5. Coral

Chapter 5

Coral

I haven’t slept this well in years.

After what feels like a solid eternity, I wake up in my own bed. In the night, a small thread of trumpet vine must have climbed through the window, because I’m wrapped in a very pleasant-smelling halo, the vines writhing through my hair. I guess that could be the reason I slept so well. But I don’t think the reason is a trumpet vine.

My dreams smelled like sage and oak. Which is not what trumpet vines smell like.

I stretch, my nose tickling as I smell something else.

Bread.

I hop up out of bed, throwing on a jumpsuit that was woven from cotton that randomly sprouted one day in the meadow. Pulling my hair back, I tie it with some grass and pop into my kitchen.

Nolan’s in there. And he’s making toast. With strawberry jelly.

I slide into one of the two chairs in my kitchen. “That smells amazing.”

“It’s pretty much the only thing you had in here.”

“I don’t eat meat. Or things that were once alive.”

Nolan wrinkles his nose, turning with the toast on a plate. “Do you mind if I do?”

“Of course not.” I grab the toast, relishing the sweet smell. “It’s natural for you to hunt. You’re a shifter. You get your energy from the hunt as much as you do from the thing you eat. I’m not a shifter.” I bite into the toast, my eyes nearly rolling back in my head. “Oh, my goodness,” I moan. “That’s so good. Thank you,” I say, crunching another bite.

Nolan makes a strangled noise.

I crack one eye open, still chewing. He’s staring at me. His gaze looks dark, and his eyes are completely focused on my lips.

I freeze. Do I have strawberry jelly on them or something? Tentatively, I lick my lips.

Nolan’s reaction is immediate. His eyes go hazy, and he fights back a growl.

Wait a second. I know that reaction. I know what shifters do when they look like this.

Does Nolan find me… attractive?

I’m about to say something to him. I don’t know what. But I do know that I want to tell him something.

Nolan looks away. “Do you want to work on the rest of the wards today?”

I groan. “Yeah, I suppose we should.”

It was exhausting, moving the aspen trees around. It was an old grove, and it never really wanted to move, but I asked. I showed it images of the pack. Of the shifters in there. Of the pups, and the fox shifters who frolic through the market whenever it pops up. I told it all about the people who live here. And, eventually, it moved.

“What… um… what does it do?”

Nolan looks over at me. The lust has faded, and curiosity is in its place.

Well.

My heart sinks a little bit, but I know that shifters often feel lust without necessarily any… value behind it. Curiosity is good, too. I like curiosity. I can handle that.

“I can talk to the plants,” I say, spelling it out clearly. “So, I asked the grove to make a boundary. It will send me messages about who crosses it.”

“And that’s the ward?”

I shrug. “That’s the word I use for it. I think that mages might have a different way to make a ward, but it’s the same concept. Something crosses the ward, the ward tells you someone crossed it.”

“So it’s not a barrier?”

I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t think the trees would be happy about that. They’re meant to let things pass by. Not keep things out.” Nolan stares at me. “You can’t make a living being do something that’s against its nature.”

“That’s true,” he says, smiling softly.

I crunch on the toast again.

“So, while you don’t mind if I would go out and hunt for some breakfast…”

“I’m going to be here. Eating the strawberry jelly and sourdough toast that I made from bread, which is just flour, yeast, salt, and water. The wheat was a gift, so were the strawberries, and I’m going to enjoy them because I get energy from the plants around me.” I smile at him.

Nolan smiles back. My heart skips a whole beat.

“That sounds like a plan.”

I finish the toast and stand, pushing in my chair. “Shall we do the south ward?”

“We shall. I think we can drive to that one.”

Oh. “Um. I’m not so good with technology.”

Nolan watches me.

“It’s like… a thing. I can’t have a cell phone. I don’t even really have a lot of electricity here. The plumbing works pretty well, but that’s about it,” I sigh.

His eyebrows rise. “Well. How well can you hold on?”

“To what?”

“Something wolf sized. Wolf shaped. Just generally… wolfy.”

I realize what he’s saying. “Do you want me to… ride you?”

“Yes,” he grins. “Let’s go for that.”

“Oh. Okay. Um…”

The thought of him between my thighs makes me blush.

“Well, let’s go outside. I think we can make it there in an hour if I run.”

“Sure,” I nod. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Let’s go.”

I follow Nolan out of my cottage. When we’re outside, my mind is completely preoccupied with thinking about him. I’ve ridden a horse before, because it was kind of common among the fae, since a lot of us can’t do the whole technology thing. Some of my friends growing up were kelpies, who would shift into black demonic-looking horses that could easily tear people apart, but we had fun racing them around.

But all of those were childhood things. This is Nolan, who smells so good and who is a grown ass man, and who carried me back from the ward yesterday, and…

Nolan turns. “Uh. I have to take off my clothes, so…”

“Oh!” I blush and turn immediately. “Oh. I’m so sorry. Yes. You… should change. I’m… I’ll. Um…” I turn the other way.

I’m so preoccupied with what’s going on, with everything that I’m trying to look at (namely Nolan’s naked back), that I miss it.

The ward shivers. Then, it screams.

It’s not the far ward at the north, either. It’s the one around my meadow.

I don’t know what to do. The plants are screaming at me, and it’s so loud, and then all I can do is…

A scream rips out of me.

I’m looking right at the edge of the boundary when the shifter bursts through. Snarling. Huge. He’s a jaguar.

Somewhere in my mind, I produce the stupidest fact imaginable. Jaguars are the largest big cats on the American continent. They’re the only surviving member of their genus, panthera. They…

I duck as he leaps for me. For my neck.

There are so many times in my life where I’ve imagined what happened to my hive. My family. The feeling of sharp teeth and crushing jaws, sinking around my neck, snapping it. There are no plants that could heal me. None that could prevent it.

I shut my eyes. I’ve been imagining it for so long, this moment almost feels… normal. Like something that’s inevitable.

The crush of fangs never happens, though. Instead, I hear snarling. The type of snarling that’s not feline, but canine. Then, there’s the loud sound of two enormous bodies colliding.

When I get the courage to peek at the commotion, I shut my eyes again quickly.

It’s brutal. There’s blood flying everywhere. I feel it splash against me, hot and bright, and I cower under the sensation. It makes me think of how I found them.

Blood everywhere. So much of it.

The snarling and snapping are beyond vicious. Nolan and the jaguar are nothing but a blur of fangs and teeth and fur, and all of it flies in a tornado around me.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything. All I can do is sit and watch it happen and hope I survive.

I don’t know that I’m aware of the moment when the sounds stop. I’m too scared to look. Because what if it’s the jaguar that survived?

What if Nolan died because of me?

“Coral?” A rasping, halting voice is speaking.

I look up.

There’s a huge puddle of flesh and blood at his feet…

But Nolan is standing.

He’s terrifying. Ass-naked, he’s covered in blood. His face is going to bruise on one side, and when he slinks forward, he’s holding himself like his ribs are bruised as well. He’s limping, on top of everything.

But he’s alive.

He’s standing in front of me. He’s not dead. He’s not gone, like they were.

Nolan is alive.

I’m not thinking. I’m acting on pure, total impulse when I stand.

Nolan steps over the carcass of the jaguar shifter. “Coral, are you?—”

I cut him off. With a kiss.

Nolan smells like blood and sweat. He’s so tall that I have to go up on my tiptoes to kiss him. But underneath that, there’s the smell of sage and oak. And Nolan’s lips are firm under mine.

It’s just an instinct. It really is. And when I come to my senses and realize what’s happening, I’m… terrified.

I’m kissing Nolan. But he is not kissing me back.