Okay, so maybe Ivy hadn’t needed to hear Rose’s plan quite so badly. Was it too late to take back her enthusiasm? Because to be honest, her original reaction had been predicated on the idea that any idea developed by a genuine Warden with two years to plan and prepare would be a sound one. After all, Rose had experience, legitimate talent, and a house full of Guild members to help her devise the surest, safest, and most effective way to stand against the Darkness and neutralize their threat for good.
Yet with all that going for her, the Frenchwoman had come up with a strategy best described as “Rub ourselves with raw liver, jump into the lion’s den, and then hope for the best.”
Really? As in, Are you fucking kidding me?
But no, Rose had assured them, she was completely serious. Thiago had been able to re-create the spell that the Wardens had used when they stood beside the first Guardians and banished the Seven Demons of the Darkness from the human plane, imprisoning them apart from this world and from each other.
Ivy would be the first to admit that Thiago’s work represented an amazing achievement, one for which he should be congratulated and offered the thanks of the Guild, if not the entire human world. Unfortunately, he and Rose both now claimed that in order to repeat the casting of said spell, they would have to first gather all six escaped Demons into one place and face them directly, performing the ritual in the presence of the evil itself.
And that’s pretty much when it stopped sounding like such a good idea.
Baen had been among the first to question the strategy. Loudly.
He hadn’t been wild about the idea of gathering six of the Seven together—in one spot, he had shouted—and then allowing the Wardens, including his mate—HIS MATE (that one was more like a bellow)—to get close enough to them to cast a spell directly on the embodiments of the Eternal Darkness.
How could they possibly have come up with a worse idea? Baen had demanded. Then he had replied to his own question before anyone else had the chance and declared that the answer was, they couldn’t. It was physically and theoretically impossible to even entertain an idea with such intrinsic badness as that one, the Guardian had declared, and his brothers (and sister) had agreed with him. The entire plan was predicated on risking the lives of the Wardens, and as such, none of their mates were willing to allow it.
Looking back, Ivy figured it was the repeated use of the word “allow,” accompanied by the word “not,” that sparked the melee that had followed.
Being a group of highly intelligent and rather independent-minded individuals, none of the Wardens responded well to being forbidden from anything by their mates. More than one voice rose several decibels, and at one particularly memorable moment, a decorative silver memento box was snatched off a table and flung with great force and no little accuracy at the head of a particularly stubborn Guardian. He ducked, but Kylie’s gesture still seemed to have made its point—the relationship between a Guardian and a Warden was a partnership, and everyone needed to remember that.
While Ivy appreciated the sentiment, and agreed with it in principle, she wasn’t so certain she objected to Baen’s position. After all, he was only trying to stop her from doing something her gut told her was roughly equivalent to standing in the middle of some train tracks and asking politely that the locomotive barreling toward her consider not turning her into human-flavored jelly. Could she really blame him for that?
And there was the other million-dollar question of the moment: not just, could she really blame Baen for trying to protect his mate, but did she believe that’s what she was? Did they really have that kind of connection?
Did she want them to?
Ivy looked out over the gardens from her position on a small terrace at the side of the manor house, and grimaced. It had been a week since they had arrived and almost as long since the meeting at which Rose and Thiago had revealed their plan, and Ivy had gotten no closer to answering that fundamental question. How did she feel about her giant, overprotective, and occasionally overbearing new friend?
You know, aside from bloody confused.
She couldn’t deny the connection between them, no matter how much easier doing so would have made her life. It was just there, a kind of invisible cord stretching between them no matter where they went or what they were doing. She felt it just as strongly when they were at opposite ends of the grounds—she learning to work magic from the other Wardens while he sparred with his siblings to keep their skills honed and their bodies occupied—as she did when they lay next to each other in her bed at night.
And that, she admitted, wasn’t exactly helping her to clear her head. Her brain told her that if she wanted to make a real decision about where she and Baen stood, she ought to stop jumping his bones every chance she got. The trouble was, that was easier said than done. Or not done, as the case may be, because when they got together, there always seemed to be an awful lot of doing going on.
