Some part of his brain warned him not to give in, that he was in serious danger of losing all perspective, of losing himself, if he didn't pull back. But his cat hissed, ears back, urging him to take her, to claim her all over again. And that's exactly what he wanted to do.
Sweeping her into his arms, he laid her down, his gaze locked with hers, the question asked and answered in a lush, carnal smile.
He told himself to take it slow this time, and he tried. But when she spread her thighs, lifting her arms to him, he was lost.
Holding her gaze, he came to her, entering her, tumbling into the beauty and fire and strength that was Ariana.
Over the next few hours, he made love to her twice more and held her through three more painful memory downloads while she waited for Hookeye to sleep. He was lying temporarily sated in her arms when she tensed beneath him. Not with pain, this time, but excitement.
He lifted off her, and she sat up, her eyes glowing with triumph. "The bright chaos just turned dark. Hookeye's asleep." Her eyes gleamed. "Are you ready for a bit of dream walking?"
Hell, yes. A feral smile lifted his mouth. "Anything I need to do to prepare?"
Her gaze trailed seductively down his body. "He'll see us exactly as we are now. I'm getting dressed." She slid her fingers up his erection. "Up to you."
He purred at the feel of her fingertips on that highly sensitized flesh. It didn't matter how many times he'd come inside her, if she was anywhere near him, he wanted her. Especially when she turned on her siren's charms. Goddess, if she kept touching him like this, he was going to come again, right there in her hand.
If they hadn't waited so long for the bastard to sleep, he might take her first, but dreams didn't last.
Wrapping his hand around her wrist, he lifted that talented little hand of hers to his mouth and kissed her palm. "Can I shift when I'm in the dream?" He licked her palm and watched with satisfaction as she shivered, her mouth twitching at one corner.
"I don't know. I guess we'll find out." She pulled her hand from his and leaped to her feet to retrieve her clothes.
Kougar joined her, dressing quickly, then sat cross-legged on the smooth stone floor beside her. He eyed her quizzically, feeling a frisson of unease. "How exactly does this work?" Goddess knew how anything worked in the Ilina world.
A hint of a smile played at her mouth. "You'll see." But the smile didn't reach her eyes. As she took his hand, he understood. Her hand was damp, a faint trembling deep in her bones. The thought of facing the creature who'd caused her so much pain had her rattled as he suspected little ever did.
He squeezed her hand, reminding her silently she wasn't going alone.
"Close your eyes and keep them closed," she told him.
He did as she asked, and, a moment later, an odd sensation hit him, a brief moment's dizziness not unlike Ilina travel for him now, a dizziness that was gone almost as quickly as it came. And suddenly he was standing beside Ariana in a firelit cave the size of his bedroom at Feral House. The hair rose on the back of his neck.
Along the walls, corpses hung--five adults and a small one that must have been a child, though he was hard-pressed to tell how many were male, how many were female. They were dressed in the simple, gowned peasant garb of millennia ago, a manner that had been largely unisex. But though their garb appeared unharmed, the flesh of the people had been all but burned away as if they'd died in a fire that had left their clothing unscathed.
The cave was clearly a living space, a cooking pot hanging over the central fire. To one side sat a table laden with bowls and vials and colorful, plastic containers. Kougar frowned at the anachronism of plastic in an ancient cave until he looked at the man standing behind the table, reminding himself he was in a dream.
The man was short, his build slight, his appearance unassuming for one who'd caused so much pain and death. His thin brown hair was cut around his face at odd angles as if he were in the habit of hacking off whatever got in his way with the nearest knife. He was dressed, not as the victims around him, but in the green sorcerer's robes the Mage had taken to wearing in recent centuries. On his wrist he wore a modern black resin sports watch.
The Mage looked up as if seeing them for the first time, then back down at what he was doing as if they were just figments of his imagination. But in that brief glance, Kougar had glimpsed his eyes. Copper-ringed Mage eyes, one of which had a pupil that appeared to have bled through the iris in the shape of a hook.
