Page 65 of Claim the Light
“I wish we could stay here, but we need to get back,” I say softly.
“Do we?” he asks, his brown eyes suddenly bright in the twilight. “Do we really need to go back?”
Well, clearly, he doesn’t remember the stag trying to kill him or he might not be so keen to stay here. All night. In the dark.
“Isaac mentioned a cabin in this forest.” Micah glances back toward the mountains. “I think I saw it on the way, halfway between the lake and the door at the top of the mountain. It could be a good stopover point.”
I consider Micah carefully. I’d love to believe that his motivations are founded in the chance to be naked in front of a cabin fire, but there’s tension in his voice.
Quietly, I ask, “Are you trying to tell me you’re not sure if you have the strength to fly all the way back to the door?”
He clears his throat. “I feel fine. Fucking great.”
My gaze becomes a stern glare. It’s one thing to fly over the forest but an entirely different challenge to ascend at the sharp angle that’s required to reach the height of the mountain’s peak. It will be arduous, to say the least.
“Okay, I don’t feel fine,” he says in a rush, his shoulders hunching. “I feel tired.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t describe it. It’s like my body’s fighting an internal battle and I have no say in it. No control over it. It’s fucking frustrating.”
I reach for him, my hand slipping over his heart. “So much more frustrating for an alpha, who is supposed to never tire. Never falter. Always remain in control. But it’s just you and me here. There is no weakness. There’s only strength.”
The anger in his expression fades, his jaw unclenching, his gaze softening. “Your hand is warm.”
I meet his eyes with a soft smile. “Will your strength take you as far as the cabin?”
“It will.”
“Then that’s where we’ll stay the night.”
Without further fuss, I slip my hand away from Micah and reach down to the rabbit on my right. “Okay, little one, off you go.”
I give it a little scratch behind its ear and it leans into me before it hops away. When I nudge the other one in the same direction, it bounds across the grass to join its friend before they both stop and turn expectantly, their ears flopping down beside their faces.
“You too,” Micah says, lifting the sleeping rabbit off his lap. It wiggles its nose, blinks its eyes, and then leaps across the grass to join its pack.
Within seconds, their paths along the lake’s edge appear as three lines of retreating splashes within the sea of light.
As if on cue, the dragonflies lift away from me and dive back into the water, and then it’s just Micah and me again.
We take to the air, our wings beating smoothly as we rise above the trees.
The mountain is a looming presence in the far distance. When I scan the forest off to the left, I make out a brighter patch, where there’s a clearing within which is the shape of a cabin.
Keeping Micah within my sights at all times, I veer in that direction. He stays close beside me until we land in front of the cabin’s porch and then he takes the lead, scanning the perimeter before heading up the short steps.
I hang back, still studying the forest.
Normally, I would assume that Micah would hear any approaching threats—just as he’d heard the deer before I did. But I can’t be sure now if his senses will be operating at full strength.
Closing my eyes and listening carefully, I take in the quiet noises that indicate movement through the undergrowth and within the trees, but it’s all quiet rustling, nothing sharp or sudden.
A bird calls softly, then another, and it sounds like some sort of owl—two of them—calling to each other. The hooting fades. I wait another moment for the hush to resume and then I turn away from the forest, as satisfied as I can be that our surroundings are safe for now.
Ahead of me, Micah is pushing open the door. It creaks a little and then catches on its hinges, only opening partway.
He makes an unhappy noise in the back of his throat and when I draw level with him and peer through the narrow opening, I can see why.
There’s a skylight in the ceiling and the moonbeams reveal a whole lot of dust and some very old furniture. Two chairs, one broken. A table with cracks in the surface. A tattered rug in front of a blackened fireplace.
