Claiming Valeria by Rebecca Rivard

it touched. He instinctively spread his legs and stretched his
arms above his head, riding the wave while a part of him looked on in wonder.
    The energy increased, and then just as it became painful, began
to recede. He bent forward, hands on his thighs, gulping in oxygen.
    What the fu— ?
    He came back upright and glanced around, dazed. The trees were
bathed in the same golden light, their leaves an intense, saturated emerald; the
sky above a radiant azure. Everything was sharper—his eyesight, his hearing, his
sense of smell.
    If he didn’t know better, he’d think he’d been drugged. But no
drug had ever left his brain feeling this keen, his senses this clear. He felt strong
and energized, better than he had in years.
    He squinted up at the sun streaming through the trees. It was
a half hour or so after noon. Could it be something to do with the midsummer ritual?
    Eliana, the young warrior helping him guard the entrance, jogged
up from where she’d been running surveillance. “Senhor Rui?” She rubbed a hand over
her face, her eyes full of the same dazed wonder he was feeling. “I—what was that?”
    She was young, twenty-one or so, but he had a vague, ashamed
memory of taking her to bed a few months ago…although he wasn’t so sure a bed had
been involved. He shook off the guilt—there was no time for that now—and asked,
“You felt it too?”
    She nodded. “What happened?”
    “Hell if I know. But it could be something to do with the ritual.
Why don’t you check with the others? See if it affected anyone else.”
    She ducked inside the base. He scanned the horizon, his senses
amped from the energy still humming through him. He could detect nothing out of
the ordinary.
    He rubbed his nape and considered what had happened. In a rare
sober moment, he’d heard Dion’s theory that Cleia was draining energy from him and
her other lovers, but had dismissed it as improbable. But now he wondered if some
of what he’d attributed to too much drink—and sheer laziness—had been due to that
energy drain.
    Hell . Not that it excused what a drunken S.O.B. he’d been—if
it were true, Luis and Rodolfo had been subject to the same energy drain and hadn’t
let it affect them the way he had—but still.
    Eliana returned to report that everyone in the base had felt
the surge. “You won’t believe it. The sick ones are sitting up in bed, asking for
food. And Fernando says for the first time in years his knees aren’t swollen. He
did a little dance to show me.” She grinned and shook her head.
    A few minutes later a motorcycle roared up. It was Teresa, returning
from Rising Sun. “You’ll never guess what happened,” she said, and then narrowed
her eyes. “You felt it too?”
    When they said they had, she confirmed that those at the ritual
had felt the same burst of healing energy, and then dropped a bombshell.
    “Lord Dion mated Queen Cleia.”
    Rui blinked. “Dion—and Cleia?”
    “That’s right. The energy surge happened when the mate bond clicked
into place. Apparently, we drew energy from the sun through the queen’s bond with
Dion.”
    “No shit.” But it fit, even if he’d never heard of anything like
it. “So everyone’s okay?”
    “They are—better than okay. And little Xavier—” Teresa’s throat
worked. “He’s fine, Rui. He was the first one Cleia cured. He’s out there dancing
with the other kids right now. You’d never guess how sick he was three days ago.”
    He briefly shut his eyes. “Thank Deus .”
    “There’s something else,” the tenente continued. “Adric
is at the midsummer festival. He knows Dion mated Cleia. Only a complete fool
would attack now—and from what I hear, Adric’s no fool. Luis said for you to come,
that the sun fae are throwing a mate ball for Dion and Cleia. Dion would want you
there.”
    When Rui didn’t say anything, she added, “Valeria’s there, too,
you know.”
    “I know.” Teresa didn’t have to spell it out; he’d seen