But did that mean he would feel what I felt when I…when I died?
My chest clenched. Gods, I hoped not.
I couldn’t think about that, though. Only the gods knew what emotion he picked up when I did.
“I’m not sad,” I told him.
“Sera,” he sighed.
“It’s not what you think. It’s just that I wish…I wish we had more time.”
“We will.”
I pressed my lips together as I nodded.
His chin grazed the side of my face. “You’re so brave. So godsdamn brave and strong,” he whispered. “There is no one like you, Sera.”
“Stop being…” I trailed off, my brows knitting.
“Stop being sweet?” Ash said. “As I said before—”
“You’re only telling the truth.” The skin of my shoulders pimpled. My dream came back to me in a rush. “I dreamt of you saying that.”
“I know.”
I stiffened, then jerked upright before twisting in his lap to face him. “The dreams—”
“They weren’t normal dreams.” Tendrils of eather brightened his eyes.
My mouth fell open.
“I should’ve picked up on it the first time,” he said. “Especially when you kept arguing that it was your dream.”
“I wasn’t arguing.”
That warm, soft grin returned. “You have such a strange understanding of the word arguing.”
“Maybe it is you who does?”
His lips curved up farther. “Either way, everything was too damn real. The feel of the grass beneath me. The feel of you.” The hand at my hip swept up my waist as his gaze dropped to where the fizzing water teased the tips of my breasts. His voice thickened. “The feel of being inside you. No dreams could replicate the beauty of that.”
My heart skipped a beat as I stared at him. “Everything did feel real. Both times—” The skipping motion moved to my stomach. “You told me to tell Kolis that I needed you to Ascend, and to summon the Arae.”
“I did. It was the best plan I could come up with,” he confirmed. “I knew he would never let me leave with you, but it would’ve given us a chance to escape.”
Ash was right. Kolis never would’ve allowed him to leave with me. If it had come down to it, he would’ve just kept Ash there until my Ascension happened.
“In the end, you didn’t need me to get free,” he said, pride filling his voice. My cheeks warmed in response. “You had it handled.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I never would’ve gotten out of Dalos without you.”
“I disagree. You would’ve found a way.” Ash leaned in, kissing me softly. “And I’m confident enough in my strength to admit that.”
Liking—no, loving—that he didn’t feel less capable due to my capability, I smiled against his mouth. “It was a good plan. It could’ve worked.”
Ash kissed me again, this time longer. When our lips parted, my pulse pounded pleasantly.
“You know,” I said after a moment, “I dreamt of swimming in my lake with a wolf watching over me. I dreamt that many times.”
“I think that was when I was in stasis.” His brows knitted. “I’m not exactly sure how, but all I can come up with is that part of me—”
“Your nota?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Attes told me about it one of the times he was able to get to me.”
His head tilted. “Exactly how many times did he visit you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Like twice.”
“And he couldn’t free you?”
“You know he couldn’t,” I reminded him, but Ash appeared as if he were choosing not to remember that. Time to change the subject. “So, when I saw you in your wolf form, it was because…？”
“I think part of my consciousness—a part of my being—was still alert enough to find you.”
My mind raced, figuring out the timing. When I dreamt of the wolf and him, it had lined up with when he was in and out of stasis, but… “That wasn’t the first time I’ve dreamt of your wolf.”
A slight frown appeared, and then his expression smoothed out. “When you almost went into stasis while in the Shadowlands.” He gave me a small shake of his head when I nodded. “Damn. I thought that was a dream then, but it wasn’t even the first time…”
Wait. The first time.
“The first dream when you weren’t in your wolf form. When we had sex.” I gasped. “We actually had dream sex?” My eyes widened. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Explains what, liessa?”
“Why I could, you know, still feel you when I woke up.”
The tips of his fangs became visible as his smile turned almost smug. “Exactly how did you still feel me, liessa?”
“I could feel you—okay, all of that is possibly the least important thing to discuss right now,” I decided.
Ash chuckled. “I don’t know about that.”
Catching the teasing note in his voice, I felt a tiny catch in my chest. Hearing him like this was—gods, it was too rare.
It was yet another thing I wished for: more moments like those.
I swallowed, pressing my hands flat to his chest. “I’ve heard stories about something like this. People who can walk in each other’s dreams.”
“Mates of the heart,” he surmised, and I felt a twinge deep in my chest.
“I…I’ve heard the legends of such.” I thought of my parents. “But that can’t be it,” I said before he could. “Then how is it possible?”
An emotion flickered across his face—too fast for me to decipher. “It could be because we’ve shared blood. That could be common among those who’ve experienced what we did.”
I started to ask how he couldn’t be sure, but who could he have asked? He’d still been young when Kolis killed his father, and while I thought there had been some sort of friendship between Ash and Attes, they had kept some distance between them.
“Or it’s the embers,” Ash added as his thumbs moved in small circles along my ribs. “In particular, the one my father took from me and put in your bloodline. That could be what allowed us to connect in our dreams.”
The thing was, no one knew if that was the case or not. Well, maybe the Arae did, but what happened with the embers had never been done before. It made sense. And it also made me wonder about other ways it may have formed a connection between us. Between the blood we’d shared and this…
Tension crept into my muscles as it finally occurred to me that this was one of the reasons Ash knew something had happened when I was held captive. How I’d reacted when he said he knew Kolis had hurt me. That was how he’d known what Kyn and Kolis told him while he was imprisoned couldn’t all be lies. My chest twisted as I looked up. The softness and teasing were completely gone from Ash’s features as he watched me.
Shit.
I needed to pull it together, and not thinking about all of that would be the first and most important step in doing so.
Forcing my thoughts elsewhere, I thought of my lake. And Ash, watching over me. “Can I ask you something else?”