Zola's Pride Read Online Free PDF Page A

woven into a charm Zola’s mother had given them. The
last gift of her fractured mind, magic that hid their presence from
the Scions.
    Magic that wouldn’t last
forever. Zola braided her hair and gathered her willpower. They’d
spent precious hours circling. Stalking. Neither ready to commit to
the one conversation they needed to have.
    It was time to stop playing.
    Zola stepped from her bedroom and
found Walker in the living room studying the framed photos on her
walls. “You studied with DeSilva?”
    “ Four months.” Her gaze
drifted over the rest of the wall, over a dozen framed photographs of
her with her many teachers, some of her most prized possessions.
She’d honed her craft under the greatest masters who would
teach her, flitting from country to country for six years after her
mother had driven her from her pride.
    She stepped forward and lifted her
hand to brush the frame of a photograph of her standing next to a man
who barely came to her shoulder. “I stayed longest in Okinawa.
With Nakamura. He’s a psychic. Precognitive. Just a few
seconds, but that’s all he needs. I’ve seen him take down
shifters twice his size.”
    Walker laughed. “You don’t
need bulk when you know what the tank coming at you plans to do.”
    Her preternatural speed had been of
no use against Nakamura, who had left her with her fair share of
humility—and a healthy respect for psychics and spell casters.
“I’ve only been in New Orleans for a few years. It didn’t
feel safe to settle in one place at first. I didn’t know if my
mother might change her mind and come after me. Or if her enemies
might.”
    He didn’t argue with that.
“Did you enjoy your travels?”
    She gave him the truth, because
she’d be demanding plenty of it from him soon enough. “Not
at first. I was young. Scared. But my teachers gave me confidence,
and I grew.”
    His voice roughened. “You did
all right.”
    “ Yes. I did.” No
turning back now. She
pivoted to face him, and worked to keep her voice even. “I will
take your people under my protection. I will reform the pride. But,
in return, you will tell me the truth.”
    Walker stepped back, such a small
movement that she wondered if he realized he’d done it. Retreat
had never been in his nature, any more than it was in her own. Nor
was the wariness in his voice. “The truth about what?”
    Zola braced herself. “Why did
you let her drive me away? Why didn’t you follow me?”
    She saw the moment he decided to
tell her, and she knew it would be the truth. His eyes shadowed, and
he sighed. “I couldn’t stop you, and I couldn’t
follow you. Not without putting you in danger.”
    “ Because of my mother?”
    “ Because of your mother’s
orders.”
    She hadn’t realized hope still
lived until it fluttered weakly in her chest. “What would she
have done to you if you’d followed me?”
    “ Tatienne said that if any of
us went with you, she’d have to assume we meant to start our
own pride. A rival pride.” He met her gaze. “She would
have killed you, Zola.”
    Zola closed her eyes as pain rose,
bringing the sharpness of memory with it. Tatienne as a younger
woman, pale skin bronzed by the relentless sun, her auburn hair
streaked with gold. Zola had inherited her coloring from her father,
chocolate and twilight, but her mother had been all the colors of a
desert sunset. Power had sung in her mother’s veins, but so had
love. Love for her daughter, for her pride.
    The Conclave’s Seer was
heavily pregnant. Would sweet little Michelle Peyton lose the
gentleness in her nature? Would the son she carried beneath her heart
turn someday to find his mother had vanished, lost to the ravages of
a power too great for one body to contain?
    “ Hey.” Walker urged her
face up with gentle fingers under her chin. “I know it’s
horrible. That’s why I promised myself I wouldn’t do this
to you.”
    Too late, she scented salt. Her
cheeks were wet with traitorous tears, revealing the