~ ZEV ~


    Sasha''s mouth dropped open and he grinned.


    "You''re walking with a living legend," he whispered.


    Yhet rolled his eyes, but didn''t speak up.


    "I… how… that''s so cool!" Sasha turned to look at Yhet. "It''s a pleasure to meet you, Yhet," she said with a giggle. "I''m so d you''re… here. Alive?"


    Yhet groaned with embarrassment. "Your human rumors and legends are silly," he said gruffly. "We are not goris or… or… creatures."


    "Sasquatch are wanderers," Zev exined to her. "Yhet visited the human—I mean, America, and got himself sighted. The researchers that investigated the sighting followed him to Thana. It''s such a great ce they ended up using it as a kind of… sanctuary for the Chimera. So here we are."


    Sasha looked around. "This is a wildlife sanctuary?"


    Yhet gave him a strange look, but he ignored it.


    "Something like that," he said. "That''s the closest thing you''d think of. The Chimera obviously weren''t here naturally—except the Sasquatch. The rest of us were ced here, but we like it. It suits us."


    Yhet grumbled under his breath which sounded a lot like a swarm of bumblebees droning nearby, but Sasha just nced at him and smiled. The smile faded quickly, though.


    "So, there''s a bunch of Chimera here?" she asked quietly. Zev nodded. "And are they all wolves like you?"


    "No, we have several species, plus all the creatures, like I said. But don''t worry, most of them are harmless, and the ones that aren''t won''t touch you when you smell like a wolf."


    She looked up at him sharply, and he shed a smile. Their gazes held for a long breath and his heart began to pound again. But she was the one to break the gaze, and he didn''t miss that she pulled her hand out of his a few stepster.


    His chest ached, but he couldn''t tell her that whole story in front of Yhet—or any of the Chimera for that matter. So he gave her a pleading look and said into her mind, My promises are true, Sash. I will keep you safe. Don''t be afraid.


    She sighed then and he wished he could untangle all the feelings that rose in her scent. But just then they reached the bottom of the slope they''d been following down to the valley floor. The trees opened ahead of them in the same moment the clouds shifted behind the peak in front of them and a shaft of sunlight pierced the half-gray of morning, bathing them all in golden light.


    Sasha''s breath caught and she stopped walking, staring at the beauty that surrounded them, her hands to her mouth.


    Zev took a long, deep breath and his chest fluttered with joy.


    He was back. He was finally back in his beautiful home, and this time with Sasha. It was going to take some time, but she''de back to him, he was sure of it. She was his mate—he was sure of that, too, though how it had happened, he had no idea. All he knew was that the air smelled better here. The beauty around him seemed to glitter. And it was all because she stood in the middle of it, smiling.


    *****


    ~ SASHA ~


    This was the most beautiful ce she''d ever seen… and the most overwhelming.


    When they were higher she''d see the peaks of the mountains above the trees, and the distant view of the valley floor with the river running through it. But much had been covered by the thick trees around the trail. Here… here she felt as tiny as an ant. Yet somehow, utterly peaceful.


    The trees spread out and opened up from the spot where the trail sloped down into a grassy in. Directly in front of them grass and bushes rippled forward to meet the bank of a swiftly flowing river. On it''s far bank the grass began again, but quickly sloped up to foothills of a mountain that rose, purple and white, above them, the sun beginning to peer out from around it as it rose.


    Above them, some kind of hawk drifted on the early morning airflows, the sun outlining its feathers in gold.


    It looked like a postcard. It looked like a painting. But Zev called it home.


    She turned to look at him, to share this with him and found him beaming with joy, watching her look at his home.


    "This is so beautiful!" she said.


    "You should see it in spring," Zev said with a lopsided grin. "Actually, I can''t wait for you to see it in Spring," he corrected himself softly.


    Their eyes caught and held and Sasha couldn''t breathe. For a moment images shed in her mind—put there by Zev—of the two of them walking down a dusty trail to the valley, finding a secluded clearing. She could see the rocks that overhung the water, a tiny waterfall off to the right, and trees and bushes hugging the edges, hiding them from the world.


    Then she saw him, smiling, reaching behind his head to pull his shirt forward and off, revealing the broad nes of his chest and the rippled muscles of his abdomen. Then Sasha joining him, both of them stripping off to dive into the cool, clear water anding back to the surface to find each other… Sasha curling her legs around his waist as he tread water to keep them both afloat—


    "You know, if it''s rude to talk about desire, perhaps you could stop thinking of things that make you stink of it," Yhet grumbled to Sasha''s right.


    She startled.


    Zevughed and teased his friend to cover for her while she blinked and tried to rid her mind of the images.. But she couldn''t quite cool the fire he''d lit, low in her belly.