to a known territory last night when Ruth was aware that our Imprinting would leave us…shall we say…sufficiently distracted from concerns of safety." Gideon looked the half-breed over calmly. "I believe we can come to the consensus that we all have made some mistakes over this past year. It is to be expected when there is so much for us to think about. These women, these stained creatures, are focused on only one thing. Eradicating us. All of us. That gives them the luxury of uncommon focus."
"For them, it is a holy war," Noah added. "They have the advantage that fanaticism gives them. They do not struggle with their consciences like we do. To them, it is black and white. We are evil and we must be destroyed for it."
"This search, I guarantee you, is probably a means to that same end," Gideon speculated darkly. "Every Crusade was as much about gathering valuable relics, religious or otherwise, as it was about upholding claims to religious principles or lands."
"Ah, the good old days," Isabella quipped with a lopsided grin as she winked at Magdelegna. "Memories of a reckless youth, Gideon?"
Gideon flicked the little Druid an acidic glare that only managed to send her into a fit of giggles.
"As much as I would love to hear about Gideon and Richard the Lionheart rounding the pubs of the Byzantine Empire," Siena said seriously, although there was repressed humor in her golden eyes, "I want to get these particular crusaders off my territory."