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  “Shad!” she cried, her toes curling, her nails biting into his shoulders as she rode him as hard as she could. “Oh God, Shad! Coming…you’re making me come so hard, baby!”

  “Gods, Kallana, I can feel you coming all around me! Can feel your tight little pussy squeezing my cock,” he groaned as he thrust inside her. “Love you, Harper—love you so damn much!”

  And then he allowed her orgasm to trigger his own. Pulling her down hard onto his cock, he thrust as deeply into her as he could and Harper felt something hot and wet pulsing inside her, finally curing the empty ache inside her.

  “Shad,” she moaned and heard her answer, but not with her ears.

  “I love you, Kallana. We’re bonded now—bonded forever.”

  “We are?” Harper asked, and realized she was thinking at him rather than talking.

  “We are,” he affirmed and sighed heavily. “I just pray to the Goddess we won’t regret it.”

  “I could never regret being with you,” Harper assured him. “I love you, Shad. And I’m sure making love like this—bonding—will help anchor you here, in this time with me.”

  “I pray to the Goddess you’re right, Kallana,” he murmured. But to Harper, he didn’t sound at all certain.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The final fading happened sometime in the middle of the night, after they had drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms.

  Shad felt it happening—felt himself starting to go—and it woke him up. It was gradual this time, the feeling of insubstantiality growing slowly and spreading though him in a tingling wave. But for all its creeping slowness, there was a feeling of finality too—as though this time he wasn’t coming back.

  “Harper,” he tried to say. She was curled in his arms, her face pressed against his chest. Shad could suddenly see her face through his own upper arm, peaceful and relaxed in sleep. He tried again to speak her name but somehow he couldn’t make his throat work—it was as though he was becoming a ghost. Then he remembered he didn’t have to use his voice.

  “Harper,” he tried again, this time using their newly formed bond. And Goddess, it was so unfair! To think it was only the second time he’d used the intimate connection between them and it had to be to rouse her and tell her he was going. “Harper please,” he sent again through their link. “Please wake up!”

  “Shad?” Her eyelids fluttered open and she fumbled for the light switch before she apparently remembered what he’d told her about settings on the Mother Ship. “Lights, dim!” she called to the room around them.

  As a dim, golden glow lit the corners of the room, Shad was able to see the panic in her lovely face.

  “Shad?” she demanded, putting out a hand to touch him. “Shad, what’s going on? I…I can see through you!”

  “You know what’s going on, sweetheart,” he sent to her. “I’m fading—being drawn back to my own time.”

  “But you can’t go now!” Harper exclaimed wildly. “We anchored you here—we bonded!”

  “And now I wish we hadn’t,” Shad sent wearily. “For now you’ll have to endure the pain of my loss as I will endure the pain of yours. I’m so sorry, Harper.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she sent fiercely, using the precious link too. “I’m not sorry we’re bonded, no matter how much it hurts! I’ll never be sorry and I won’t let you go!”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and clung to him and Shad clung to her. But he could feel himself growing more and more insubstantial, losing his grip on both Harper and the present time.

  “Harper,” he mind-whispered. “Harper, I love y—”

  And then he faded completely and everything was blackness.

  * * * * *

  Harper couldn’t believe he was actually gone. It felt like some kind of bad dream she was certain she’d wake up from. She felt around for him desperately, her fingers searching the indentation on his side of the bed. It was still warm from the heat of his big body—it still smelled like him, that dark, spicy scent she’d come to love so much.

  “Shad,” she begged brokenly. “Shad, come back to me. Please don’t leave me all alone here. Please, just come back.”

  But Shad wasn’t there anymore and after a while, Harper had to acknowledge he wasn’t coming back.

  There were no words for the grief that flooded over her then—it consumed her completely, closing over her head like dark waters, drowning her in despair.

  With a low wail, she curled herself around his pillow and lay where he had been so recently, willing the last of his heat to seep into her cold heart, to warm her even a little.

  But she was cold…so cold during the rest of that sleepless night and she knew she would remain cold.

  Cold and alone the rest of her life.

  Chapter Thirty

  Shad regained consciousness in the middle of the Sacred Grove—the special spot dedicated to the Goddess which was the very heart of the Mother Ship.

  It was shady and quiet among the green and purple leaves and at first he thought he’d simply been transported somehow from the bed he’d so lately shared with Harper to the center of the ship.

  Then he became aware of two things—one, he was naked and two, there were voices—familiar voices—just outside the screen of rustling leaves.

  “Come on, Ziza, why won’t you give us a chance?” It was War, Shad’s Dark Twin brother—there was no mistaking his tone.

  “My brother is right—you should at least allow us to prove we’re serious in our affections for you,” Peace, the Light Twin brother said.

  “Well…I don’t know.” Ziza’s tone was light and teasing and when Shad peered through the tree branches, he saw that her gold-on-black eyes were laughing. “You boys think the two of you could handle me? Because I don’t know if two is enough. I’ve been thinking maybe I should travel to Gamish Prime where I hear they have three males to each female—maybe that would be more my style.”

  “Be serious, Ziza.” War’s dark auburn hair, so like their mother’s, gleamed in the light of the Mother Ship’s green sun.

  “You know we love you,” Peace said quietly. His sandy brown hair, so like their Light Twin father’s, also gleamed mellowly in the sunshine and his blue eyes were serious. “We’ve loved you since we were all children together.”

  “Is that so?” Ziza’a hair was long and black, her skin almost the same café au lait brown as Harper’s had been. Her unique eyes were pure velvety black where the whites should have been with golden pupils—truly she was a perfect mixture of her Earth mother, Lauren, and her Scourge father, Xairn.

  Further off, through the trees, Shad could see Kara and Kaleb, Sylvan and Sophia’s twins. Though he couldn’t hear what they were saying, it looked like they were deep in some philosophical conversation or other. They loved to argue and debate each other, Shad remembered, but if anyone should come along and join one side or the other, the twins would close ranks against him immediately.

  Kaleb was especially protective of Kara because she was something of an anomaly—a Blood Kindred female who had fangs. Normally among the Blood Kindred, only males had the double set of fangs which were used to inject essence for either healing or bonding a mate. Males wanted to be the ones doing the biting—not many were anxious to be bitten themselves—it was considered emasculating. Which meant that Kara, as lovely as she was, didn’t exactly have many suitors. She mostly stuck close to her twin and her cousins.

  Shad watched the twins curiously. They were close…so close, but not to the exclusion of everyone else, as they had been in the awful Hive-ruled dystopian world he had left behind. He could tell because as he watched, Daniel came up and said something which made them both smile. Kara’s high, silvery laugh rang out over the park-like expanse of green and purple grass that extended all around the Sacred Grove before she covered her mouth to hide her fangs. Shad marveled to hear the sweet sound—when was the last time he’d heard his cousin laugh like that?

  Never, he thought. She never l