Read Online The Mating Intent-mobi by Bonnie Vanak - Free Book Online Page B

walked away. She picked up the crossbow, dusted it off and  ran after him. As Roger sat at the picnic table, she set down the bow before him. “This is not useless and neither are you. You will use it again, some day, I vow.”
    He looked doubtful. “No one can help us. Gabe’s tried.”
    “But I haven’t and I’m Elven. I have powers he lacks.” She squeezed his hand. “I promise I will do all that I can to aid you and everyone affected by this.”
    Something flickered in his dark gaze. It might have been hope.
    Sienna returned to Gabriel, who gave a warm smile. “You’re good for them. I can feel the change in the air since your arrival. Come, meet the others.”
    Taking her hand he brought her over to a black bear shifter. “Neida was rummaging through an island deep in the Everglades when the water began rising, trying to drown her. She climbed a tree and remained there all night. Then she got hungry and ate some berries. They poisoned her.”
    He squatted down and put a hand on the shifter’s shoulder. “You doing better now, Neida? No more tummy pain?”
    The bear shook her head.
    “Neida’s folks were killed by over-eager hunters. She’s still a cub, with no one to look after her.”
    Sienna smiled at the young shifter. All of them looked at Gabriel with shining gratitude.
    “You’re healing them,” she told him.
    “Trying to.” He stretched out his hands and studied them. “I don’t have much power, not like you, but I gained the magick shortly after you left. It’s as if being one in the flesh with you endowed me with new power. Wyldings can’t heal others, but I can. So I started searching for injured Wyldings. A few here and there. And then about a month ago, the land went berserk.”
    His jaw like granite, he swept his gaze around the circle. “There’s no other way to describe it.
    “I know it’s dark enchantment, but I’ve never felt anything like it before.” She lifted her face to the air, and sensed a something that had been lacking when she’d hiked along the Loxahatchee and at the swamp. “Someone has cursed this area.”
    Gabriel locked gazes with her. “There’s only one kind of dark enchantment that has this power, Sienna.”
    She had a bad feeling about this.
    “Yes. Fae magick.”
    “Not just any Fae magick.” He gave her a level look, his big body tensing. “Only one type of Fae has enough power to do something this nasty and this widespread. Elves.”
     

 

Chapter 5
     
    Gabriel felt certain the dark enchantment was Fae. He knew the Elves weren’t as noble as some believed. Except for Sienna, he distrusted her kind.
    He distrusted them because he kept a shameful secret from his clan, and from Sienna herself. His mother wasn’t a panther shifter, but a powerful white light Elf. She’d abandoned him at birth, leaving him to be raised by his father. He’d tried to gain acceptance among her kind, but failed.
    Elves, unlike shifters, were selfish. When infused with power, some went very dark and did very bad things. 
    Sienna’s eyes widened. “My people would never curse the land they are foresworn to protect.”
    He leaned close, his muscles tensing. “Maybe you don’t know your people as well as you thought, pixie. Because some of them have proven to be very devious.”
    Sienna clenched her fists, her shoulders rigid. “Stop insulting us. We protect the land. Perhaps a shifter did this, a shifter who somehow gained new powers.”
    Going still, he searched her face. “What are you accusing me of, Sienna? Are you saying I did this on purpose? I hurt my land?”
    “Maybe you did it to lure me into staying, convince me that I’m needed here.”
    Infuriated, he clenched his fists. “You believe I’m that low I’d hurt those under my care?”
    ”No. But I have a hard time believing a Fae would do this.”
    “Because your people are noble. So you think. The almighty Elven especially have no faults,” he grated out.
    And you’re not like them.