AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He frowned and took a deep inhale. “You’ve always got protective magic on you—so while I figure you’re a shifter...you’re not anything strong.”
My lips twisted to the side. I was, when I was a swan; swans could fuck your shit up...it was just that I didn’t want tostaya swan, for the rest of my life.
“And if you don’t want other people to know what you are,” he added, “it’s why you need protection.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong there.
He was just too late.
“Lily?” he asked again, quietly, when I’d taken too long.
“I’m a swan maiden,” I blurted out, ripping off the scab. “My powers to shift are tied to my feathers—it’s like a feather-skin coat. When I swear it, I’m a swan, and when I take it off, I’m human. But if someone else gets ahold of it...they can control me.”
Namir made a low growling sound on my behalf, and his hand tensed on my knee. “And that’s what was hidden in your wall, behind your bathroom mirror?”
“Yeah,” I breathed.
“Do you know who took them?”
I swallowed and stared into space over his head for a moment, thinking, before lowering my head into my hands to hold. “No. Though I can guess why.” If whomever had stolen my feathers hadn’t put them on yet—and I knew they hadn’t, because I still felt free—then.... “They probably stole them to sell to the highest bidder. And soon I’ll be trapped, as some rich man’s plaything.”
“The fuck that’s happening,” Namir said, with enough intensity to snap my head back up. He stood and started pacing. “Are you sure they’ll auction it?”
“Not a hundred percent positive—but it seems likely.”
“Let me make some calls,” he said, stalking off. He went around the corner to where I couldn’t see him, although time passed and I heard the comforting murmur of his voice. While Iwas waiting, I chugged coffee and liquor in turns, and when he returned, his expression was still dark.
“Anything?” I asked, embarrassed by the quaver in my voice.
“I know people who know people,” he said, giving me a tight half-smile. “Don’t worry, Lily. I’ll find them for you and bring them back.” He glanced between the beverages I’d polished off. “You should rest now. You’ve had a night.”
Namir’s place was only lit by firelight. There were windows along the far wall, but all the curtains were drawn. It was dawn by now though, it had to be—and this might be my last free day on earth.
“I don’t think I can sleep. I mean...what if it happens when I do? And when I wake up, I don’t belong to myself anymore? And I’m at some stranger’s beck and call?”
Namir moved to sit on his heels in front of me. “I don’t make idle promises. Iwillbring them back for you.”
I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t dare. “How can you be so sure?”
He paused for a long moment before answering. “Because,” he said simply. “I want you to belong to me.”
Everything in his bearing said that that was the case. The way he was looking at me now, the intensity he radiated. I lost the ability to think—to breathe!—again, filled by an entirely new type of panic: a thin thread of hope, tangled with fear, knotted with longing. I took a ragged breath and frowned, quickly looking at my lap. “You don’t really know me.”
“And there’s a very good reason for that—you work for me, essentially, and I’m not an asshole. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. I feel pulled when I’m around you—and now I wish like fuck I’d told you sooner.”
I made myself look up at him. “It’s just because I’m a bird, and you’re a cat.” I shook my head, trying to deny it. “And—you’re just saying that because you always get your way.”
“Not always,” he said softly, but giving me a dark smile. “Just most of the time.”
Was he really flirting with me? At a time like this?“Must be nice to be a predator, then!” I crawled back on his couch, curling up into a ball. “You don’t know what it’s like, to always be afraid!”
Namir rose up on his knees on the ground in front of me, casting me in shadow, and I could hear him breathing hard. “That’s where you’re wrong, Lily. Because right now, at this very moment, I am deeply afraid of losing you.”
His revelation made me gasp again. I’d spent years thinking that some fraction of the people in my parents’ stories deserved what they got, for not playing it safe, for being stupid enough to fall in love.
Up until now, I’d had no idea what they’d been through.
Namir’s suit rose and fell as his chest heaved. “Do you feel it too?” he asked, in his low voice, as he leaned forward to clutch the edge of his couch with both hands. “I swear to you, no matter what, I will get your feathers or die trying, but if you don’t—put me out of my misery.”
