HeartsAflameCollectionV (9 page)

“
No, I did run away,” she said softly. “You betrayed
me for that weapon you hold in your hands, and he helped me.”

There was a moment of sheer rage in
Mads
' eyes, but his hands on her were still gentle.

“
I love you,” he said forcefully. “What does that
mean to you?”

“
It means...” she hesitated. It meant everything,
but she had no idea how she was going to say that to him.

A sharp cry and a furious howl behind her took them
both by surprise, and Lukas, who was less injured than Tara initially feared,
threw himself into the air. There was nothing that either wolf or man could do
to hold him, and when
Mads
charged him, slashing with
the sword, he only flew higher.

“
It is done,” Lukas said, with aching regret in his
voice, and Tara heard something in it that made goose bumps rise up on her
arms.

“
What? What is done?” she demanded, and he met her
stare with grief.

“
I'm... I'm so sorry, Tara. Please take heart, it is
for the best. I will see you again at the Aerie.”

With nothing more than that, Lukas threw himself
into the air, and was gone, leaving everyone to stare at Tara.

“
Fen,” she whispered.
“Oh no,
Fen!”

She took off running, but
Mads
caught her by the elbow again.

“
Who or what is Fen?” he growled. “What are you
hiding from me?”

She stared up at him, seeing the rage and the
jealousy there, and suddenly, her own anger came up to meet it quickly and with
the power of a tidal wave.

“
My son,” she shouted. “My son, my child,
the
one I carried from city to city! Lukas, that angel you
were going to kill, helped me birth him, and helped me survive, and now I have
to go to him! Let me go,
Mads
!”

With every word that she spoke, his hands tightened
on her, and his face grew paler and paler.

“
A child?” he said thickly.
“A
son?”

“
My son,” she cried. “Mine and yours, and now let me
go!”

Whether he let her go from pain or from shock, she
didn't know and didn't care. She ran as hard as she could, and she was only
vaguely aware of the three following her, all human now.

She dashed up the stairs to her apartment, and to
her shock and terror, she found Mrs. Erikson's door hanging open. The woman was
in a dead sleep in her bedroom, but there was no sign of Fen. The only thing
left was a long white feather that she knew came from no bird, and she
shivered, thinking of her child in the arms of one of the burned and scarred
angels.

Numbly, she woke up Mrs. Erikson and told her that
she was taking Fen back, and then she went to the little apartment, a place
that had felt so safe just a few hours ago. She let
Mads
and his friends in, because she couldn't think to do otherwise, and for a very
long moment, she sat still as a statue in the kitchen chair.

She was prepared for
Mads
to shout, to be angry. She didn't even know what the penalty was for taking a
child from its father among his people. She wondered dully if he would abandon
her, or if he would leave in disgust. When he spoke, she was ready to hear
anything except what he actually said.

“
Tara, I'm so sorry,”
Mads
murmured.

He dropped to his knees by her side, and he took
her frigid hands in his. He was so warm, he always had been, and she wanted
nothing more than to collapse into him. There had been too much time, though,
and too much blood, and all she knew was that she didn't know him at all.

“
He's... he's a beautiful boy,” she found herself
saying woodenly. “He came out perfectly,
Mads
.
So strong, and so... so loud.
He has eyes just like
yours...”

Mads
made a pained sound deep in his throat, and then
the decision was taken away from her. He swept her up in his arms, and it was
such a relief that she simply fell into him. It was what she had been yearning
for the past year, and now that he was so close, she couldn't resist his scent,
his touch, and his strength.

“
We'll get him back, Tara, I promise.”
Mads
whispered the words into her hair, and Tara could only
nod tightly. She heard the truth in his voice, the honesty, but then she had
thought she could tell when he was lying before.

After a long moment, she drew back, and blinked at
the two other men who were watching them closely.

Mads
followed her gaze and nodded.
“
Tara, let me introduce you to my brothers. The
idiot with the smile on his face is
Kalle
, and the
quiet one who always glares is Nils. Nils,
Kalle
,
this is Tara.”

“
The famous Tara,”
Kalle
murmured, and she was struck all over again by how much he looked like
Mads
.

“
I need to pack,” she said. “If we're going to find
the Aerie, I'll need to have more than my flannel pajamas on me, like I did
last time.”

She went into her room, where she started to pack
an old backpack full of things that she might need. Her hand hesitated over the
book of unbinding, which she had kept at the very back of her sock drawer. It
was a rather ridiculous place for something so precious, but no one had found
it yet. She stuffed it deep into her pack, but before she could go out to join
the wolves in her kitchen, she noticed a fluttering piece of paper tacked to
the back of her door.

When she pulled it down, she saw directions, and
coordinates that could be put into a GPS. They were all written in Lukas' tidy
hand, and at the very bottom, she saw that he had written
Forgive me.

Perhaps
,
she thought grimly.
Perhaps I will when this is long over.