Physically, Ivy couldn’t resist him. He’d become this powerful drug, and no matter how she told herself after each encounter that it would be the last, the minute she laid eyes on him again, she wanted him. No, she needed him, like a junkie needed a fix, and that frightened her.
Just not enough.
Not enough to stay away from him, at any rate. Every night, she climbed into bed beside him, and then ended up climbing him like her own personal Everest. Either that, or he climbed in with her, and she welcomed him with open arms, not to mention open thighs. She felt kind of like a slut afterward, but in the moment, all she felt was hunger and heat and something frighteningly like … affection.
Ivy leaned against the balustrade separating the terrace from the grounds and dug her fingers into the cold stone. You’d think the sensation would ground her, but oh no, it just made her think about Baen, about the way his skin felt when he carried her through the air in his winged form, such a contrast to the smooth heat of his human shape. Both of them enthralled her, which only gave her another reason to worry.
She had never felt this way before, not about anyone. She was twenty-seven, for pity’s sake, and she lived in the modern world. She’d had crushes and boyfriends, lovers and even one relationship she had thought of for a while as the One. She’d thought she’d been in love. Hell, she’d thought she had run the gamut, from infatuation to genuine affection to hormone-inspired madness to real love, and none of them had prepared her for the way she felt around Baen.
Cue waves of terror.
How was it that this man who wasn’t even a man could make her feel things she had never experienced before? And, even more than that, how did she trust that any of it was real? With all this talk of Fate and magic and mates and destiny, how could she know that what she felt came from her, from her own heart and her own mind, and not from some cosmic force using her like a Barbie doll to act out its own grand plan. Maybe on her own, she would have chosen to settle down with Ken, but instead, the universe had scooped her up, paired her with G.I. Joe, and forced these feelings on her for some unfathomable reason of its own.
The idea terrified her, and her way of looking at it might be a bit silly, but was it really outside the realm of possibility? If she really was “fated” to be with Baen, then where did that leave room for free will and the autonomy she needed to develop feelings for him (or for anyone else) naturally? Wasn’t she supposed to have a choice in determining her soul mate? The way Baen described their relationship, she wasn’t so sure.
The uncertainty made her want to run. The way she felt when she was with Baen made her want to stay.
Bloody hell.
She blew out a breath, watching it steam up in the crisp evening air. One of these days, she was going to discover who had stood over her crib in the hospital nursery and blessed her with an interesting life. When she did, the bugger was getting a good swift kick right in the babymaker.
The jerk.
When it came right down to it, all her confusion stemmed from the dichotomy of the way she felt when she was with Baen compared to the way she felt when she was on her own, like this, with time to think. So really, you could say that thinking was her enemy; it only made her doubt herself, while Baen just made her feel good.
Really, really good.
It would make her life so much easier if she could shift all the blame for her situation onto his shoulders. After all, they were more than broad enough to bear the burden. If she told herself often enough that Baen’s presence distracted her, that his touch clouded her mind, and that sex with him completely cut her off from reality, maybe she could start viewing all those as bad things, instead of as the bright moments in a present full of fear and anxiety and the possibility of doom hanging over the world. Make Baen the villain, and let herself off the hook.
Kind of hard to do, though, now that she’d seen the real villains. Having looked into the faces of demons and nocturnis, the intrinsic and uncompromising honor and goodness of the Guardians couldn’t be denied, not even for the sake of Ivy’s sanity. Which left her right back where she’d started—enthralled, terrified, and having no idea what to do with the giant, sexy creature who occupied her bed and seemed determined to convince her to let him stay there forever.