Bingo. Hookeye.
Beside him, Ariana's hand spasmed in his, then fell away as she stepped away from him. A knife appeared in her hand, from where he wasn't sure, but a quick glance told him exactly what she meant to do with it.
If she'd felt any anxiety about facing the bastard, it was gone, replaced by a seething hatred.
He grabbed her upper arm. "Wait."
"They didn't survive." Hookeye's tone was conversational. "But they rarely do." He glanced up, his gaze meeting Kougar's. "I'm the poison master, you know. But you know." That gaze turned amused as it flicked to Ariana, then back down at his work.
The scene shifted suddenly, the room and victims changing as if the walls of a Hollywood set had been yanked away, another shoved into place with all the accompanying vertigo. An old castle, this time, built of bare stone. Once more, bodies hung, chained and tortured. The four surrounding them now were covered in the swollen buboes and dark patches of subdural hemorrhaging that reminded him all too well of the dead from bubonic plague.
"You collected plague victims?"
Hookeye smiled absently. "No. This one I caused. One of my more spectacular successes, though it only affected mortals, which was a shame."
The bastard had caused bubonic plague. Kougar's mind reeled. And how many other devastating human diseases?
It was well known that the Therians had often been the target of Mage poisons, though few had ever died from them. Tighe believed his childhood enclave had been the victim of one such attack, but such successes were rare, or the Mage would have wiped out the Therians long ago.
"You were my greatest failure, Queen of the Ilinas." Hookeye chuckled, but the sound was ugly. "Except you weren't, were you?" His tone hardened. "You just made me think you were."
Ariana stilled beneath Kougar's grip. "You meant to control me."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Hookeye shrugged one scrawny shoulder, still concentrating on the vials and liquids he mixed together like some kind of medieval alchemist.
"To turn you against the Feral Warriors, of course." He picked up a vial and shook it, peering at it closely. "I'll succeed this time, you know." His gaze flicked to her, evil shining in those copper-ringed depths. "You'll bring the Feral Warriors to me."
"Never."
Kougar's impatience for battle cooled with the chilling words. "How will you succeed, Mage?" He growled. "How will you succeed in capturing the Feral Warriors?"
"The way I always do. I'm the poison master." He turned away, scraping away a bit of flesh from one of his victims into a plastic container.
But as he turned back to his table, the walls of the room shifted yet again. The new ones were eerily familiar, glittering with inlay on ivory-colored stone.
The Temple of the Queens. Kougar's heart began to thud in his chest.
Beside him, Ariana gasped. His gaze slammed into hers as understanding arced between them. To dream of the temple, Hookeye had to have been there. But when?
Recently?
As if in answer, a cat ran through the room. No ordinary cat, but a small, dark-spotted jaguar.
Jag.
Kougar stared at the animal, chills racing over his skin, triumph flaming in his mind. Hookeye had been in the temple when Jag raced through with him a few hours ago.
He's here now. We have the bastard!
"Get us out of here, Ariana," he said under his breath. The moment they were free of the dream, he'd get the other Ferals and attack. This was the break they needed.
Ariana made a sound deep in her throat, a sound of denial, her body tensing to be free of his restraint. Clearly, she'd had enough. She jerked free of his hold and sprang at the man who was little taller than she, lifting her knife as if she would cut out the Mage's heart.
But Hookeye was more aware than he appeared. Before Ariana could reach him, his hand flung out toward her, palm out. Ariana stopped as if she'd hit a brick fence with a guttural cry that was half fury, half pain. And suddenly she shot three feet into the air, her head flinging back, a look of agony on her face.
With a roar of fury, Kougar leaped at the Mage, shifting into his cougar in midair as he soared over the table and slammed into him, his jaws clamping around the bastard's neck. His fangs sank into the Mage's jugular, but no warm blood filled his mouth. He'd forgotten it was dream.
