LITMIR.BIZ

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      Chapter 7

      Kai woke the next morning with the feel of Regan’s hand lingering in his and his head full of cotton. His arm ached sharply, which still took him by surprise. But after drawing water from the hand-bored well at the back of the dugout and scrubbing himself down, he flipped the hair out of his eyes and looked at the inflamed wound. Significant injuries healed preternaturally fast—but only to a point. Such healing exacted its own price, and his body knew when it wasn’t worth the trade-off.

      Like now.

      He glopped on the herbal unguent—prickly pear, sage, and juniper in bear grease and jojoba—that he’d learned to make in his family’s first days here, and wrapped the arm with cotton, tying it off with split ends and the help of his teeth. After that came Regan’s second bandanna, the one she’d left in his jacket.

      Simply because he wanted to wear it. And because he thought she’d like to see it.

      Not that he had any true clue what women liked or wanted. Only instinct, and a day with the lady Sentinel who had brought him through initiation at the age of fifteen.

      You’re strong, she’d said. You’re unrelentingly lynx. You really need more time than this to learn control or you’ll end up hurting someone. Be careful. Never forget.

      As if he could.

      And then she’d left...and shortly after that, his family had followed.

      His gaze strayed to his father’s unopened letter. Some small part of him cursed himself as a coward, but the lynx knew differently. The lynx lived in a world where things came in their own time—where Kai did what was necessary, when it was necessary.

      Yesterday, ghosting along the mountain ridge from Regan’s driveway, he’d been distracted and ill. He’d slipped into this home, shed his clothes and rolled up in the nest of a bed to sleep hard and right on through the night.

      This morning, the home set to rights and a breakfast of dried fruit behind him, he’d go see if he could make sense of what had happened the day before—heading for the dry pool with the letter tucked away for a later moment.

      He should have known Regan would be there and on the same mission.

      Maybe some part of him did. For he’d dressed not only in breechclout and leggings—the all-natural materials that would shift with him if he took the lynx—but had also covered his torso with the loose, long-tailed cotton shirt sewn to pioneer patterns and belted with flat, plain leather. He approached the dry pool as a gliding lynx, but Regan—when she finally realized he was there—found only the fully clothed human.

      She wore work jeans that fit loosely enough for active movement and yet somehow rode across her hips in the perfect spot to draw his eye—to make his heart beat just a little bit faster, before he even knew he’d responded to the sight of her at all. Her shirt was red again—red with a field of tiny blue flowers—and it only brought out the bright gold of her braid, the pleasant flush of exertion across fair skin. In her hand she held not the walking stick, but a shotgun.

      “Kai,” she said, as if seeing him here had been inevitable.

      As maybe it had. Given her deep connection to this land, whether she understood and acknowledged it or not.

      She said, “You left that handgun at my place.”

      “I have no use for it.” He’d carried it as far as her house and left it there with the vague thought that it was a thing of the human world; it did not belong in his. Now, if he couldn’t find what he needed here, he might ask to see it again.

      She sat on the throne of roots that had served her so well the day before and looked down on the dry pool, laying the shotgun across her knees. “I guess I had to come make sure they hadn’t come back. Or to clean up after their mess if they had.”

      “You would have felt it if they’d come back,” he told her, easing around the base of the pool until the butt of the shotgun, not the muzzle, pointed his way.

      She didn’t fail to notice. “Nothing in the chamber,” she said. “You think my dad let me grow up with a long gun in the house, and no gun safety?”

      “I think every gun is loaded,” Kai said—not speaking from the perspective of a Sentinel who’d been shot by a Core minion the day before, or from that of a human who’d also been taught gun safety on the way to adulthood, but from the perspective of a lynx who never assumed on the safety of his skin in the woods.

      But Regan winced, and he knew she’d taken it the obvious way. The day before way. “How’s your arm?”

      “Healing,” he said. He crouched by the side of the dry pool, letting his splayed fingers push through crackling leaves to feel the faint dampness below—moisture left from the spring melt. He let his awareness filter outward, a whisper of a question.

      He pretended not to notice when Regan stiffened, lifting her head—searching for what she’d heard without quite understanding from where it came.

      “Here,” he murmured, and lifted his head in invitation.

      She frowned, not quite certain. He gestured again, and she set the shotgun aside, sliding off the roots to land at the edge of the dry pool.

      Kai beckoned her closer and nodded at his hand. “Like this.”

      She crouched beside him, slowly imitating his reach for the land—stiff and wary and closed away.

      Not from him—Kai understood that right away. From fear of hearing again that faint whisper.

      But it wasn’t something to fear. It was something to celebrate. It was something to breathe in and exhale and feel alive about.

      He eased closer, his arm reaching out beside hers, his hand covering hers, his fingers gently reaching between hers to touch the ground. “Easy,” he said. “Quiet.” He brushed his thumb over her hand, soothing her.

      “What—” she said, her voice at normal volume—and then cut herself off, chagrined. When she spoke again, she did so quietly. “What are we doing?”

      “Listening,” he told her.

      “Why? To what?”

      “Shh,” he said, close to her ear and barely putting sound behind the words. “To learn.”

      “I don’t—”

      “Shh. Learn.” He stroked her hand with his thumb again, and went back to the land.

      Gentle burble of precious water soaking deep, feeding roots, damping ground. Hints of icy cold below, the touch of warmth above. The great, thrumming heartbeat of networked life, scampering little nails...the crunch of a seed, the hull left behind...

      And the dark blot of the spot that felt nothing at all. Cold metal, a whiff of corruption—

      Hurts...

      Regan’s hand jerked beneath his.

      “Shh,” he said, coming back to himself. “You’re safe. You’re...” He trailed off, suddenly aware that his head tipped forward against hers, that her pale gold hair tickled his face and the beguiling scent of it tickled his nose. His hand had slipped around her waist to press across her stomach, now suddenly aware of the flutter in her breathing. “Regan,” he murmured and nuzzled behind her ear.

      “Not,” she whispered, freezing under his touch. “Not safe at all.” And she turned in his arms, her hand coming up to cup his cheek. He leaned into it as she leaned into him, mouth closing in on his.

      Instantly, he tugged her closer, bringing them together so she suddenly straddled his thigh; she gasped into his mouth and twined her fingers through his hair, holding him so she could tilt her head to touch his lips with her tongue, a flirt that led to ferocity and his shudder of response.

      He hadn’t planned to tuck one hand under the firm muscle of her bottom and tip her so she could have received him, but

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