“You’ve got a look about you that says you could go one of two ways.” A voice interrupted her brooding, and she glanced to her right to see Michael Drummond stroll to a stop against a neighboring piece of terrace railing. “Either you really need a friend to talk to, or you have a grapefruit spoon in your pocket and plans to use it on the next set of bollocks that get within striking distance. I’m hoping it’s the former, but if not, I’m hoping my longer legs will provide the advantage of speed in getting away.”
His words and wry smile startled a snort of laughter from her. “Yeah, I’ll let you know when I decide. How’s that sound?”
“Fair enough.” Drum leaned a hip against the balustrade and looked from her to the scenery spread out beyond the small, flagstoned patio. “The views here aren’t bad. For France, anyway.”
Ivy glanced at him. “Not that you could possibly be biased about scenery, or anything.”
“I’ll admit we’ve a vista or two back home worth noting.” He grinned. “Have you been to Ireland?”
“Once. I spent some time touring the south. Cork, Kerry, Waterford. It was beautiful.”
“It is that.”
Silence descended, not an uncomfortable one, but one that felt too heavy to be empty. Still, she had enough to keep her mind busy without pressing the friendly Irishman to state his business.
Ivy had gotten to know all the Wardens a little in the past week, and she’d come to like Drum. He was a nice guy, mostly low-key and good-natured, with a quick smile and a laid-back, somewhat dry sense of humor. She found him an interesting contrast to his Guardian, Ash, the only female Guardian ever summoned. Where her Warden came across as mellow and kind, Ash seemed much more intense, serious, and almost brooding. They didn’t seem like a good match, and yet they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, tab A into slot B. Perfect.
She wasn’t naïve enough to believe it had really been that easy for them. It was never that easy for anyone, let alone couples who had to cross a species barrier in addition to all the normal ones. But that didn’t keep a small part of her from feeling a twinge or two of envy. Maybe it hadn’t been quite as hard for Ash and Drum as it was turning out to be for Ivy and Baen.
“You know, you’ve been doing very well with your lessons. I had a bit of a mental block when I first started, but then I had to do a few things in the heat of the moment before I ever got a real lesson, so I can admit I was a bit impatient with starting over from the beginning.”
Ivy shrugged. “It’s all still a little surreal for me. I never even wondered what it would be like to be able to do this stuff. Not because I didn’t believe in it, but because … I don’t know. Maybe because I figured that if I could have, I would have by now. I feel a little bit like an adult having to sit down with the kindergarteners. You know, squeezed into one of those tiny chairs with my knees pressed all the way up to my chin.”
“Oh, you mean a Kylie-sized chair.”
She chuckled. “Something like that.”
Drum turned around, leaning back against the railing now and focusing on Ivy. “You’re doing fine. I think we all felt like that in the beginning, but you’re picking things up fast. Not that you have much choice, given the situation.”
“Yeah, nothing like the specter of certain death hanging over your head to make a girl study hard.”
“And when it comes to the big spell, we’ve all started from even ground. No one’s tried to work anything like that before, and you’re holding your own with the rest of us. We can’t ask any more than that, can we?”
“Sure you could. You’d just be doomed to disappointment.”
“No one is disappointed in you, Ivy girl.” He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
She blew out a breath and stared hard into the distance. “Baen is,” she admitted quietly.
“Ah.” Drum folded his arms back across his chest and gave her a knowing look. “I thought that might be the real reason behind those frowns of yours.”
Was she really that obvious? she wondered for a second, then gave in and admitted the truth. Yeah, she probably had been.
“I have no idea what I’m doing with him.” She shook her head. “He keeps telling me all this stuff about Fate and destiny and how we’re partners and how much we mean to each other and part of me really wants him to be right. But the rest of me thinks he’s just clinically insane.”
Drum chuckled. “Yes, I remember that stage. Believe me. It wasn’t all that many months ago. Have you gotten to the point where you think everything will just be fine if you move to a different continent and leave no forwarding address?”
“I hear Greenland is highly overlooked in terms of quality-of-life issues.”
