“Isn’t this great?” She flung an arm around my shoulders and jabbed her finger at the twinkling stars. “Look at all those. Gemini is out there somewhere. I bet it’s up there looking down at us while we’re looking up at it.” She jumped and waved her arms. “Hey. We’re down here.”

Laughing, I yanked on her arm. “You’re crazy.”

“You followed me out here.” She spun in a wild circle and kicked the surf. “What does that make you?”

The weightlessness of my body vanished. Had I hit the bottom? Was a plume of sediment rising around me, clogging my nostrils? Had I missed the entrance to the caves?

“Open your eyes, sweetheart.” Warm hands cupped my face. “That’s my girl.”

I’m not your girl, I thought back at him on reflex, the taste of his blood in the back of my throat. Except now that I had won him, I suppose I was.

A figure carved from blinding light stepped into my field of vision, despite the fact I hadn’t opened my eyes.

“Now you’re just being stubborn.” His mental laugh throbbed with relief. “I thought I’d lost you.”

If he said more, I didn’t hear it. Even the bright burn of him behind my eyes wasn’t enough to anchor me anymore.

Alone in the dark, I drifted.

Chapter 18

“There you are.”

Shifting onto my side, I groaned and coughed up the taste of pond water. My chest ached deep like the time I had contracted pneumonia, and I tasted blood from where I’d bitten my tongue. I opened my eyes and found Graeson, mostly dry, leaning over me.

The stark relief on his face transmuted to a radiant kind of joy that warmed me from the inside out.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “I was getting worried.”

“You weren’t the only one.” I rubbed my thumb over the leather bracelet on his wrist, which seemed to have survived his ordeal without so much as a single hair out of place. “I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

“I’ll never leave you, Ellis.” He hooked a smile on his lips. “You’re stuck with me now.” He leaned down, cheek brushing mine. “Mate.”

“Your wolf talks too much.” The answer to “how much does the man know of the wolf’s dealings” had been answered definitively for me. “He really needs to learn to keep his muzzle shut.”

The mention of muzzle sent his gaze dipping to the calf he’d shredded, and regret filled his eyes.

“He and I have an understanding now.” I sounded braver than I felt. He had decided there at the last minute not to eat me.

He grunted. “I noticed. He fought like hell to stay with you.”

A filament of warmth whispered through me. “He did?”