Free Kiera Hudson & The Lethal Infected by Tim O'Rourke

felt inside threatened to overwhelm me, and if it did, I might not leave with Potter – however much I wanted to. However much I hated myself for feeling it, I knew my loyalty and heart belonged to Potter, even if he wasn’t mine in this world. I just couldn’t shake those feelings off, however much I tried.
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered at Nev, pushing my chair back and standing up again. 
    “Me too,” he whispered back.
    Gripping my arm, Potter led me back across the restaurant to the door. I stopped and looked over my shoulder at Nev. He sat alone at the table by the fire. It was then I remembered the card he had drawn for me.
    “I’ve got to go back,” I said to Potter.
    “He’ll get over it,” he said, dragging me through the open doorway and out into the night.
    Once outside, I pulled myself free of Potter’s grip. “What’s so important that you think you have the right to storm in there and drag me away from my friend?” I demanded. “And how did you know where I was going to be? Have you been watching me?”
    “Don’t flatter yourself, hot-lips,” Potter said, skulking away from where I had parked my Mini and to a darkened corner of the car park. “Murphy told me.”
    “Murphy?” Then I remembered telling him that I was going out with a friend for dinner at the Light House tonight.
    “If you don’t want to be found, don’t tell people where you’re heading,” Potter said, disappearing into the darkness.
    I went after him. “Where are we going? My car is back over there.”
    I felt a hand grip mine and pull me into the shadows out from the glare of the lights spilling from the restaurant windows. I felt Potter against me, his breath against me. I felt my heart miss a beat. In fact, it felt like it had stopped altogether as he pulled me close.
    “Where we’re going we won’t need your car, we can fly,” he said. In the darkness I felt and heard the heavy rustle of his wings breaking free of his back.
    “Where are we going?” I whispered, as he snaked one arm about my waist.
    “To a party,” he said, his pale face and dark eyes looming out of the darkness just inches from me.
    “A party?” I frowned.
    “And you’re dressed perfectly for the occasion. You look as hot-as-fuck tonight, Kiera Hudson,” he smiled, soaring up into the night with me held in his arms.
    When the Ragged Cove was nothing more than a sea of twinkling lights in the darkness below me, I let my own wings spring from my back. Potter loosened his grip on me and I swooped away. My long, black hair fluttered about me, as did the dress I was wearing. Potter swooped in close, taking one of my hands in his.
    “What’s this party all about? I thought you said it couldn’t wait?” I said over the ripple of the wind and my bristling wings.
    “It can’t wait,” he smiled sideways at me. “It’s a once in a lifetime kind of thing.”
    A once in a lifetime kind of thing? What was that supposed to mean? I wondered as we raced through the night together. A bit like my twenty-first birthday. That was only ever going to happen once, and Potter had screwed that right up. Then glancing at him again, I wondered if he had. He said he was taking me to a party? A birthday party, perhaps? I dared to hope – to dream. But how would Potter know it was my birthday? Murphy! I smiled. He had told Potter that it was my birthday, just like he had told him where I was going to be tonight.
    Sensing that I had figured out what Potter was up to, any anger that I felt toward him for dragging me away from Nev melted. I curled my fingers tighter about his and flew closer toward him. What more could I have asked for on my twenty-first birthday than to be swept up into the night by the man I loved and to be taken to a surprise birthday party? Perhaps Jack had been right and Potter and I were meant to be together in this layer… perhaps we were going to be married just like we had planned… perhaps we were going to have a