Sebastian

can make a difference. It's your auntie's reputation we're talking about."
    "It's my aunt's life we're talking about."
    Jeb nodded. "All right, then. I'll talk to Nadia. That's all I can promise to do." He paused, then added,
    "What about you and the girl?"
    "I belong in the Den. She belongs someplace else."
    "And you can live with that?"
    "I have to live with that," he snapped.

    Jeb took off his cap and turned it round and round in his hands. "You asked me a question, and I know how my heart wants to answer. So I'll ask you the same question. If you send her off to some landscape you think is the right place for her, someplace that's more than a few minutes' walk down a path…"
    "This is different. The Den isn't safe!"
    "Will any place be safe?" Jeb asked quietly. "How will you feel if this trouble skips over the Den and lands square in the middle of this place you think is so safe and you can't reach her?"
    The thought made him sick. "I'm trying to do the right thing."
    "I can see that. But Sebastian? Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the right thing to do."

    "Here," Nadia said, caging the keet between her hands. "It's time for him to go back in his cage."
    "Oh," Lynnea said. It had been easier to tell Nadia about her life with Mam, Pa, and Ewan while she kept her eyes on the bird. Much easier to admit the thing Pa had tried to do that had led to her being sent away. When she'd told Nadia about the water and the sand, the older woman's hands had trembled. But what had her stumbling was talking about Sebastian and those hours when he'd made her a tigress and she'd seen what it could be like to live without fear.
    But even Sebastian was trying to send her away. He'd wanted her to stay in Sanctuary. He hadn't argued when she'd told him she wanted to go with him to his aunt's house, but he'd made it clear enough that he didn't want her going back to the Den with him.
    "Now," Nadia said, returning to the table, "what do you want, Lynnea?"
    I want Sebastian . "I don't understand."
    "You're free of the life you had. You have a chance at a new beginning. Where would you like to go?"
    "I want to go back to the Den." She didn't have to think about that. It was a dark place, and a strange place, but she felt safe there. "But Sebastian doesn't want—"
    "Darling, Sebastian does want. That's what has him tangled up in knots where you're concerned." Nadia smiled. "Don't you see? If you'd been nothing more than a woman who had aroused his body, he would have been your lover by now."
    "But he knows I'm not… that I haven't…"
    "He's an incubus. That wouldn't have mattered in the least. But you've done more than arouse his body, Lynnea. You've touched his heart, and that's something I've hoped would happen to him—that he would find someone who touched his heart." Nadia patted Lynnea's hand. "Frustrating for you, I know, and doubly so for him, I imagine."
    "He still doesn't want me to go back to the Den."
    "That's not his decision, is it?"
    Lynnea looked at Nadia. She'd always been told where to go and what to do. "But—"

    "Your life, your journey, your choice. Your opportunity." Nadia leaned back. "Have you ever tossed a coin into a wish well?"
    "Once. Just a penny."
    "The amount doesn't matter," Nadia said. "It's how much heart is put into the wish."
    "But nothing happened."
    "Oh? And just how do you think the wish wells work?"
    "You hold a coin, make a wish, toss the coin in the well as a tribute to the Guides. And then if you're meant to have it, your wish will come true."
    Nadia sighed. "Yes, I suppose that's how most people think it works. This is how it does work. You make a wish and toss a coin in the well as a declaration of your intention to have something in your life.
    Then what do you do?"
    Lynnea shook her head to indicate that she didn't know.
    Nadia's voice took on the tartness of impatience. "You roll up your sleeves and you work to make it happen."
    "But I don't know how to make it happen!"
    "Opportunity and choice, Lynnea. What the heart truly desires doesn't come to you overnight, and it doesn't always come in the way you imagined."
    Lynnea nibbled on her thumbnail. "Maybe I could find work in the Den. Maybe I could work for Philo. I know how to cook and bake. I know how to clean, wash dishes. I'd need to find a place to live."
    "I don't think that will be a problem," Nadia said dryly. She pushed her chair back and stood up. "I'd better put something on under this dress before I shock my nephew more