Tying her thick hair back into a ponytail, she went
out to give this information to
Mads
.

***

Against their protests,
Mads
had sent his brothers home. They were furious about it, stating that
Mads
needed them, and that of course this was a trap. Tara
had anticipated long debates, but all
Mads
had done
was snarl at them both, and when
Kalle
looked like he
wanted to contest the ruling,
Mads
stepped up to him
to stare him down.

There was a long moment where Tara was afraid that
they would come to blows, but then
Kalle
stepped
back, breaking the contact easily and gracefully.

“
We worry about you, big brother,” he said. “And if
you're not back in a decent time, I swear that I'll send the whole war party
after you.”

Mads
smiled wryly.
“
Do that,” he said, “but I'll be back before you
know I'm gone.”

Tara watched in fascination as
Mads
'
brothers turned back into wolves. They were enormous, but when they barked
happily and sat up for treats, anyone who didn't know what they were looking at
would have passed them off for dogs.

Mads
loaded them into the back of the truck, the same
one that he had driven what felt like so long ago. They drove in silence for
hours, until they came to the edge of a national forest, and both brothers
vaulted out of the truck bed and were lost to the trees.

“
They'll make better time going home like this,” he
explained, and she raised an eyebrow.

“
I guess it has nothing to do with the fact that
they were both giving you so much trouble back at the house?”

Mads
shrugged, smiling a little, and they got on the
road again. It would be a long trip, and there was so much between them that
they didn't know what to say.

It wasn't until hours later that Tara broke the
silence, and when she did so, it was to ask a question that had been preying
upon her for the better part of a year.

“
Why did you do it?” she asked softly. “Why did you
lie to me?”

Mads
glanced at her, and though he looked back at the
road very quickly, she could see the momentary grief and loss that came across
his face.

“
There were a lot of reasons,” he admitted. “Some of
them I only understood later, some of them were simply because I was selfish
and short-sighted.”

He
sighed
.
“
I
looked at you, and in a heartbeat, I saw that you weren't a killer. That made
you different from everyone else I had ever known, from myself, from my
brothers. You lived a life untouched by this kind of violence, and I couldn't
imagine you helping me. You would never condone me trying to find a weapon that
was designed to end lives.”

“
Why not wake up the
Fenrisulfir
?”
she asked. “You told me about him. You told me that he would bring this all
under his control.”

Mads
laughed harshly.
“
The
Fenrisulfir
was a man
who lived a long time ago, like King Arthur. He's more a story than anything
real, and it's a fairytale that we tell cubs that he will return someday.”

“
A fairytale like werewolves and angels?” she asked
archly, and he grinned wryly at her point.

“
So you didn't trust me, and then you got what you
wanted. Were you going to leave me on that field in Scotland?”

Mads
' hands tightened on the wheel.
“
Never,” he said, looking straight ahead. “I went
off to fight, and then I came straight to try to find you. I wanted to... to
explain, to thank you for the good that you had done, even if you didn't see
it. I wanted to do anything to win you back, because Tara, for me, it was never
just about the sword. It hadn't been about the sword since I met you.”

He swallowed hard.
“
I knew that there was an angel unaccounted for. I
fought three. I killed three, but I saw four in the sky. What do you think I
felt when I followed your trail, and it just... ended in the middle of
nowhere?”

“
What did you do?” she
asked,
her mouth dry.

His laugh was a hopeless sound.

“
I searched. I searched all night and into the next
day. I howled for you, I screamed your name. Around every stone and down every
gully I thought I would find your broken body, where an angel dropped you.
That's one way they kill, did you know that? They lift you into the air and just....drop
you.”

She shivered, because she could see him doing it.
She could all too easily imagine him baying for her in the darkness of the
Scottish country side, and then finding nothing.

“
Why did you go to him?”
Mads
asked.
“Why an angel,
why that?”

“
Because the Three in One sent him to me,” she said
softly. “When... when you lied to me, when you lied to my face about what I was
to you and what you needed me to do, I was sick right to my heart,
Mads
. I couldn't take it. I ran, and I knew that you would
just come after me and convince me that it was all fine. You could do that, and
I needed to find my own strength. I needed to think about what you had done and
to find out if I could forgive you on my own. I couldn't wait for you to tell
me what to think.”

“
And now that you've had the time that you need to
think about it?”

She shook her head.
“
It's not fair,
Mads
, not like this. You can't come out of nowhere
and demand an answer from me.”

“
What about my son?” There was
a
tautness
to his voice now, a throbbing of rage and grief and something
else that she couldn't name.

“
I didn't know that I was pregnant until I left.
Then how could I risk him? You might have taken him away from me. You might
have done anything.”

“
I would have respected your wishes,”
Mads
said, a hint of that bright temper burning through.
“My people believe that children belong with their mothers, and it is their
mothers who choose where they wish to live and with whom.”

“
I didn't know that, and what was I to do? Did you
want me to bring myself and my child into a war that you were intent on
fighting?”