“Yes,” she managed to whisper. “Uriah?”
He pulled his hand down the tail of her braid, and somehow, she knew he'd been the one to plait the long tresses together for her. “Hmm?”
“Thank you for taking such good care of me.”
Her entire body vibrated with the happy rumble he gave in answer. “Always, honey.”
CHAPTER TEN
The clock on the bedside table said it was six-twenty in the morning. The sun wouldn't rise for another few minutes, everything was quiet, but his instincts were screaming at him that something was wrong.
It only took him a fraction of a second to realize Ivy wasn't curled up in his arms, and fear flooded him like a tsunami.
Uriah jerked upright, throwing the blankets back as he looked wildly around the room, hissing out a breath when he saw her standing by the picture window.
She'd asked him to leave the salt lamp on, and in its glow, he saw she had on one of his shirts. She hugged herself, her hands slowly rubbing up and down on her biceps like she was cold or frightened.
The sound of the blankets being thrown back got her attention, and she turned to him, an apologetic smile tugging at her lips. “Did I wake you?”
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ivy answered calmly, but her posture and her scent told him something was definitely wrong. He got up immediately and crossed the distance between them, pulling her away from the window with one arm while he used his bear's eyes to peer out into the shadows.
“Did you see someone? Feel something? If you did, honey, it's okay. Don't discredit your instincts, especially right now.”
Ivy snuggled into his embrace, rubbing her cheek over his chest. “So far, the only instinct of mine that's been right was the one that told me to hear you out on the first day you brought me here.”
The instinct that told her he was indeed her mate. What a stroke to his ego. “I'm glad you listened to that one.”
Her lips curled in a smile against his skin, but she remained mute on whatever had pulled her out of bed in the wee hours. Cuddling her close, he dropped a kiss on her head and urged her to tip her head back to look at him by gently tugging on her hair.
Soft, pearly light shimmered across her brow, the first blush of morning reflecting in her clear green eyes. His heart clenched with disbelief that anyone could be so beautiful. Maybe it was the fairy blood coursing through her veins that made her so damn captivating.
He could have watched her for hours, days, and never tire of it. His hands were huge and rough, too rough to be touching such soft skin, but she turned her face into his palm with a sigh, her long lashes fluttering with pleasure at the scrape of his callused thumb across her cheek.
He wondered if this feeling of awe would ever fade. He hoped to hell it wouldn't, and every morning he woke up with her, this overwhelming sense of love and disbelief that she was his would wash over him, warm and steady, like the sun.
“Tell me what you feel, Ivy. Even if it turns out to be nothing, tell me.”
A shadow passed over her expression, but there was trust in her gaze, which was every bit as important to him as having her love. “It's hard to describe.”
“I got plenty of time, honey.”
She raked her bottom lip through her teeth, shooting a quick glance out the window, not able to hide the shiver that worked through her. “I spent so much of my life cut off from my magic; I'm not sure what things are supposed to feel like. When I spread all the wildflower seeds yesterday, it felt like tiny little pebbles being thrown into a pond. I could feel the soil, sense the water flowing deep underground, the skitter of squirrels up the tree trunks. Everything, you know?”
Uriah nodded to silently say he was keeping up, and she continued, her speech speeding up as she unknowingly tried to convey to him that she wasn't making it up. As if he would have ever thought she would lie.
“I thought I felt something when we sat down to read, like another series of stones dropped into a pond, but I chalked it up to nerves of getting into my mom's journal. But then a few minutes later, Rowena and the girls came walking out of the forest, and I knew, I knew, those ripples had to have been the ground warning me that someone friendly was coming.
“It made me think about the lessons one of my instructors at school gave about how a Green Witch could stake her claim on a plot of land, and if it accepted her, it would always be her first line of defense.”
“That's excellent, honey.” A sweet blush warmed her cheeks. “So, you felt something… the land warning you about an intruder?”
Her face screwed up in the most adorable look of confusion, her nose twitching like a little bunny's.
“I don't know. It did feel different than before. More of a tiny earthquake than a gentle ripple. I got up because it seemed almost... urgent? I was standing here, trying to work it out, and just for a second, I felt that uneasy feeling of being watched.
“There and gone so fast, I'm sure I imagined it because I was staring out into the dark, looking for something bad. The lions are out there patrolling though, right? It could have just been one of them. It's not like I know the pride members on sight or anything.”
Uriah gave a tight harrumph, making a quick decision to change that, ASAP. “I told Abel to focus his patrols around the coven house, who knows if he listened to me. The guy's a dickhole on a good day.
“I'll shoot him a text after breakfast and introduce you to his crew. Next time, you'll know if it's a lion or something else. You felt it come from this section of the woods though?”
He jerked his chin in the general vicinity of the forest that butted up to the manicured lawn, now sporting a riot of flowers. Ivy nodded, her gaze searching back and forth at the tree line as the sun rose higher, illuminating the boundaries of the yard.
“That general area.” She pointed, her long finger swirling in the air. “To the right of that tree... stump.”
The way she trailed off sent warning bells blaring through him, and he crowded closer, seeking out anything strange about the area she indicated. “What?”
Ivy opened her mouth, but the only sound he heard was a breathy inhale, then her teeth snapping together before she tried again. “I threw wildflower seeds out in the grass.”
“I know, they're beautiful.”
“But that's not a wildflower, and it's not native to the area.” It took him a minute to seek out the one flower among thousands that didn't belong, frowning at how he managed to look past it twice.
He missed it completely because he'd been looking on the ground, but the slender green vine with spear-shaped leaves was wrapped around a dead branch, and it didn't look like a flower at all. The bright pink stem had the shape of a pipe, with paler pink tentacles wrapped around a white, oblong-shaped pod.
It looked more like something out of a sci-fi movie than a flower. He said so, and got a short laugh out of his mate. “It's not poisonous, is it? That thing is big enough to have teeth.”
Ivy shook her head, briefly biting down on her thumb with a deep frown pulling at her brows. “No, it's not poisonous. It's called Queen of the Night, and it only blooms in moonlight. I didn't put it there.”