“I was thinking Australia, personally, but after a lifetime of Irish weather, I was looking for sunshine and beaches. You know it’s perfectly natural to feel that way, don’t you? Think about it. Think about what’s happened in your life in the last week or two and compare that with all the … what? Twenty-four years? That went before it.”
“Twenty-seven. It’s not just the suddenness, though. I honestly don’t think that’s what I’m hung up on. Not really.” She hesitated, unsure whether to keep going. Drum was easy to talk to, but was she really ready to admit to him what had her so tied up in knots? Just because he was with a Guardian didn’t mean he would get it. Besides, if she had this talk with anyone, shouldn’t it be with Baen?
Not that she’d been doing much talking with him. Every time they got a few minutes alone to themselves, they ended up naked and sweaty. It wasn’t conducive to soul-searching, or to meaningful heart-to-heart discussions.
There were too many other body parts pressing against each other.
“Let me guess. Destiny?” Drum asked, then grinned and launched into an impression of Gene Wilder’s character in Young Frankenstein. “‘Destiny! Destiny! No escaping death for me!’”
Ivy laughed. She couldn’t help herself. The moment perfectly summed up her inner conflict, while pointing out the inherent ridiculousness of her reaction to it. “Yeah, something like that. You do a mean Frederick Frankenstein, by the way.”
Drum pretended confusion. “Who? That was me, when I first met Ash.”
Ivy imagined him repeating the scene in front of the tough, serious Guardian and laughed again. She could just imagine the female’s expression. “Right.”
“Well, nearly, in any event,” he said. “I didn’t take very well to the news. Not to any of it, really. I’d grown up in a family where a little gift wasn’t a great surprise to anyone. I have a knack for finding things that have gotten lost, for instance, and my baby sister can see what hasn’t happened yet, as I told you. Those things I had known all my life, and I had no trouble believing in that kind of magic. But the rest of this? Stone statues that spring to life in the middle of the night? Real, tangible demons and crazy cultists who worship evil in ways the chat shows couldn’t even fathom? No, none of that made sense in my pretty little world. I didn’t like it at all, and I wanted it to get the hell out of my pub and never come back.”
He gestured to himself and the house and his smile turned wry again. “You can see how that all worked out for me, in the end.”
“Well, Ash doesn’t strike me as the kind to take no for an answer.”
He raised an eyebrow. “But Baen does?”
“Touché.” Ivy wrapped her arms around her torso, wishing she’d put on a heavier jacket now that the sun had fully set. “No, Baen is pretty determined to make me see things from his perspective. I’m just … having a hard time with this idea he has that it’s all been predetermined.”
“Because if it’s just Fate that’s thrown you together, how would you know whether either of you had genuine feelings for each other, and you’re not just ending up stuck with each other because some big mouth in the heavens up there said you had to.”
Her head jerked up and her gaze flew to his face. How had he summed up all her angst so perfectly in just a few words?
“Because I wondered exactly the same thing, love.” He answered her unspoken question with a grin. “Trust me. No one in this world has a more complicated relationship with the notion of Fate than an Irishman. They mix the stuff into our baby bottles. Everyone where I come from believes in Fate, whether they call it that or destiny or the hand of God. We Irish are a fatalistic bunch. But that doesn’t mean I was ready to surrender the most important decision in my life to some outside force. I intended to choose the woman I loved, thank you very much, after much searching and careful deliberation.”
“So what happened?”
“I met Ash, didn’t I?”
“And you just gave up on having it be your own idea?”
“Oh, not quite. There may have been some kicking and screaming and bare-knuckled punches thrown at Fate’s ugly mug before it was all said and done.”
“May have been? Do not lie to the poor human, Michael. You fought like a tiger and sobbed like a little girl before you finally manned up and accepted the inevitable.” Ash joined them in the dim light cast on the terrace from the sitting room beyond. “To be honest, I was embarrassed for him. He lost all sense of dignity for a time.”
