Defy by Raine Thomas Page A

her eyes as tight as she
could and concentrated. Surely she could will herself out of this
boredom.
    “What are you doing?”
    Without opening her eyes, she answered, “I’m
trying to wake up. This has been a blast and all, but you obviously
don’t want company. I’m just trying to get out of your hair.”
    A rustling sound had her cracking one eye. He
had reached up to touch his hair. Unable to stop herself, she
snorted in laughter.
    “It wasn’t literal, doofus. Geez.”
    “What makes you think my name is Doofus?” he
wondered.
    Giving up, she burst into hysterical giggles,
bending over at the waist when she laughed hard enough to make her
sides hurt.
    “What are you—are you all right?”
    The fact that he didn’t recognize her humor
or seem to know what to do about it merely made her laugh harder.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She clutched her waist
and gasped for breath as he approached and tentatively touched her
shoulder.
    It was as if a sizzle of charged energy
flashed through her.
    Her laughter cutting off abruptly, Tate once
again stood straight and stepped away from him. Now her heart raced
for a reason other than fear…something she didn’t quite
understand.
    He watched her with his potent eyes, seeming
to sense that he had managed to change her mood and behavior. “It
seems you are all right.”
    “I…” She wasn’t sure she could answer that
truthfully. Fortunately she didn’t have to.
     
    A flick of Nyx’s massive tail woke him.
    Zachariah opened his eyes and looked around
the alcove, disoriented. One moment he had been standing and
staring at the compelling female after witnessing her strange
behavior, and the next he was opening his eyes to an empty
chamber.
    Ignoring the vague sense of disappointment he
experienced, he double-checked to make sure she wasn’t hiding
somewhere and then nodded. “Right.” For good measure, he added,
“Blasted dream.”
    But as he again settled against Nyx and
forced himself to go back to sleep, he couldn’t quite ignore the
fact that the air now smelled faintly of lemons.
     
    “You believe that Tiege left in search of
Tate, and that the others just went along with him?”
    Caleb rubbed his fingers tiredly across the
bridge of his nose before answering Jabari’s question. They were
gathered in his and Skye’s home, which boasted a large living area
intended for socializing. Every elder, commander and second
commander was present.
    Less than an hour ago, they discovered the
illusions that kept them from knowing Tiege and the others were
gone. Caleb had gone to his son’s room for the fourth time that
day, finally deciding to wake him so that he could talk to Skye.
When Caleb reached for his son’s shoulder, however, his hand passed
right through it.
    James and Olivia discovered a similar
illusion of Sophia working in her laboratory. Gabriel and Amber
ultimately found the illusion of Quincy, Clara Kate and Ini-herit
sitting around the table in Quincy’s cottage conversing about
baseball.
    “I only know that last night, he insisted she
was still alive,” Caleb said at last. He felt Skye squeeze his
hand. They had already communicated about the previous night’s
encounter. He could only love her all the more for understanding
why he hadn’t told her sooner. “He wanted to go after her.”
    He didn’t add that Tiege begged his father to
go with him only to be denied.
    “It’s unfortunate that the Gloresti bond
doesn’t extend between child and parent,” Uriel said. “You could
easily find them that way.”
    They still didn’t know why it didn’t. The
children all carried the blood of their Gloresti fathers, though it
was blended with that of their half-human, half-Corgloresti
mothers. Over time, their fathers had changed diapers, cleansed
wounds and received exuberant and sloppy kisses from their babies.
But the bond that typically formed between a Gloresti and a being
with whom he or she exchanged bodily fluids—one way