Tears stung her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You cannot,” he promised, brushing away the wetness with his thumbs. “I am yours, my mate, always. I will love you for all my life, and into the next.”
He touched his forehead to hers and started to move again, slower this time, savoring every stroke. Summer shut her eyes as his rumble-purr vibrated through her again . . .
Sometime later Summer awoke. She rolled over, reaching for Ke’lar, and found only emptiness.
She half sat up, her hand still stretched toward where he had lain.
I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. I’ll reach for him, look for him, and the place beside me, where he should be, will always be empty . . .
Summer dressed in the blue gown and slippers again, the only clothes she had with her. The ship was very quiet.
She found him in the cockpit. He would have heard her coming with that g’hir hearing of his but he didn’t turn around, his gaze toward the vast black emptiness of space framed by the ship’s front windows.
“We are clear of the Hironian system,” he said quietly. “I can initiate the jump any time.”
Summer’s throat tightened. “Okay.”
He waited until she was seated in the co-pilot’s chair, until she was strapped in.
His fingers moved over the controls. “Initiating jump in three . . . two . . . one.”
She drew her breath in sharply as a blinding burst of light appeared and vanished again, leaving the stars in completely different places, and a wondrous sight filling the viewport windows.
It was beautiful, hanging in the blackness of space like some exquisite blue jewel, so isolated, so vulnerable.
“Earth . . .” she whispered.
“You are home, my Summer,” he rumbled hoarsely, and the world blurred at the anguish in his voice.
Twenty-one
“The house looks okay,” Summer said, chewing her lip for a moment and pulling the cloak tighter around her.
The sky was an ominous gray and it looked like more snow was on the way but her uncle’s cabin looked as it always did—a little rundown, the porch in need of painting, but quaintly nestled in the woods and a mile in every direction from the nearest neighbor.
“You are shivering.”
“Yeah. December. Smoky Mountains. Pretty fucking cold.”
Ke’lar’s eyes were troubled. “I should have secured you more suitable clothing for this weather.”
She reached out, her fingers intertwining with his. His hand was warm, strong—as always.
“I wasn’t complaining. I was actually trying to be funny.” She gave a half smile. “Though I’m really sorry those boots you made got left behind on Hir. They rocked.”
He smiled faintly. “I wish there was time to make you others.”
And we’re almost out of time, aren’t we?
He could never return here; the briefest visit would endanger him and not even Beya awaited him on Hir now. He would return as a criminal on his world, alone and hated, without even the unconditional comfort of the multari’s steadfast presence.
Ke’lar was making the greatest sacrifice a warrior of Hir could, to be separated from his bound mate, for her sake and the sake of a child he had never met, yet considered his own . . .
All I want to do is cry till I don’t have a tear left but I can’t make this harder for him. I have to honor his courage; I have to match it— he deserves that from me at least.
Summer swallowed hard and wrenched her gaze from his and back to Uncle Lester’s cabin.
Her car, covered in snow, was still parked outside. The lights inside the cabin were on, and shifting a bit she could see the TV still on as well. If someone—or even the police—had come by the cabin they wouldn’t have left everything on like that, would they? They would have towed her car, checked it for evidence or something.
“Well,” she murmured, “everything looks just like it did when I left it.”
“You do not sound certain.”
“I won’t be certain till I get inside,” she admitted. “But no one has even cleared the snow off the steps. I don’t see any sign anyone’s here—or has been here. Let me take a look. I’ll be right back.”
He caught her before she’d taken more than a single step. “I will go and ascertain if it is safe.”
So beloved to her now, his brilliant eyes were alert as they scanned the cabin and the area, his rippled brow lowered a bit, the showing fangs a dead giveaway he was anticipating danger.
“I think it’s better if I go,” she said. “If Uncle Lester’s come home early, you won’t have to lift a finger. He’ll take one look at you and have a heart attack.”
His glowing eyes turned to her. “I will not let you go alone.”
Summer sighed inwardly. At this rate they’d be here till nightfall.
“Fine, we’ll just go together, okay? But I go first and if there are any humans around, don’t let them see you.”
Her feet, still in slippers, were half-frozen by the time they made it to the door. It wasn’t locked.