Luin

After dinner was done, we all lingered at the table, just relaxing. Glenna got the stew recipe from Arrowan while Safiya, Magnus, and Lachlan chatted. I sat back and took it all in. The feeling of family and togetherness I got from these gatherings had been all that kept me going sometimes over the past couple of years. Having Arrowan here fulfilled so many of my daydreams.

I used to always try to sit next to an empty chair, mentally reserving that seat for my bond mate, and having him finally filling that seat... well, it was kind of surreal.

Then I heard Magnus choke and snapped back to attention. Lachlan patted his back, but he was laughing softly. Safiya, on the other hand, was positively cackling. What had I missed?

"Magnus? Are you okay?" Glenna asked.

He nodded furiously and chugged some water.

"What's all this about?" I asked.

Safiya rolled her eyes. "I just asked when they were going to have kids."

I couldn't stop a little giggling laugh from escaping, and I snapped a hand over my mouth. Safiya's eyes met mine and she started a whole new round of hysterics.

"So? Have you two talked about it at all?" Glenna asked. I was surprised she did, since usually she was the last person to press people to talk about something that would clearly make them uncomfortable.

Lachlan wrapped an arm over Magnus' shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. "We've talked about it a bit, but there's no rush."

I glanced at Arrowan. Where would he land on the kids issue? I hadn't ever really thought about whether I would have kids one day. It had been a big enough struggle just meeting my bond mate, and no way was I going to have kids without him. Children deserve a stable home with two parents. Now that Arrowan was here... well, maybe someday it would be possible.

He caught me staring and lifted a brow, but I shook my head and turned back to the rest of the table, desperately hoping my cheeks would cool soon. Arrowan gently took hold of my hand under the table and wove our fingers together, ensuring my cheeks would stay pink for the remainder of our time here.

--

We left a couple of hours after eating. After a round of goodbyes, I hugged the empty stew pot to my chest – Safiya had insisted on keeping the leftovers – and led Arrowan the short distance to the house we were staying in. Almost as soon as we stepped off Safiya and Glenna's property, the shadows around us moved and hands roughly grabbed me, yanking me away from Arrowan.

The street around us shimmered and disappeared, then was replaced with a dark forest. We weren't in California anymore. I panicked until Arrowan appeared at my side seconds later, and I still struggled with the shock while I struggled reflexively. My body registered the threat and responded while my mind was still trying to process the situation. I caught sight of Arrowan swinging a punch at a dark, indistinct figure and I started to understand.

Shadow magic – Arrowan had told me it was something the Unseelie could do, but I never did ask about what it meant. The person who held me in a tight grip no matter how hard I fought to get away, he was ensconced in shadows and his form seemed to waver when I landed a kick on his leg, like my foot was sort of passing through him. How could I fight an enemy I could barely see, who'd ambushed me, and who could soften my blows against him?

The arms around me tightened and it started getting harder to draw in air. I hadn't taken Arrowan seriously enough when he told me about the danger the Unseelie posed to us. I had never been very afraid of attack, since I could teleport away from any attacker, but that only worked if I got a moment alone.

And even if I could manage to break my attacker's hold on me long enough to teleport away from him, I couldn't just leave Arrowan here.

I thought my vision was darkening, but it was hard to be sure when my surroundings were so dark already. I blinked furiously against my fading vision, but of course that did no good.

Since lashing out physically was obviously going to get me nowhere, I started mentally flipping through my magical options. I couldn't compel my captor to release me since that required eye contact, and I couldn't see a shadow's eyes. Tracking magic was useless here. It was too late for warding to help us. I had exactly one trick left that might help – metal manipulation. I only had a trace of metal magic and I was out of practice, but I screwed my eyes shut anyway and cast out my senses, looking for something I could fling at him.

The stew pot! It was trapped between our bodies, but I could change that. I flung my magic into it and warped the metal so it folded in on itself and contorted until it was able to slip between us. It landed on the ground and I writhed in the space it had just freed between me and my captor, who only pulled me tighter against him.

"You can't get away from me," he said. "You're outclassed, and as soon as my partner restrains your bond mate, he's going to watch you die."

I never was a fighter. I was never good in a tense situation. Mental anguish I could handle. Crippling hope was the backdrop to years of my life. Give me a mental or emotional struggle any day, and I wouldn't break under the weight of it.

This was different, though. I had never encountered mortal peril before. I had never been in a real fight, much less a fight for my life. It turns out, I was exactly the wrong kind of person to be in this situation. My body froze with terror as I realized exactly what was happening.

These Unseelie, they were going to kill me in front of Arrowan, then take him back to Alterra for a public execution. I was out of commission and when I looked back at Arrowan's fight, I had no idea who was winning. Arrowan staggered as he took a punch to the face, but came back swinging. My eyes screwed shut automatically, shutting out the images I wasn't prepared to process. I didn't need to see Arrowan fighting for both our lives. If he lost, I didn't want to see my death coming.

I had no idea how long I stood there, trying and failing to calm my racing heart as panic ate at me. Somewhere in that fog, I remembered the mangled pot at my feet. My first instinct was to reach for it with my magic again and to use it to try and knock out the man holding me, but I opened my eyes again just in time to see Arrowan being knocked to the ground as his assailant reached for the holster at his waist and pulled out a small device I couldn't identify. I reacted on instinct, sending the pot flying into his hand and knocking the device out of it.

Arrowan used that moment of surprise to buck up his hips and maneuver so he had his opponent pinned. While Arrowan rained blows on the man underneath him, I felt the arms holding me start to slacken.

Was my opponent considering releasing me and going to help his partner? I couldn't let that happen. Arrowan would be overpowered and I couldn't do enough to help him. I was more useful here, being held captive and taking one of our assailants out of the fight. Maybe I was being too complacent?

