Druidess Found (Druidess Trilogy Book 1) by Machelle Hanleigh (interesting novels to read txt) 📕

real possibility that he would never take a bonded mate. He never wanted to take a bonded mate for the sake of taking a bonded mate, and never expected to be drawn to anyone. He decided he would avoid taking a bonded mate unless he felt a connection with someone.

In reality, the Queen would have at some point forced the issue and he would have been forced to choose a bonded mate, but it would not have been a bonding of the heart, not like it was with Kaily. Now, he felt incomplete without her. There was a place inside him that suddenly became empty and only she could fill it with her presence. She was his, now and for eternity, and he was hers. Taking Kaily as his bonded mate would change both of their life paths for all times. How was he going to make her understand what it meant to become his bonded mate?

He stood and made his way to the shower room.

The other issue that plagued him was his night terrors. He knew somehow, he needed to remain close to his people even if it meant he and Kaily remained in hiding until those events played themselves out, if they ever did. He didn't have the night terrors any longer, yet he still had an uneasy feeling that something was coming for the Kahoali people. It didn't make sense and he couldn't figure out who could be that kind of threat with one exception: the Druids. There was no love lost between the Kahoali and the Druids, but not even the Queen believed that they would attack after so many years.

She and Baridi were the only ones left who were present at the massacre of Center Village 140 years ago. If they didn't believe the Druids were a threat, who was he to say differently? There simply wasn't anyone else that could account for the destruction he witnessed in his night terrors. The other Inhabitants of Ki just didn't have the power to cause that kind of destruction. The Agenors couldn't navigate the oceans to get to them and had no ability to touch the energy of Ki. The Zaltys attacks subsided over the decades, and only the occasional stray minor incident ever occurred in the outer villages.

His thoughts abruptly stopped as a decisive harsh laugh escaped him. In truth, the Kahoali were not what they once were. With so few taking up their heritage, the Zaltys or Agenors could probably cause a great deal more damage than he gave them credit for before those Kahoali with abilities could stop them. In the end, the speculation didn't matter or help. He had to remain close by to protect his people in case his night terrors manifested in reality.

He turned the water on and stepped into the shower stall. He thought about the destruction of the training clearing. It had been massive. It scared him to think about the power it would have taken to cause that kind of destruction. He thought about Kaily being in the center of the damage. If Sari and Shimani were right, and she was the source of that destruction, she would be a powerful asset in protecting his people. If he could train her, and that was a huge if. How was he supposed to train someone with that kind of potential? After finishing cleaning himself, he stepped out of the stall and dried off. He didn't know how to train her, but he needed to try. She was his people's best hope, if the destruction was any indication of her potential.

He dressed, picked up logs from the storage stash, and made his way to the fire pit. The fire went out in the night. He placed them in the pit and through a fireball on the stack to set it ablaze. It was still cold in the cave and he wanted it to be warm for Kaily when she woke. He checked on her to make sure she still rested, and then made his way to the back of the cave and the training room Shimani mentioned the previous evening. He entered the room and closed the door behind him with a wave of his hand. Before Shimani left, he conveyed what he learned about the room to Moto. He probably should have told Shimani to show him the room, but he wanted to spend time alone with Kaily. He had things to work through in his mind, before he could work through them with Kaily.

He walked the parameter of the room, and ran his hand over the dark, glass-like, polished surface. The stone was obsidian black and not like the other stone of the cave which was a light grey. He wondered if the process to make the room suitable for training was what caused it to look like an obsidian mirrored surface. That possibility made sense to him. He continued to walk the parameter of the room and to caress the surface. The walls felt alive with energy. Whoever created the room and the rest of the cave, was someone that he would like to meet. The ability to create a space in a cave to live and train one's abilities with the energy of Ki was a remarkable achievement.

He admired the craftsmanship and the power it would have taken to create and endure for so long. He didn't know how long it had been since the cave was altered. To him, it felt as if it had been a long time in the past. It didn't make sense that he could feel when something had been created, yet it was there inside of him. It was not a sense of an exact date, but a sense, a feeling of time passing since its creation, he felt the years, and yet he couldn't give an exact amount of time in a tangible number of years. It was the strangest feeling and wasn't an ability he possessed, experienced, nor