Primal Bonds

“Don’t touch her, Dad,” Sean warned.

“Dad! Sean!” Liam’s voice cut like a whip. Dylan and Sean remained locked in place, eyes on each other. After a long moment, while Andrea’s heart froze, Dylan dropped his gaze from Sean’s and turned away.

Liam’s whole body was tight with fury. “To avoid any Shifter blood spilling on this fine day, I suggest we let the Faerie man speak.” He switched his glare to Fionn. “Tell Andrea what she wants to know, and if you’re sweet about it, I might decide not to rip you to shreds. I might let Sean and my father do it instead.”

Fionn’s lip curled. “Goddess, Andrea, how do you live with these ... creatures?”

“I never had much choice, did I?” Andrea took the bracelet from Glory, her breath catching as sunlight danced on the unicorn charms. Her mother had always loved unicorns. They were gentle beasts, she’d said, in spite of their horn and some stories that painted them as fierce. “How did she know so much about unicorns?”

“I showed them to her,” Fionn said. “I risked taking her to Faerie to show her the unicorns, because she was so fascinated by them. I wanted to give her that much.”

His dark eyes swam with sorrow for a deep-felt love that had been torn from him too soon. For all his Fae arrogance, Fionn Cillian had loved and lost. Andrea touched his hand.

“My daughter.” His stern voice broke and his eyes grew wet. “I’ve waited so long to find you.”

Andrea swallowed. “I think I believe you.”

Fionn raised his manacled wrists. “Then will you have pity on your poor old dad?”

“Oh.” Andrea turned to Glory. “The key?”

Glory had her arms folded, her expression forbidding. “There is no key.”

“Then what are these for?” Andrea held up her hands. “No, please don’t tell me. Sean, can you help?”

The handcuffs were ordinary steel, the same as the police used on human captives, but they would be no match for the strength of a Shifter. Sean sheathed his sword, worked his fingers between the cuff and Fionn’s gloved wrist, and twisted one handcuff open. He did the same with the other, and Fionn quickly stripped off his gloves.

“Let me see,” Andrea said.

Fionn held out his hands. Below the tunic he wore under his mail shirt, his bare wrists held red marks in the exact shape of the cuffs. The metal had burned him right through the gloves.

Andrea brushed her thumbs over the wounds and closed her eyes, reaching for her healing magic. She saw the tangle of threads around Fionn’s hurt skin, blackened and burned, but the aura of the rest of his body was amazing. He was like silver and light, shimmering strength.

She’d seen some of that glittering silver in her own body. As she touched the threads of Fionn’s being, they wrapped around her, familiar, loving, welcoming.

She also sensed Sean beside her, as she had when she’d healed Ely. Tall and strong, like a bright fire, Goddess blessed. The magic of his sword ran through him, and she reached for it and for Sean, who was bound to her now through the mate blessing.

It was real, this mate blessing, she realized. Not just words spoken by the clan leader in a social agreement. The Father God had been in the words and in the sun kissing their skin. She saw the bond between herself and Sean, gold and strong. Real.

Under her hands, Fionn’s wounds closed. When she opened her eyes, Fionn’s wrists were whole and unblemished, and he was watching her with an amazed expression.

The silver threads of his being still wrapped Andrea, seeking her own. “I see it, the substance of your aura in mine,” she said. “Yours and my mother’s.”

Fionn’s eyes were fathomless. “Well, yes, child. ’Tis only natural.”

He was part of her, and she of him. Andrea had been conceived by this battle-hardened, proud warrior, and a gentle and loving Shifter woman.

Tears trickled from her eyes. At last, after years of shame and fear and withdrawing into herself, Andrea knew who she was. She belonged, both to the Fae holding her hands and to the Shifter at her back who’d just made her his mate, bound to her body and soul.

M y mate. Mine.

Sean shuddered with release in the darkness, surrounded by the feel, the scent, the warmth of Andrea. Her lips, her hands, her breath, touching his skin. She gasped along with him, her sexy little noises making him wild.

He kissed her face, her hair, her mouth. He’d lost his power of speech, and he kept silent, simply kissing and touching, arching his body to drive himself deeper inside her.

Her lips were soft with desire, as were her eyes, which were silver-gray in the moonlight. Fionn had looked at Sean with the same kind of determined arrogance Sean had so often seen on Andrea’s face. They were related, all right.

Andrea was so elegant, and Sean felt nothing but brutal frenzy. He’d spilled his seed but was hard again, ready, still inside where she could squeeze him.

Andrea touched his cheek, her fingers featherlight. “Sean,” she murmured. “You all right?”

Sean let the growl come, and with it, his words returned. “I’m buried inside my sweet, hot little mate. How are you thinking I am?”

“Horny. A mate-frenzied male.”

“You bet.”

“Now you sound like Ellison.”

Sean thrust again. “Don’t mention that Lupine idiot while I’m making love to you.”

Andrea laughed, the little beauty who teased him raw. “You’re so easy, Sean.”