Chapter 50
“Are you okay?!” I gasp as I wipe my tears off my face. Lifting my body off King Harvey slightly, I examine him. His masculine face is drawn and pale, he is sweating lightly. A distant look shines in his silver eyes. In a blink, they revert to brown when he cups my face.
“Elena.” King Harvey rumbles as he runs his hand through my hair. “You are well.”
He exhales heavily, pure relief washing over his body as his muscles relax.
“Are you hurt?!” My hands dig into his chest and feel for a wound. Nothing. Gently, I skim his stomach and he scowls at me.
“Will be better soon,” King Harvey grunts then lifts me to stand and follows. Guiding me to the tree outside to show me what I did, he takes my hand lovingly and presses a kiss to it.
It was not something I pictured in my head when I did it, I just felt pure rage.
“You need to rest.” I say, his taking forearm in both my hands.
He grins. “Do I?”
King Harvey stands behind the felled tree, running his hand across the thick wood of the tree. With three long slashes, he carves an E in the front of the tree, then lifts the thick tree with two hands and slams it back down onto its jagged roots.
The forest and surrounding trees shake with his might, and King Harvey is too busy grinning to register the shock on my face.
“How powerful are you?”
“Very! Thank you for your help, Elena. I am well, trust me.” King Harvey wipes his hands on his pants and smiles broadly. “Look, Elena, your first tree, I carved your initial into it.”
“Will the tree live?”
“Sure, I put it back into its roots perfectly.”
“King Harvey… your parents worry me.” Carefully, I pick my words to continue. I draw in a cold breath. “They could really… hurt us.”
King Harvey nods. “That is possible. Yet, Elena, I believe when you prove your luna powers they will calm down. What choice will they have? I meant to ask you about your powers. What do you feel?”
“I… feel worried about them and you overall, King Harvey. When I use my luna powers, I just everything to stop. I want you to be safe. I focus on wanting to protect you. I don’t want to live
without you.”
King Harvey wraps his arms around me from behind and holds me. “You will not lose me, Elena.” He presses a long, innocent kiss on my right cheek, then moves over to my mating mark and presses another kiss to the center of it.
A small fire surges across my body and I rock against him, almost automatically.
We are calling out for one another.
“King Harvey, there are more pressing matters than this…”
Yet, when he spins me into a kiss, I don’t say no, I get on my tiptoes and kiss him back as deeply as I can.
He pulls away early this time, panting and wiping his lips with the back of hand. A hazy gaze is what he gives me as he clicks his fangs together.
“Well, well, Elena. You said we have other things to do, yet here we are, in love.”
“King Harvey, we must stay focused on my luna powers!”
He stares at me for a long, tittering moment, a haze of lust and love overcoming his features. I sustain his gaze, then decide to speak.
“I said we must focus, King Harvey.” Firmly, I step to him and look him dead in his eyes.
It is as if he wakes up.
Is this what he meant by me stopping wars with one word? That I can calm him down?
King Harvey clears his throat. “Perhaps our desire is a good sign our bond is deep. You are correct we must focus… for your sake.”
With a shake of his head, King Harvey readjusts himself, and regains all sanity. His fangs have retracted but still are their normal slightly visible. The wild look in his eyes has lessened, but not completely fled him.
“Is it normal for one mate to react to the other the way I do?”
“Only during mating, Elena.” King Harvey takes my hand and pulls me to walk body to body with him.
I wrap my arm around his waist and tickle his side to see a lovely grin.
“So, we are not normal. Do you believe this would bleed into battle?”
“Yes, it seems very likely. A heightened situation. Sex is a heightened situation, Elena.”
“When it is love, King Harvey, we humans don’t say sex, we say love making.” I point it out gently.
I don’t know, I hardly like the word mating, I am not a werewolf like King Harvey and the term seems rather technical. He and I are in love, so this is not just to pass a lonely ten minutes.
King Harvey’s eyes shine with an unfiltered joy. “I have never heard that, Elena. That is very intriguing.”
“Humans consider it a bit lame…”
“Not every human can break a tree down in one shout, Elena. You can get away with it.”
“Thank you.” Blushing, I look down as he laughs softly, in pride.
“When you use your powers, Elena, what do you really think of? I meant to ask that earlier…”
“I think of protecting you.”
King Harvey tilts his head to the side in thought. “Are you, my shield?”
“A shield for you? I don’t mind being one for you, King Harvey. You the sword, I the shield, it would be a full armory between us.”
“Or our people… you would be the first human luna… very powerful. Yes, I do believe you are a shield, Elena.” King Harvey thinks out loud. He walks me back inside the cottage and pulls out the pen and paper to draw.
He is silent in his fever, sketch after sketch of shields. Every size and shape are on page after page, until hours pass, and he has filed the notebook.
“King Harvey,” I whisper as I lean into him across the table. “It is night-time. We need to rest.”
He hardly looks up from his work. He has taken to fiddling with the back cardboard of the notepad and is carving out little shields with my dagger, I suppose to show me.
“One moment, Elena.” King Harvey whispers back gently and soothingly.
His voice is liquid honey.
After a few minutes and the candle dancing under his attentive face, he happily displays to me a drawing of a shield.
It is a circular shield that could cover my whole body, with my husband’s signature wolf in the middle of it. Yet, there are little spikes across the perimeter of the shield, and he has drawn that when it is thrust forward the spikes fly out.
“It is beautiful, King Harvey. A bit violent?”
“I understand your concerns, Elena. The small blades are meant to take place of a sword, if you do not master both.”
“Oh!” I brighten instantly. “A backup?”
“Yes. You need balance. Of course, you will have your dagger. I would like for you to be as safe as humanly possible, Elena.” King Harvey replies seriously.
“Do you think I could learn?”
“Yes.” King Harvey smiles proudly. “Why would you not?”
I shrug. “I am not the most athletic.”
“You have punched me, Elena.”
I slip into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck to settle in his lap. “Oh, I did, but was it a real hit or was he playing?”
“No, no, you really hit me. You have all the capabilities in the world, Elena. Let us wait. It will all work out for our favor.”
