Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors #6)(88)

He stared at her, his mouth half-open.

Her brows drew down, suddenly worried. "What's the matter?"

"My father used to be able to do that." His voice sounded stunned. "I thought . . . I thought it had taken him centuries of practice."

"What did I do?"

He shook his head. "You flew through the trees without hitting a thing. Shifted as you landed, in the blink of an eye." Grasping her arms, he leaned toward her, his expression lighting with wonder. "How did you do that?"

She shrugged. "I thought about flying through the trees and returning to you, and that's what I did."

"No." His grip on her arms tightened. "No, you did so much more."

"The falcon did the rest."

Hawke stilled, his eyes narrowing. "You said that before. That the falcon takes over."

"She doesn't take over, not at all. I think of what I want to do, and she executes the moves. We're a team." Deep in her mind, she felt the falcon's approval.

But only confusion lit Hawke's face. Releasing her, he turned away, then swung back around. "My father could do that. The hawk is capable of it."

"It's what he wants." Even without the falcon's coaching, she suddenly understood. "He wants to work with you as a team. In perfect unison. In perfect trust. Instead, you push him away. Or you did, until the spirit trap caused the break in your connection, allowing the hawk to fight you for control. Why, Hawke? Why do you push him away?"

"I don't."

She cocked her head. "But you don't fully trust him."

"I'm a man first, not an animal. It's the man's brain that must make the decisions. Otherwise . . ." He shook his head. "People get hurt."

She closed the distance between them and pressed her hands against his chest. "What people? What happened?" she asked softly, because it was clear something had. "Why is your relationship with your animal so different from mine?"

Slowly, he turned away again, standing in profile, staring down the hill as if suddenly fascinated by the rocks and dead leaves littering the sloping forest floor.

"When you first shifted, what was it like between you, Hawke?"

He shrugged. "It was always like this."

"He didn't show you how to fly? He didn't take you?"

"Never." His brows pulled together as he glanced at her. "He tried, I think. Those early days were a fog. Not good."

He kept pulling away, but she refused to let him escape this. Or her. She stepped closer and ran her hand over his broad, tightly muscled back. "Why not?"

"I . . ." He shook his head and looked away.

She kissed his shoulder. "Tell me."

"Faith . . . this isn't the time."

"It is the time. You don't want to talk about what happened, which tells me it's important. I'm not going to let it go. Not with so much at stake."

The stubborn set to his jaw slowly softened, his mouth forming a rueful twist.

"Tell me what happened."

He turned to her fully and sighed. "You're relentless." But his mouth tipped up in a half smile.

"Only because I love you so very much."

His eyes softened even more as he pulled her into his arms and rested his chin lightly on her head.

"I didn't want to be marked." He groaned. "That's not exactly true." Pulling back, he grabbed her face between his hands and kissed her, a quick soft peck. "I'll tell you, but . . . I need to pace."

As he turned and did just that, Faith perched herself on a small rocky shelf and waited.

"My father was killed by a human mortar shell during the Civil War. I think I told you that."

"You did."

"I was living in Finland at the time, tutoring the only child in a small enclave. Aren. His father was Therian, but his mother was human, and Aren was mortal. I'd been with them five years when I discovered the feral marks on the back of my shoulder one morning. I immediately knew one of the nine must have died. I'd grown up in Feral House. All nine had had a hand in raising me. I was devastated at the thought of any of their deaths, but the fact that I'd been marked made me fear that the one who'd died was my father. We shared the hawk DNA, of course.

"It was a couple of weeks before Lyon's letter reached me. I was alone in the library of the enclave's house when I read it." He frowned. "I wasn't prepared. Not only had my father died, as I'd feared, but so had my mother. Three days after my father died, she was killed by draden. Accidentally, Lyon said, but I knew better."

Bitterness twisted his mouth, a bitterness he'd lived with for over 140 years. "I loved my mother, but she never had half of Kara's strength. She couldn't bear the suffering from the severed mating bond, so she took her own life. Or let the draden take it."

Faith shuddered at the thought of dying beneath those razor-sharp mouths, though she'd all but done that, hadn't she? If Hawke hadn't been there . . .

"I was furious. It was bad enough I'd lost one parent, but two . . . and the second intentionally . . ." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then dropped them, his expression bleak. "Aren ran into the room while I was reading that letter. Eight years old. I'd known him since he was a toddler and loved him like a son."