Free Twiceborn by Marina Finlayson

think I killed her?”
    “No! No, of course not.” His hands reached for mine, enclosing them in a warm comforting grip. “But I’m guessing other people do. Like that werewolf who attacked you. Must have been one of hers.”
    In a way that werewolf had done me a favour. Forget letting life just happen to me, as if I were a piece of flotsam being swept along a storm-filled gutter. I looked back at the person I’d been only a few months ago and marvelled at the change. I’d thought I wanted to die. And maybe, if death had come then, I wouldn’t have struggled.
    I gazed into his eyes, their dark brown rich as liquid chocolate. Be careful what you wish for, they say. Death, once longed for, looked different when you were staring it in the face. People—at least, things that looked like people—wanted me dead, because of something they thought I’d done. Maybe I’d even done it. It made no difference. Guess what? I’d decided to live.
    Somehow, without my even realising it, life had become valuable to me again.
    Perhaps the reason stood before me, brown eyes full of worry. I looked down at our joined hands, then at his mouth, wanting to taste it again. A rush of emotion—and something even more basic—filled me. It had been a long time since I’d kissed anyone.
    “Ben. I’m alive. We’re safe. And I’m not going to turn into a werewolf. You can’t imagine how good that makes me feel.” I leaned in till our foreheads touched. Whatever that guilty look had been about, he didn’t draw away now. Sudden heat flared in the little bathroom. My hands tightened on the muscles of his shoulders. Now or never, before I lost my nerve. “Really, really good. Let’s celebrate some more.”
    He froze as my lips found his, asking a silent question.
    “Kate …” I trailed one hand across his shoulder to the smooth column of his throat. His pulse hammered under my fingertips. “This isn’t a good idea. I don’t think—”
    “That’s right,” I breathed into his mouth, “don’t think. Just feel.”
    He gathered me against him. For once he didn’t argue.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    My empty champagne flute clinked against the stone balustrade of the terrace as I set it down and looked out over the dark scene below. There was no moon tonight, but the white dots of streetlights cascaded down the hill below us. Their light showed the rest of the world lay dreaming beneath the summer stars; the only signs of life were up here at the party of the century.
    My mother was desperately old-fashioned: the strains of a waltz floated out the open French doors from the ballroom. Of course the dragons knew how to waltz—most of them had been around since before the waltz was invented—but some of the lesser shifters looked nonplussed, eyeing the members of the formally clad orchestra as if they were aliens.
    “Better?” asked Luce.
    She leaned back against the stone beside me, but she wasn’t relaxed. She hadn’t wanted me out here in the open, but the ballroom was stuffy and I refused to be pawed any longer by lesser creatures looking to hitch their wagons to my star. Her dark eyes were never still, darting from one person to another, constantly assessing possible threats to my person.
    No one was armed tonight, of course, in the presence of the queen, not even my security chief, but Luce was a weapon all by herself. Perhaps, like others before her, my mother underestimated Luce because of her slight stature. She had the look of a pretty Chinese doll with her flawless skin and hair like a river of black satin. But Luce had a wiry strength and agility that had to be seen to be believed. Many who’d seen it hadn’t survived the experience.
    More likely my mother overlooked Luce because she was only a wyvern. Her aura, the soft blue common to the lesser winged shifters, glowed with a purity that spoke of her vitality and strength, but there was no denying a wyvern was lower down the social scale than a griffin. Valeria, favoured in