Kylie pouted as she piled leftovers into the fridge. “Why should I not have a little trouble with all this? You had a big ol’ head start when it happened to you.”
“On the subject of Wardens, Guardians, and the Order? Yeah, I did. But when it came to mating a great big hunk of winged badass, I did not, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”
Groaning, Kylie climbed onto a stool and buried her face in her arms. “Wynneleh, it’s just too much,” she mumbled into her own forearms. “I don’t know what to do with all this.”
“Really? Because judging by the crack in the plaster behind the headboard in your guest room, I’d say you knew exactly what to do this afternoon.”
“There are knives hanging right over there.” Kylie glared. “Don’t make me stab you.”
Wynn laughed. “What? I’m not allowed to know you had sex? Or I’m not allowed to know it was good enough to crack your plaster?”
“Neither. Either. Both. Yes. No.”
“Maybe?” Her friend’s amusement rang clear, but at least she didn’t laugh again. “Look, I’m not going to tell you that I took to this whole mating thing like a duck to water, either. I don’t think any of us did, and it’s natural to have doubts. It’s weird, it’s fast, and it came out of frickin’ nowhere, am I right?”
“Oy vey, are you right!”
“Right. But this wasn’t really nowhere. I know you’re not really religious, and I’m all witchy-witchy-woo-woo, which you don’t really get, but I do honestly believe that the Goddess, or God, or Fate or whatever you want to call it, has a hand in all of this.”
“Is the hand attached to a mouth that can’t stop laughing?”
Wynn snickered. “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong about all this. There’s a reason why we—you and me and Felicity and Ella—why we’ve been able to wake up the Guardians, and why we’ve been able to do it now, when clearly the danger from the Order is building. There’s a reason why the old Wardens have gone missing, and why what’s happening now bears so many similarities to the legend of the first Guardians and the females of power.” She paused. “Please tell me that Dag at least told you that whole story after what happened this afternoon. I mean, after we talked in here earlier.”
Kylie nodded.
“Okay, so you know that when the old ways stopped working, that was when the women woke the Guardians and helped defeat the Seven. The Guardians couldn’t do it alone; they needed the special bond they had with their mates. They drew strength from it and that strength was necessary to their victory. So maybe the same thing is true now. Maybe we’re necessary to help Dag and Knox and the others keep the Order from winning.”
Kylie heard her words and understood what she was saying. She even maybe believed some of it, but she still felt as though there were some kind of trap closing around her. Or maybe an Acme brand anvil dangling by a rope above her head. “You mean, I should just lie back and think of England,” she said, sighing.
“Oh, hell no!” Wynn scoffed. “I’m much more an advocate of sitting up and riding him like a cowgirl. I just mean that maybe if you just stopped fighting quite so hard and stopped trying to make everything make sense, things might fall into place without your help. You have to remember, Koyote girl, that life is not a program you can debug, or a line of code you can tweak until it all does what you want it to. It’s a little bit more complicated than that.”
Oh, how she hated it when other people made all the sense. She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes at her friend. “I still might stab you.”
“Ha! I’d like to see you try. You’d have to get through my fiancé first, and he can’t stand the sight of my blood.”
And that reminded Kylie of all the things Wynn had gone through since she had been dragged into this mess well before Kylie had gotten involved. Wynn hadn’t just been hurt, attacked, shot at, and nearly killed, she had lost a brother.
It all came back to Bran, and his loss was what had motivated Kylie to start digging around in the first place. She didn’t want anyone else to lose their own family the same way, stolen from them by a group of people too greedy for power to see the lives of others as anything other than fuel for their evil fires.
Stopping the Order was the most important thing Kylie could ever do. Could she do that without the giant Guardian by her side?
Did she want to?
Chapter Twelve
Az dos harts iz ful, geyen di oygen iber.
When the heart is full, the eyes overflow.
Dag entered the room warily, nearly tiptoeing over the cool floorboards, entirely unsure of his welcome. A smart warrior, a cautious warrior, would have executed a strategic disengagement and given his mate the time she had told him she needed to sort through her feelings and the crucible of events she had already been through.