Free Turning Tides by Mia Marshall Page B

much proof of that recently. We could burn someone’s insides or turn their hearts to ice. We could calcify bones or drown them in water we pulled from the air.
    I also knew it wasn’t a power we should have. We shouldn’t get to decide who lived or died. When I sent my magic into another person, for that moment I held their life in my hands. It wasn’t a role that fit me.
    I’d made one exception, for Mac. Just once, I’d used my water and fire magic together. It brought him back to me, but it also changed us in ways we still didn’t understand. And, despite what I’d said to Simon, for Mac I’d do it again. I’d do whatever I needed to do to keep him with me. If that meant healing him now, I would do it, and I’d just find a way to live with any consequences.
    I was halfway across the parking lot when the trailer’s aluminum door slammed open and Mac himself filled the doorway. If I’d been dying of thirst in the desert and someone gave me a bottle of water, I don’t think I’d have greeted it with more joy than I did the sight of that man.
    He didn’t look ill. Hell, he didn’t even look mildly uncomfortable. He looked like a freaking god.
    Mac wasn’t just tall, or strong. He was immense. Near him, all other men looked a bit puny and underdeveloped, like they were just a step below him on the evolutionary ladder. He was a bear shifter, and sometimes I was embarrassed I’d needed to be told that. I should have known, just to look at him. He had the strength and size, the broad, tanned face, the dark brown eyes and hair, but it was more than that. He was gentle, until he wasn’t, and he was calm, until provoked. He was as protective as any mother bear, and anyone who threatened those he cared about might find themselves missing a spine. Somehow, I’d become one of the people he cared about.
    Not just one of them. We were becoming more than one of many to each other, and though neither of us were in a hurry to put it into words, we both recognized there might be something real between us, something rare and unchanging. Something that could destroy us both and maybe, if we were lucky, put us back together again, better than we’d ever been before.
    I stared at him, a smile spreading across my face, washing away the fear and tension that had gathered under Simon’s dreadful words. I launched myself across the parking lot, crossing the ten feet that separated us in the time between one heartbeat and the next. I didn’t stop when I reached him, either, but I didn’t need to. He already had his arms out, ready to catch me as I landed against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in the warm curve of bare skin where his shoulder met his collar bone.
    “You’re here,” I murmured, lips pressed against his skin.
    A rumble coursed through his chest, a silent laugh. “So, we’re not doing the take-it-slow thing anymore?”
    With one hand, I lightly smacked the back of his head, then simply held on tighter, squeezing for all I was worth. Granted, between my absolute lack of muscle mass and his excess of same, he probably didn’t feel much, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t letting go, and he should know that.
    “If you need a room, I’m sure Simon and I can vanish for a bit,” said a familiar voice.
    It was enough to pull me back to reality and remind me that, abandoned building or not, we were still in public. I should probably hold off trying to climb inside Mac’s skin until we were alone.
    I drew back, looking for the source of the voice. “Miriam?”
    The otter shifter lowered herself out of the trailer somewhat cautiously. In water, few were more graceful than she was, but on land, she was a bit awkward, at least by shifter standards.
    “Hey, Brook. So, I checked on them like you asked.”
    I looked between her, Simon, and Mac. “Bit of an overachiever, aren’t you?”
    She laughed, a big booming sound that made me think everything was going to be okay. “Well, I hadn’t