4 - We Are Gathered by Jackie Ivie

his chest.
    The chair toppled backward, taking their leader out of her immediate range, although she sent blow after blow at the chair bottom, each one slamming it against the other chairs, rather like a ball in a pinball machine. The Garrick fellow was right with his leader. He’d immediately dropped and shielded him with his own body, and then some fool sent one of their arrows at her.
    Rori hugged herself and spun, making a whorl of protection about herself that deflected and turned the missiles sent at her into projectiles back to their source. She heard thuds and breakage; cries and shouts. She’d never felt more powerful, or more in control of it. They should have done their little background check a little more thoroughly. That’s what they should’ve done.
    She opened her arms, ratcheted up the speed of her spin and started sending wave after wave of crushing air. Light infused every wave, turning into an explosion of bright yellow and red when they landed on anything, or pummeled anything, or bent it into complete and total submission.
    “Rori?”
    “In here!”
    She didn’t bother projecting it with her mind. She shouted it.
    “We must leave.”
    Leave? She wasn’t leaving until she pounded every last one of them into the stone walls and floors of the hideout. The light surrounding her got brighter, making some of them shield their eyes. That made them even easier to locate and hit, slamming them back against the stone with invisible blows they couldn’t countermand. Lord Beethan didn’t need to test her. She had a great aim.
    “Now, Friudil! ”
    Tristan’s body slammed into hers, the impact sending a shower of sparks outward to encompass the entire room, turning it into a lightshow of blues and reds and yellows. Rori didn’t see it, though. She was in his arms, sealing to him with legs and arms wrapped all about him, clinging and capturing, and then she was weeping, as if a plug had been pulled from her frame, draining her. The room went black, filled only with groans and an occasional shatter of something breaking.
    “Hold to me, darling.”
    The man had to be joking. She was glued to him, her nose against his throat and her lips against skin; warm skin, radiating life and joy and love. She’d been such a fool, and she wasn’t repeating it.
    “You should let me finish with them, Tristan.”
    “Didn’t dare.”
    “I had them handled. And they all deserve to die for what they tried to do.”
    “They failed, love.” And then he bent his head and kissed her.
    If she’d thought electrons were flying in that stone room, she’d been mistaken. They were probably lighting the sky as they moved with such speed, a blink would miss them. And then they were back at her apartment. At the front step, and he opened his arms and released her.
    “What…are you doing?”
    She was back against him, clinging while he didn’t move one portion of his frame. He just stood there, statue-still and implacable.
    “What you want. Setting you free.”
    “Are you nuts?”
    “Akron believes so. He has advised me to simply take you and protect you and keep you. Exactly as I tried to do before. But I have learned.”
    “You don’t want me?” Her stomach rolled. She almost clasped a hand to stop it.
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “So, you do want me?”
    “More than I can say, and definitely more than I can show. But I don’t want a woman who is forced to be with me. Even if she is my mate, and even if I’m doomed to emptiness without her. You are my mate, Rori, and I love you. I want you. But I want you to want me. And I don’t know what to do to make that happen. So…this is good bye.”
    “Good bye?”
    “For now. I’ll always answer your call, Friudil . You have my word.” He turned from her and looked to be fastening and adjusting his trench coat.
    “Tristan?”
    “Yes?” He turned his head but didn’t face her.
    “Did it hurt very much?”
    “What?”
    This time he turned a quarter of the way