Rakshasa Book I, Part #3: Tigerheart Read Online Free PDF Page B

things had turned out, but I knew that Ishan would never actively do me harm. Although I resolved to ask him about it later, I knew that he would not keep the truth from me unless he had a very good reason.
    “So the Garden is safe?”
    “Yes.”
    “And… and the giant tree you apparently live in?”
    Ishan smiled. “Yes. For now. And yes, it’s a giant tree. I’ll have to show you it some time.”
    “Isn’t something like that a little, I don’t know, obvious?”
    “You’ll see,” he said, cryptically.
    “I’m kind of a little sick of secrets.”
    Ishan chuckled. “Well, a’right. It’s not giant giant, merely fairly large for its species. And it’s substantially larger on the inside than it is on the outside.”
    “How does that work?”
    “To be honest, it’s a bit of a mystery. How does the vines and plants of your Garden grow underground with no sunlight?”
    “I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.”
    Ishan pursed his lips. “There’s a theory that areas inhabited by Rakshasa tend to take on a kind of life of their own, that the power that lives within our bloodlines can, in some rare cases, actually leak out of us like helium from a balloon. Normally that energy would just dissipate into the environment, but when the leaky Rakshasa—”
    “Leaky? Oh, eww. Can we use a different word other than leaky? It makes it sound like they have poor bladder control.”
    “… very well, sometimes, when the rare Rakshasa stays in one place for a long time time, especially somewhere underground or somewhere completely surrounding them, that energy becomes a part of the landscape, too. Literally infused with the land.”
    “Oh,” I said. “I’m guessing this doesn’t happen very often.”
    “Right,” said Ishan, “our kind tend to be solitary when we’re not banding together in small packs, forming covens is usually something that’s done by the younger ones. The craving for solitude grows stronger as the Rakshasa grows older and more powerful.”
    I nodded. “I wondered why everyone was so young.” A thought seized me. “So, wait. You’re saying that we’ll… eventually not want to be with each other?”
    Ishan shook his head. “I’m not saying that, and it seems unlikely.” He smiled at me and those blue eyes shone in the bright light of the morning. “I don’t think I could ever leave you.”
    “I love you, Ishan,” I said, feeling my breathing quicken and a strange feeling of total, complete calm wash over me.
    “I love you too,” he said, leaning up against me. I felt with my hands, resting them over the centre of his chest, feeling his strong heart beating against me. The heart of a tiger.
    We held each-other tight, arm in arm, unmoving and silent, watching as the sun began its slow climb up from the horizon towards the sky, sharing a moment that we both wished would never end.

Chapter VI

    The Fires of Love

    Katelyn looked so peaceful, snuggled up in my bed at my apartment, and I watched her with a little tiny bit of envy. I was still dog tired and the adrenaline kick of the morning had well worn off, leaving me somehow even more tired than I had started.
    But I couldn’t rest. Not yet. What Ishan had told me had shaken me in a very deep, very real way. We’d only known each other for a very small period of time, but I felt like I’d known him all my life.
    Two months seemed like an eternity when compared to the length of our relationship so far, but I knew that it would pass faster than I could imagine.
    “How is she?” Ishan asked from behind me, resting his chin on my shoulder. I felt his strong arms around my middle and I wiggled back against him.
    “She’s… okay, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. She took an awful whack to the head and she hasn’t woken up yet.”
    “Vriko says it’s a drug that’s keeping her unconscious, not any injury. The black eye looks really bad, but it’s not enough force to knock her out for this long. She