Grabbing his mate around the shoulders, Drum hauled her against his chest and growled a playful threat. “I don’t recall you giving in gracefully there, my stony love, so let’s be careful where we cast the blame, shall we?”
Ash pretended a cool indifference, but Ivy didn’t miss the way she leaned into her mate’s embrace, fitting against him as if she belonged there. “I merely report on events as I recall them, and I recall you pouting like a child deprived of sweets.”
Drum lowered his head to nuzzle his mate’s cheek and murmured, “Then you’ll just have to give me a taste of honey to keep me happy, won’t you?”
Ivy looked away and pretended she hadn’t heard that. With any luck, it was too dark out here to see her blush.
Ash hushed Drum and spoke to Ivy. “The point that I believe is important to remember, is that most of us resist Fate in the beginning. It is the natural response of any animal to fight against a restraining hand, and humans remain animals like any other in this regard. Fighting Fate is not a bad thing. In fact, I believe that Fate wants us to struggle against it, for if we accept it too quickly, it can see that we may lack the strength for what it has planned.”
Ivy didn’t think anyone could accuse her of giving in too quickly here. Especially not Baen.
“What is important,” Ash continued, “is to recognize that if Fate insists on guiding us along a certain path even after we resist, it is not because it wishes to trap us, but because it knows that the place it guides us toward is the place we will best be able to become our true selves. In other words, Fate does not wish to be humanity’s puppet master, only our treasure map.”
She offered Ivy a smile, hooked her arm around her mate’s waist and guided him back toward the house. Watching them go, Ivy mulled over the Guardian’s words. If Fate wasn’t trying to force Ivy into a relationship with Baen, but merely offering her an opportunity that would inevitably give her much more than it cost her, then what was she really fighting against? Fate? Baen?
Or herself?
* * *
Ivy had disappeared from the house that evening before dinner, and it had cost Baen every ounce of self-control he possessed not to hunt her down like a wily fox. She had been behaving erratically toward him since they had arrived at the manor, warm and affectionate one moment, running away to avoid him the next. He had told himself that she needed time to adjust to the idea of being his mate, but his self had started to grumble back and insist that she’d had plenty of time, and now it was their job to demonstrate all the benefits of accepting their relationship. Most of which, if his inner voice was to be believed, had to do with nudity. Lots and lots of nudity.
As it turned out, his inner voice belonged to an insatiable pervert.
It had to be insatiable, because the one place where Ivy had not tried to run from him over the last week had been in the bed they shared every night. All he had to do was touch her, and she turned to him, sweet and eager and pliant in his hands. She gave as good as she got, too, lavishing him with pleasure on a few memorable occasions that had made him fear the other members of the household would respond to his roars to see who had died or been killed. Luckily, the others seemed to know to stay away. Either that, or the manor bedrooms had some of the finest soundproofing ever installed in a private home.
Yet despite all the time he spent in his mate’s sweet arms and sweeter body, he never seemed to get enough of her. He had only to think her name or hear her voice and smell the scent of sweet oranges, and he wanted her again. For a male who prided himself on his honor and self-control, it was turning into something of an embarrassment. Even more so because of the teasing to which his brothers liked to subject him.
They went at it again, subtly over dinner in the presence of their mates, and then with less restraint in the smoking room, which they commandeered for themselves most nights. Not because any of them smoked, but because no one in the house did, either, so it afforded them quiet, privacy, and an environment with heavy, masculine furniture they did not have to worry about breaking every time they took their seats.
Instead of smoking, most of the Guardians spent their evenings honing weapons, reading through books and pages their Wardens had passed on to them, and taking advantage of the novel experience of having so many of them gathered together in one place. Even the eldest of them had only rarely spent time together in the past, and most of that had taken place on the field of battle, where opportunities for conversation appeared sparingly. Sharing a common archive of memory and knowledge was one thing, but being able to actually speak to each other freely and openly made for a refreshing change.
Most of the time. Baen found it less of a delight when the others of his kind used it against him. Especially when they did it with such open glee.
