Gideon. Jacquelyn Frank

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      Legna gave an impish wiggle of her brows, making Bella laugh.

      “I’m familiar with that particular desire,” Bella said with a nod. “Still, there’s something comforting about the vast openness of the sharing and honesty between Jacob and me. And…” She paused, her face softening with a warm, beautiful thought, her skin, like pale satin, flushing with a gentle glow. “My love, my mate, lives within me always, Legna. I’m never completely alone, even when he tries to give me solitude. And I don’t even mind. Part of me realizes that, for the rest of my life, I will never be alone again. Better still, I will never be lonely. It’s compelling in a way I can’t possibly describe. My sister is only just beginning to learn this for herself. I have tried to help her, but I always fail to describe it to her adequately.”

      “Your description lacks nothing, Bella,” the empath confessed quietly, a catch of emotion in her throat and a shine of bittersweet happiness in her eyes for her friend.

      “Corrine’s power acquisition is taking much longer than mine did. Gideon believes it’s delayed because of how close she came to dying.”

      Bella shuddered as she remembered the image of her sister lying close to death in her bed, gray and gaunt from the energy drain she had suffered. A Druid only came into power when his or her Demon mate came into contact with them for the first time. At the time Corrine and Kane had encountered each other, no one had realized she was a Druid, destined to be with Kane and destined to wither away without his nearness and energy to replenish her.

      “It has been taking time, Gideon says, for her connection with Kane to rebuild and repair itself. He likened it to having brain damage, where the brain has to reroute function in other ways to compensate for the damage.” Bella shook her head. “I watch her struggles and I am so frustrated for her. I want her to be as happy as I am. I want her power to come so she will know what we have inherited. As a logical person I know it will take time, but as a sister—a pregnant sister at that—I want to yell out to the Fates, ‘C’mon already!’ She’s already been through so much.”

      “She has come very far already. She is looking healthy and does not become weak as quickly,” Legna soothed her.

      “Gideon said as much, but he also said she may have more setbacks and that we should be prepared for that. He explained that the damage has made her pathways to power fragile. But you know this. This is why you are teaching her meditation and focus techniques. It is by his prescription.”

      “It will never cease to amaze me, the extent of Gideon’s knowledge. He is the only Demon in all the world who was alive during the time of the last Druids. In spite of it being over a millennium ago, he still remembers such details of the connections between Druid and Demon, and of the healing processes of a race he thought was obliterated. It boggles the mind to think he was only a fledgling himself at the time.”

      “Yes. It’s quite remarkable.” Isabella leaned forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “But Gideon holds a great deal of weight on his soul over having been a part of the original massacre of the Druids. I believe he feels he should have known better, in spite of the fact that the entire world was fairly savage at the time and he was a mere fledgling following the orders of the Elders of the era.”

      “War never makes sense when the aftermath is studied a thousand years later. It is a testament to his strength that he has survived in spite of all the deaths, Summonings, and worldwide upheavals of a millennium. A thousand years.” Legna shook her head with amazement. “Even those Demons who are past their fifth century have difficulty comprehending such a lifetime.”

      Isabella nodded, sitting back once more and absently rubbing her distended belly. “So you are certain he would tell me if he had concerns about the baby?”

      “Positive,” Legna affirmed with a curt nod. “There may be a great many things about Gideon I do not understand, or even like, to be honest, but his straightforwardness is admirable, even if somewhat harsh from time to time. Besides, Jacob would not tolerate anything less than total forthrightness, and Gideon would respect that. Their friendship is still much strained, in spite of Gideon’s welcome return to mainstream Demon life and his Triumvirate seat on the Great Council. However, Jacob’s latent hostility would not keep Gideon silent if speaking was called for.”

      “I know,” Bella said softly. “I don’t think that Jacob has quite come to terms with Gideon’s rude behavior around me in the beginning of our relationship.”

      “But he would be foolish to turn away the most skilled medic in Demon history when that Demon offers to oversee the pregnancy of his beloved mate,” Legna pointed out. “And Jacob is no fool. No matter how deeply his Imprinted instincts have made him come to distrust other males who come too close to you, I believe your safety is paramount to him. He wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of that, not even if it were Prince Charming himself who needed to tend you.”

      Isabella tossed back her head and laughed aloud at that, appreciating the mischievous sparkle in the other woman’s eyes. Legna was impressively unmoved by the power of the male Demons who surrounded her night in and night out, century after century. Isabella had appreciated that from the moment she had met the female Demon.

      This brave characteristic in her friend had served as a model for Bella, teaching her to put her foot down and stand up for her rights and perspective even before her own ability to absorb and use the powers of those around her had come into play. Other Demons had learned to respect her long before they had been forced to respect the magnitude of her awesome ability to render anyone from any Nightwalker race completely powerless.

      Luckily, this was the same power that had forced Isabella into being included in Legna’s terrifying Summoning during her and Jacob’s aborted wedding ceremony. It was that same power that had nullified the damaging effects of the pentagram that had caged them together.

      Even though the experience had been terribly harrowing, Isabella was constantly grateful to have had a hand in sparing her friend the fate of being Transformed. Among other things, it would have destroyed Jacob to be put in the position of hunting the sister of his King, forced to destroy her before she destroyed others. Jacob’s relentless sense of duty and his respect and love for Noah would have made his course clear, but Jacob carried his failures hard, and he would have blamed himself for not doing more to save one so important to the man he looked on as a brother as well as monarch.

      No one meant as much to Isabella as Jacob did. Perhaps not even her sister Corrine, whom she loved with all of her heart. Jacob was her heart and her soul, and she would be deeply affected if he were to ever suffer that magnitude of pain. Worse yet, the responsibility could have fallen to Isabella herself, destined by that newfound ancient prophecy to hunt the Transformed. She had been born with the genetic code for her special abilities just for that purpose, unaware that they were lying dormant, waiting only for the day she and Jacob finally crossed paths.

      Jacob had experienced the untenable situation of enforcing those he had once been friendly with. There had even been times when he had been required to destroy them after they had been perverted into the monsters a pentagram’s black magic forced them to become. But Isabella was so much softer in the heart and so new to her Enforcer role; she had not yet been confronted with destroying a Transformed Demon she had once known and cared about.

      It was her deepest fear that she wouldn’t be able to do so when the time came, and Legna immediately became aware of the weight on her friend’s heart as the expecting woman considered the possibility. She did not mean to intrude, but Legna’s power was always “on” just like Bella’s was, and the effort to control it came when trying to shut it off or lower its effect. She had allowed herself to relax too much during their СКАЧАТЬ