I started struggling again, wriggling and kicking and lashing out. I flung my head forward, trying to smash it into my captor's face, but to my relief, he dodged. I could only imagine how much it would hurt to actually slam my face into someone else's. My sad attempt at fighting back did the trick – the arms banded around me tightened again.

I kept struggling until Arrowan loomed over my captor and smashed the mangled pot into the back of his head, following it up with a few sickening kicks. I fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs, but was able to finally extract myself from the shadowed fae.

"Let's get out of here," I said, holding a hand out to Arrowan. He took my hand and I teleported us back into the house.

It was dark inside. After that harrowing fight against shadows in a nighttime forest, being in the dark skeeved me out and the first thing I did was turn on lights all around the room. Arrowan leaned against a wall, panting hard.

"Are you okay?" he asked. His voice sounded scratchier, and when I looked at his neck, it was bright red like he'd been choked.

"Fine. You got the worst of it."

Arrowan sighed and shut his eyes as his chest still heaved. When he opened them again, he grabbed my arm and pulled me against his chest, hugging me close. His chin rested on my shoulder and I folded myself into the embrace. How could I feel so safe, so secure, after such an ordeal? I tucked my head so my cheek was resting against his chest, and Arrowan was so much bigger than me that I felt completely encompassed in him.

"How about you? How hurt are you?" I asked. My words were muffled against his chest, but they were clear enough.

"Fine. I was so worried about you." His arms tightened around me and I felt tears well in my eyes. I'd had the time to worry about both of us.

"He wasn't going to hurt me yet. He said he wanted to make you watch them kill me."

Arrowan stiffened, then pulled us far enough apart that I could look up at his grim expression. "We need to be more careful. No more walking around outside, and you need to start training."

Normally I wouldn't appreciate being told what to do, but he was right. "How long until they give up on us?" I asked. We couldn't hole up in warded spaces forever. Tonight, we could have teleported home directly from Safiya and Glenna's house, but we shouldn't have had to act quite that paranoid. Their entire property was warded. Between the edge of the property and the wards around the house we were staying in was a distance of maybe a hundred feet. What would our lives look like if we couldn't even go into the open for so short a time? What quality of life would that let us have?

"They'll never stop, Luin. They might wait years between attacks, but we're on a list, and the only way off that list is death."

He let go of me now and paced around the room, though he was agitated enough that it was more like stomping. "I've been dreading this ever since I decided I would try to reach you on Earth. I never wanted to put you in danger like this, Luin. Part of me thinks I was wrong to come here. I should have stayed in Alterra."

Logically, I knew exactly why he felt that way. Logic didn't matter to me right now, though, and instead his words just hurt. "Please don't say that," I said.

"How can I not?" Arrowan asked bitterly. He turned around, still pacing, and caught my crestfallen expression, then winced. "I'm sorry."

"I can't regret meeting you," I told him, my voice wobbling with emotion. "I don't want you to regret meeting me, either."

Arrowan sighed. When his pacing brought him in front of me, he pressed a kiss to my forehead and said, "Okay. Why don't we get cleaned up?"

I looked down at my rumpled clothes. I liked my clothes to be crisp and neat – it was one of my more frivolous pleasures in life. I didn't care about that right now, though. Without Arrowan's arms around me, I didn't feel safe. I would have sworn I still felt the phantom sensation of my captor's arms pinning me to him, and all I really wanted was to wash the feeling off. A shower would be amazing, but when I thought about closing myself in the bathroom, I shuddered. It wasn't worth being alone right now. My feet stayed glued to the floor while my thoughts wavered.

Arrowan's eyes were on me and he smiled sympathetically. "What do you need right now?" he asked.

The truth slipped from my mouth before I could think through the consequences. "I don't want to be alone tonight."

Arrowan's eyes filled with understanding. "I won't leave your side," he promised. "Why don't we run you a bath? I'll stay on the other side of the shower curtain."

He had to be sore from his fight, though I knew he could heal himself with his magic, and here he was taking care of me. I wanted to support Arrowan, too, but right now he was letting me be the weak one and I was shaken enough that I let him. When I nodded my agreement, he gently took my hand and led me down the hall, flipping on the light before I could reach for the switch.

We went to my bedroom first so I could grab some pajamas. Then we went to the bathroom, where Arrowan turned on the taps and dumped some soap in to make bubbles. We waited in comfortable silence while the tub filled, and I felt so tired I think I could have fallen asleep standing up, if only blurred images of our ambush didn't flash through my mind every time I closed my eyes for more than a couple of seconds.

After stopping the water, Arrowan screwed his eyes shut and spun around. "Go ahead and get settled. I won't turn around until you tell me to."

Even though I trusted him not to sneak a peek, I felt self-conscious as I stripped down and got into the tub. I pulled the curtain shut almost all the way, leaving just enough of a gap that I could see Arrowan if I leaned back. "You can turn around," I told him.

It was strange, being in the same space as him while I was so exposed, even when I knew he couldn't see anything. Arrowan seemed completely unphased, but I felt my cheeks heat up in a persistent blush that I really hoped he chalked up to the heat. Something strange happened, though. As the tension in my body relaxed in the soothing heat of the water, my discomfort melted away too.

"Feeling better?" Arrowan asked after a few minutes.

"Yes, thank you."

I was too tired to make any real conversation, but Arrowan didn't seem to mind. He settled down on the floor with his knees up against his chest, leaning against the wall and looking completely comfortable with the situation. After a while, long after I quickly washed my body and my hair, Arrowan said, "I feel better too. Just being around you makes it so much better."

I ducked my head forward so he wouldn't see just how widely I smiled at that. I felt the same way about him. The bond between us shuddered and flexed again, feeling like a rumbling in my very soul as it grew even stronger.