A dream that ended abruptly. He found himself once more sitting beside the pool in the queen's chamber far beneath the temple. Beside him, Ariana collapsed, her hands clawing at her throat as she gasped for air.
Kougar reached for her. "What's the matter?"
"Whatever . . . he did . . . was real."
The pounding of his heart deepened into a sickening thud. "He has you. He's locked onto you with his magic. Can you break it?"
"No."
Dammit. He needed to break out of the lower chambers and go after the damned sorcerer. But Ariana came first.
He shot to his feet, lifting her into his arms. "Then we're getting out of here."
How? He set her back on the floor. "Go, Ariana. Transport yourself back to the Crystal Realm. Once you're there, I can follow."
She met his gaze, then nodded, her hand sliding over the moonstones as she choked out the magic that would carry her to the Crystal Realm without turning to mist. A moment later, she was gone.
Focusing on her through the mating bond, Kougar curled his hand around his Feral armband and whispered the same incantation. Moments later, he was sitting in the Grand Corridor of the palace in the clouds, Ariana seated on the floor beside him.
Unlike a moment ago, she no longer gasped for air.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes." She took a deep unsteady breath. "He must have known we weren't part of his dream."
"He knew."
Kougar rose to his feet and pulled Ariana up beside him just as Brielle came rushing into the pine-scented corridor.
"Did you reclaim the memories?" Brielle asked, her face radiating a desperate hope he was certain every Ilina shared.
Ariana glanced at him, the truth thick between them that she hadn't gotten them all. And now, probably never would. A truth they would keep to themselves for the time being.
"Yes," Ariana said, glancing at him, then back at Brielle. "Yes, I reclaimed the memories. I'm sorting through them now."
A smile bloomed on Brielle's delicate face. "Wonderful." She clapped her hands together. "We must celebrate, Ariana. We've not had a true celebration in far too long."
Ariana dipped her head, a small gesture that was all Brielle needed. She hurried away, shouting out names, a four-star general calling her troops.
Ariana turned to him, her eyes at once hard and haunted. "Hookeye has to die."
"And he's going to. Right now. Gather your maidens, six of them, and meet me at Feral House. We're going to need transportation back down to the temple."
Ariana frowned. "What? Wait. You can't kill him. Not until we know whether killing him will help or hurt our ability to destroy the poison." She took his hand. "Wait, please? I may have the answers we need once I sort through this mess in my head."
"He's there, Ariana. In the temple. We can't afford to let him get away."
"Where's he going to go? He's on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas." She gripped his arm. "We can't attack him. Not yet. I know that."
"How?"
"I'm not sure, I just know it's true, and it has something to do with my memories. Give me another day to sort through what's in my head. If I haven't come up with the answer we need, I'll order my warriors to transport yours to the temple."
Kougar's teeth ground together beneath the force of his impatience.
"One day, Kougar. I feel like I'm on the edge of something vast. Like the veil is about to be lifted, and I'm going to see what I've been missing all this time. It's going to happen. Tonight." She squeezed his hand. "It's going to make the difference between success and failure, it's that big."
He pulled her into his arms. "Twelve hours. That's all."
"Deal. Then we'll reassess."
Twelve hours. His fingertips itched with the need to draw claws and rip out that bastard's throat, now. But Ariana was right. If there was a chance she held the key to the battle in that head of hers, not giving her a chance to find it was a rash, foolish move.
Too many lives hung in the balance.
Fury roared up out of nowhere, ripping through Hawke's mind, white-hot. A vicious rage.
The hawk's anger had become his own.
How long he roared and thrashed, he didn't know. Time held no meaning. But as quickly as the fury rose, it abated, leaving his mind throbbing with pain and the echoes of his hawk's pulsing anger.
He'd never had the relationship with the hawk spirit that his father, the Wind, had claimed to have. Then again, his father had been the hawk shifter for nearly three thousand years until a Confederate mortar explosion ripped his heart out of his chest a century and a half ago. The hawk spirit had flown to the son, but Hawke had never possessed the faith in the wildness that his father had.