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GAR

"We can\'t go this second!" Rika hissed. "I have to get that tool I told you about first—that will prove that what I\'m saying is real. They aren\'t going to believe me otherwise."

Gar grunted. They\'d talked about this once. What she\'d need to bring to prove herself if it ever came to this moment. But the conversation had been little more than a bit of fun to her—a dream. He\'d known it was far more likely that they\'d have to do this than she thought, but he\'d never imagined that they\'d have guards on their heels. He thought they\'d be fleeing humans.

Humans were easy.

Rika chewed her lip, thinking. "Why don\'t you wait here. Everyone will be asleep in an hour or two. I\'ll get my stuff together and sneak out when they\'re snoring—"

"We can\'t wait that long." Gar was emphatic. "It\'s too risky that the guards will get here. You have to get your things then leave with me. Right now."

"But…" she raked a hand through her beautiful, thick brown hair and Gar wanted to take his fingers and comb through it for her, watch it fall in waves around her shoulders.

Rika apparently didn\'t notice his pathetic, submissive-male longing. She sighed and shrugged. "Okay. I\'ll… I\'ll take the water back and tell them that I\'m going to sleep. I can be back here in fifteen or twenty minutes."

The idea of the wait set Gar\'s teeth, but he nodded quickly. "Go," he whispered. "As quickly as you can."

She nodded and, after a hesitation, stepped into him, one hand on his chest and leaned up to kiss him briefly.

It was everything he could do not to plunge his hands into her hair and possess her on the spot, but he kept his hands clenched at his sides and only responded to her kiss.

"I\'ll be back as soon as I can. Wait here!" she whispered. He nodded, but it was a lie. He waited for her to begin back down the trail, then he followed, shadowing her in his beast through the trees.

There was no way he was letting her out of his sight.

*****

The short journey towards her camp was nothing. Gar slipped through the trees making no sound—even she wasn\'t aware that he was there. His beast felt tense, warring between the fierce protectiveness that clenched his stomach, and wanting to hiss, to roar, to warn any males nearby to stay away from her. Gar kept it silent, knowing that any attention he drew would only endanger her.

But as they got closer to the human camp he shifted back, still following, eyes on her, his heart pounding in time with her breathing. He marveled again at the matebond and what it had done to him.

He\'d felt it the first moment he laid eyes on her. The moment he\'d smelled her scent as he\'d crept into the approach to his hideaway cave. When he realized there was an intruder already waiting inside, he should have been angry, protective of his own safety. Instead, the moment her scent filled his nostrils he\'d wanted to skip through the trees like a cub on name day.

He\'d put it down to her beautiful scent that, for a few minutes anyway, had lifted his heart out of the mire of his father\'s disapproval, and his sister\'s shadow, and placed it in the heights of joy. But he\'d been curious, assuming one of the disformed had snuck a mate in without telling them, and wondering why.

He\'d snuck up behind her in the cave without so much as making her ears twitch. Then he\'d been so close he realized he had to decide how to tell her he was there without scaring her so badly that she wet herself.

But instead she\'d muttered, "Fudge. I have to get out of here. They\'re going to smell me." And before he could recall what his mother had told him about fudge, or figure out why she\'d use it as a curse, she\'d whirled and thumped right into his chest.

He\'d almost giggled. His blood fizzed at the touch of her. He\'d caught her by the arms and, stifling a grin, said quietly, "Too late."

He\'d thought it was funny.

She had almost wet herself, just as he\'d predicted.

But despite her fear, she was remarkable at remaining calm and trying to measure a situation. He hadn\'t had to hold her—she\'d been unwilling to challenge his space by trying to get around him to flee. Even if she had, he would have simply kept pace with her until she ran out of energy, which humans did quite quickly.

But as she\'d watched him warily, keeping space between them and the rain began outside, they\'d sat in the cave for hours—right through the night—talking. And by the end of it they were sitting side by side on the mattress, backs to the cave wall, bonding over a shared pain in the form of their father\'s disapproval.

And Gar had been forced to recognize that, though his father wasn\'t perfect, he had at least remained loving towards his family.

Her story was horrific. An abusive, alcoholic father. A mother addicted to some kind of medication that the doctors gave her—Gar wondered what kind of medicine it could be and why healers would offer it, if it caused such destruction in a family.

Her family knew her as Erika, but she\'d shortened her name to Rika when she began her adult studies. She\'d worked and studied ceaselessly the first year of her higher studies, and almost killed herself, she said. But then she\'d won something she called a scholarship and hadn\'t had to work after that. Every step she\'d taken, every success, had been hard-won. And Gar respected that.

Now she was a qualified research scientist and working on what she claimed was the most fascinating job she\'d ever heard described in her world.

Except… except that her job was to learn his world. To gather information about his kingdom, his people, his race.

At first he\'d told himself this couldn\'t be to do with the prophecy. After all, she was peaceful. She was there in just the same way he went into the human world—to enjoy and learn.

But the longer they spoke—because he didn\'t leave her after that night. He returned her safely to her camp and met with her for days afterwards—the more his uneasiness grew.

And the more certain he was that he could never, ever leave her.