Free Wild Darkness (A Bound By Magick Novel) by Lauren Dane Page B

courtyard, full of life. Container gardens spilled with plants and flowers.
    “Gage and I are in the living room watching movies when you’re ready.” Molly hugged Helena and then Faine and went back inside.
    Faine settled on a bench and watched as Helena took her shoes and socks off, along with her sweater, leaving her in a T-shirt that showed the whipcord strength of her upper body. She freed her hair from the bun she’d been wearing, running her fingers through it as she did.
    Then she wandered through the path, letting her outstretched fingertips brush over the plants, against the bark of the trees, through the rushing water of the water feature. She stepped up and then down into the bed of a large garden space.
    He saw it then, the light of her aura as she drew all the magick around her. It settled against her skin like snowflakes and then seemed to melt into her. She breathed slow and deep as she walked. Occasionally she’d pause, burying her face in a bunch of leaves or flowers.
    This side of her was soft. Lush and so achingly intimate it was as if he’d been spying on her. But she’d allowed it. Moved around knowing he was there watching.
    A gift of her inner life and the weight of that settled. Not crushing.
Anchoring
.
    She’d been sort of tattered when they’d arrived. Her spine hunched, the tension rolling from her in waves. But when she came back to him, settling next to him on the bench, that was gone. Her ragged spaces seemed to have filled in. Her aura was brilliant, sunny yellow, the blue of the sky at summer.
    She stretched. “This garden is fantastic. Whoever tends it does so with love. Every leaf seems to vibrate with it.”
    “You can feel things like that?”
    “Not always. But living things most especially. My mother says we get it through her. Lark is much the same, though she’s got this crazy affinity with birds. We’ve always loved being outdoors. There’s so much ambient magick in a garden. If it’s tended by someone who truly loves the work, the magick seems to leap to you when you call for it. The energy, the life force of the plant life fills in all your empty spots. I don’t know how to explain it.”
    “Seems to me you’re doing just fine.”
    “I have a lot of plants in my apartment, but at the house I used to share with Lark, we had an inner courtyard like this and it was full of plants. After crazy shifts we’d often just sit out there and have a glass of wine, letting all the bad business wisp away. My mother is a big gardener. She loves it. All the stuff from her teas comes from her gardens at their house. I guess we do get it from her, though I’m not that gifted with green things. She’s special that way.”
    He smiled. “Thank you.”
    “For what?” She clearly had no idea.
    “For letting me share in this with you. This private side of yourself.”
    “Oh. Well. I figured you’d find something restorative out here too. Shifters have that connection with nature as well. Different, but it’s there.”
    He snorted. “I’m
not
a shifter.”
    She turned, a mischievous grin on her lips, and his heart lightened.
    “You’re human and you shift into a wolf.”
    “You enjoy poking at me, don’t you?”
    She raised a brow, but said nothing else and he chuckled.
    “I’m Lycian. I am a beast who wears a man’s skin sometimes. And other times I wear fur. But I am always who I am, no matter the skin I wear. I do not need the moon or the tides. If I bit you, you’d bleed, but you wouldn’t be infected.”
    “Did I insult you?” Her levity was gone, her question genuine.
    He snorted a laugh and took her hand, squeezing it a moment. “No. We’re related in a distant manner, to shifters. But we are not the same.”
    “Thank you for educating me. There’s so much I don’t know about everything out there in the universe. I thought I did until the Magister. Not knowing things makes me nervous.”
    “There’s so much out there. Miraculous things.”
    “I envy