“Given up on your little female for the night?” Knox asked, throwing the evening’s opening salvo. “Or did she chase you off with that satchel of hers? She wields a mighty weapon, considering it is made of canvas and leather.”
Most of the others chuckled while Baen glowered at them all from his comfortable leather chair. It had been days since Ivy had struck out at him with her bag, hitting him square in the side of the head when he had pushed her too far on the subject of their mating. He had thought they were alone when he had pursued the subject, but apparently one of his brothers had been lurking nearby, and they had yet to let him forget the incident.
“Leave him alone,” Ash scolded. She perched in the corner of a heavy sofa with her legs curled up tailor fashion and her lap full of hardware. “Or perhaps you’d like me to share what I know of your own courtship? A little birdie told me it wasn’t all smooth sailing between you and your witch, brother.”
Knox’s smile morphed into a frown, one with a distinctly petulant air about it. “A little birdie named Kylie, I presume. That one certainly likes to share a story or two, doesn’t she?”
Dag passed behind Knox’s seat and smacked his brother across the back of the head. “Watch your tone when you speak of my mate. Even when you might be speaking the truth.”
Another chuckle rippled through the room, and Knox joined in. None of them had been able to completely escape the group’s teasing, but that didn’t stop Baen from feeling he’d been a particularly popular target. Of course, there was the slightest chance his nerves being on edge made him a tad oversensitive of late, but he preferred to discount that notion.
“Don’t listen to these beasts, Baen.” Ash ran a soft cloth over her weapons, polishing surfaces that already gleamed. “They might be our brothers, but they have little notion of how to deal with women, especially human women. That any of them have managed to win, let alone keep a mate, is a testimony to the forgiving nature of their better halves, not any credit to themselves.”
Kees hooted. “As if you had such an easy time yourself, sister. I heard that the path between you and your Drum did not run entirely smooth.”
The female Guardian refused to take the bait. “I had two barriers to surmount in my case. Not only was my mate human, but he had the mind of a man, as well. That made my job twice as hard as any of you, because I had to overcome the limitations of masculine thinking.”
Boos and hisses and good-natured grumbling greeted her words, and a few balled-up pieces of paper and decorative pillows were immediately lobbed in her direction. Ash merely ducked, dodged, and smiled as she continued her polishing. “I rest my case. Males always try to reduce complex issues to one of two things—fighting or fucking. Females require slightly more advanced tactics before they can be won.”
Baen snorted, speaking before he could think better of it. “Neither of those seem to be a problem for my little mate and me. We seem to spend any time I can engineer for us to be together doing one or the other. Or both.”
Spar snickered. “Trust us, brother. We’ve heard.”
Ash snatched up one of the pillows that had landed beside her and landed a solid blow to the angelic-looking Guardian’s smirking face. “Say something like that in front of the human, and you’ll earn more than a pillow to the face, Spar, and from more than me, I would wager. Have some respect.”
Baen shifted uncomfortably. While he found enchanting the way his mate’s cheeks flushed rosy red when she felt angry or embarrassed, he would not want his friends to be the cause of such emotions. Nor would he want her to add that to the long list of grievances she must have against him by now.
“Yes, remember what Dag said to Knox,” he finally grumbled. “Watch your mouth when you speak of my mate.”
“But that is your whole trouble, isn’t it?” Dag pressed, dropping onto the far end of the sofa opposite Ash. “The little redheaded female has not admitted that she is your mate, has she?”
Baen answered with a narrow-eyed glare.
“Easy, brother. That was not my attempt to goad you, merely to clarify the situation. We all understand this part of the wooing process, and we all remember how it felt to be there. Knowing your mate stands before you and having her refuse to acknowledge your claim is maddening. We know.”
“Then I would think you would all be able to offer me useful advice, instead of poking fun and teasing me at every given opportunity.”
“Oh, but the poking is so much more fun,” Spar quipped.
