“Tiger told me not to let you go,” she whispered.
Jace lifted his head, his green eyes dark. “I have to. If they find me, it will be bad for everyone here, not only me.”
“I know. I know.”
“I can’t let you get hurt because of me.” Jace traced her cheek with a firm thumb. “But I’ll fix this. I’ll find a way to come back as soon as I can.”
Deni nodded, tears filling her eyes. No reason to cry, she told herself. This was smart, and he’d just promised to come back for her.
She heard Tiger’s gruff voice in her head. Don’t let him go.
Everyone knew Tiger was a little nuts, but he’d looked at Deni as though he could see the threads of the mate bond around her heart. He was telling her to latch on to the bond and not let go, damn the consequences. But Deni needed to be sensible. If they did everything by the book, asking for official permission for Jace to move here, or she and her sons to go with him, then the humans couldn’t legally keep them apart. But permission was difficult to obtain—the human government might deny it for any number of reasons, and then it would be more difficult for Jace or Deni to sneak away to be together.
“You could always hide here until they get tired of looking,” Deni said, though without much hope.
Jace shook his head, pressing her closer. “Dylan’s right. The police might start checking the other Shiftertowns. My dad can’t cover for me for long.”
“I know.” His words made sense, but Deni’s heart ached. She tried to smile. “The next time you come, we’ll take my motorcycle out on one of the back roads and see what it can do. We’ll open it up—just us and the wind.”
“Yeah.” Jace cupped her cheek. “That sounds good.”
They kissed again, mouths seeking, needy, each of them holding on tight. Deni memorized Jace’s scent and his goodness, his taste, his hard body against hers. He was large, strong, whole, the answer to her emptiness.
From beyond them, Dylan cleared his throat, the sound rolling from the edge of the grove. Jace broke the kiss, lifting slowly away from Deni. His green eyes held anguish. “I have to go.”
“Wait.” Deni fumbled with the catch of her bracelet, an old-fashioned clasp. The bracelet had been in her family for so long, no one remembered where it had come from. She took off the bracelet and pressed it into Jace’s hand. “Keep this for me. Bring it back to me.”
Jace started to shake his head. “It’s special to you, I can tell.”
“It is. But if I know you have it, that will be special too.”
Jace hesitated another moment, then he closed his fingers around it. “I’ll keep it safe. I promise.”
Deni nodded. She stepped back from him and clasped her hands. “The Goddess go with you.”
“No.” Jace reached for her once more, his arms coming hard around her. “That’s what you say to someone you’ll never see again.”
His kiss was fierce, wild. Deni held on to Jace and kissed him back with as much force, her heart pounding and aching.
At last Jace eased away, and Deni made herself let him go. Jace laid his hand on her chest, between her br**sts.
“Be well, my heart,” he said, then he turned and walked away, following Dylan into the Texas dawn.
* * *
There was no question of Deni coming with Jace to the plane. Jace understood—the fewer Shifters who left Shiftertown the better.
Jace hunkered down with a bunch of junk in the bed of Dylan’s small pickup, and Dylan tied a tarp over it all. Then Dylan drove out of Shiftertown without ceremony, heading east along the Bastrop Highway.
After a long time, Dylan took a turn off the main road, pulled over, and lifted the tarp. The road was deserted, and Jace climbed out, stretching his cramped limbs. Dylan would leave Jace here to wait for a human man to come by who would take him the rest of the way to the airstrip—they’d done this on Jace’s previous trips as well. Safer for all concerned if a Shifter wasn’t spotted driving out to an abandoned airfield.
“Be well,” Dylan said, clasping Jace in a brief but tight hug. “I’ll work on things from here.”
Jace nodded his thanks, jogged into the tall grasses, and crouched down, hiding himself, to wait. Dylan got back into his truck and drove smoothly away before any other vehicles came down the road.
Jace didn’t wait long, though it felt like forever as he lay in the dew-laden grass. Another pickup, which was driven by one of the men he’d seen this trip at the landing strip, slowed down and waited for Jace to climb inside the cab.
Fifteen minutes and an unpaved road later, Jace was back at the airstrip, boarding the small, old cargo plane a man named Marlo flew. Marlo had long ago worked for very bad men, transporting things for them from Mexico, but had given it up. Now he smuggled Shifters anywhere in the country they wanted to go.
“Let’s get up in the air,” Marlo said, ushering Jace up the little stair into the body of the plane. “The wind is getting bad. Want to get out of this system.”
To Jace, the sky was clear and beautiful, only a little breeze stirring the grasses around them. But pilots spoke a different language. Jace stowed his backpack, then took the copilot’s seat in the cockpit. He didn’t know how to fly, but Marlo tended to talk a lot on the trips, and Jace always felt better if Marlo faced forward, looking at his instruments, than if he constantly turned around to yell at Jace in the back.