“Frankly, I did not think you would appreciate my advice.” Kees grunted. “I would not have, when I was in your position.”
“What is it?”
“Patience.” Kees smiled when Baen made a sound of disgust. “You see? You do not appreciate it. I was right.”
“In more ways than one,” Knox said. “You were right that your advice is not appreciated, but it is correct. There is nothing else to be done with females like ours. They might look small and delicate, but they are fierce in their own right, and there is nothing a male can do to hasten their acceptance of their fates. You must let them come to realize the truth on their own.”
Frustration gathered in Baen’s chest, threatening to either strangle him or make him roar. Neither would accomplish anything more than a brief release of tension, though, so he fought back the emotion and focused on his brothers. “And what if she never stops fighting? My mate is stubborn.”
“No, she is afraid.” Ash threw down her cloth and shot Baen a look of disgust. “You need to pay more attention, Guardian, and listen to what your mate tells you.”
“Listen? I always listen!” Baen protested. “She barely speaks to me!”
“She says enough. She says that she is uncertain, and yet your response is not to offer reassurance, it is to tell her that her uncertainty is unfounded because Fate brought you together.”
“Because it did.”
The female Warden rolled her eyes. “And what does that matter to a human’s heart? They don’t know the power of Fate, brother, not like we do. They do not trust it. They build their lives on the concept of free will, that they can all choose their own destinies. And then you appear before her, telling her that none of it was true and she must give up her entire belief system and throw herself in your arms like a mindless hussy? Tell me, would you really want that from your mate?”
Baen stilled and focused on her words. He had never looked at the situation in those terms before, and he found them unsettling. Of course he did not want Ivy to abandon her personal beliefs for him, nor did he want a mate who meekly accepted his word without question, who went along with whatever circumstances arose in her life just because someone—even him—told her it was destined. He wanted his mate to think and reason and act independently, and Ivy did, which were among the reasons he found his little redhead so appealing.
Spar leaned over Knox’s shoulder and pointed. “Look, you can see the light beginning to dawn. Does anyone have one of those intelligent phone devices? We could get a picture.”
A second pillow hit Spar square in the face.
Ash hadn’t even bothered to look when she threw that one. Her gaze remained on Baen. “You need to show your mate that while Fate might have brought you together, you still want her to choose to be with you. Ivy needs to have good reason to do so.”
“And before you start planning to impress her with your strength and ability to keep her safe from harm,” Kees broke in, “allow me to save you some trouble. Humans have no difficulty understanding that we are stronger and faster and can protect them from harm. They appreciate it, but only to a point. Your mate doesn’t need to be reminded of that. What human females value is when we reveal our emotions to them. Do that, and your Ivy will stop struggling against her fate.”
Baen felt shock, then panic. “Guardians do not feel emotion.”
The five other figures in the room broke into raucous laughter. Spar actually wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “Oh, brother, you cannot still believe that old nonsense, can you?”
Ash rolled her eyes. “Everything that lives, feels. Magic or no magic, emotion is the fuel of the living mind. Of course we feel. The only ones who said otherwise were the founders of the Guild, and remember, these were the same humans who trapped us in stone and wanted to leave us there like hibernating guard dogs who would only be let loose at their whim. By telling us we did not feel, they kept those leashes short. But they lied.”
“All you need to do is think of your mate, and you will know the truth,” Dag said. “Your feelings for her are clear to anyone who sees you together, and anyone who bothers to watch your face whenever you set eyes on her. You feel plenty, Baen. All you need to do is acknowledge it.”
Kees nodded. “And then share it with your mate.”
Baen must have looked as shocked as he felt, because Knox chuckled and hastened to reassure him. “Be comforted to know that all your brothers—and your sister,” he corrected himself when Ash cleared her throat. “All your siblings before you have gone through this same experience. We have all come to feel deeply for our humans, and by sharing those feelings have claimed the mates we were destined to have. They have made us better men—er, better Guardians—and your Ivy will do the same for you.”