“Tell me a story,” I whisper.
Pax and Thane’s stories have been the only thing keeping me from throwing myself off this horse and declaring that we’re sleeping in the damn dirt. I don’t care. I just need it to stop.
Except I do care. I know there could be rogue Sabers behind us, freed from Tanakan and hired by the Crown to take my guys’ heads off. And I know that on our own, with me injured, we need to find a place to hide, or we’re going to get killed.
I sigh, a strangled and resigned sound, and lean back into the arms of the AlphaSeed behind me. He shifts, moving the reins from one hand to the other, so he can reach around and tilt my chin up.
The horse responds to Pax’s change in mood, naturally slowing from pushing down the barren road in a long-strided canter to walking.
“I can see that,” he says, clearly to Thane once more.
His eyes are golden, glowing for a beat then settling back to normal, but the ashy hues to his coffee-colored hair tell me that Thane is still lurking under his skin. Probably looking out at me through Pax’s eyes. I wet my lips, swallowing to try and get my dry vocal cords to function, and his gaze traces the motion. First focused on my lips, then watching my throat bob.
“Hi, Thane,” I say, and they shift their gaze sharply back up to meet my own.
“He thinks you’re in too much pain,” Pax says, his calloused fingers warm against my jaw, the concern in his gaze even warmer. But I have a pretty good grasp on Pax, who he is on the inside, and I’m willing to bet this moment of caring is dwarfed by his bigger fears. Fears that an ambush out here would result in our bodies being eaten by the ravens. There is no one to help us, no one to fight with us, just the ancient scorched land with outcrops of trees and fences as mortals try to scratch a living from the waste of a magical fire a thousand years ago.
“I think he worries too much,” I say, which makes the corner of Pax’s lips quirk upward.
“He says other stuff too, but I think repeating them would just start an argument.”
“Wise,” I say. He lets go of me, and I nuzzle backward until my head is resting on his chest, just under his chin, and I can hear the steady rhythm of his heart.
My eyes drift closed, and I don’t bother opening them to repeat, “Tell me a story.”
“Have I told you how I met Jessamy?” he asks softly, a hint that even the suggestion is baring part of his soul. Part he hasn’t dared open in decades.
We’ve talked about all kinds of things, like the time Seth managed to magically seal his bedroom in the Black Castle and fill it with water during the night, leaving Pax’s bed floating when he awoke in the morning. And the ensuing fight they had that left their entire wing with holes in the walls and magical rain clouds in the halls. That had made me laugh.
Or the ceremony they’d had to say farewell to their mother and the last time they stepped foot within sight of the Black Castle, that had made me cry.
But not this.
“No,” I whisper.
“Do you want to hear it?” he asks.
“Of course I do,” I say, and I mean it. Not a single flutter of my heart or soul suggests otherwise. I have no idea if that’s weird for other people, but it’s weird for me. I tackled their pretty servants and began trying to leave bruises – so, yeah. History says I should be jealous – but all I am is sad.
“Okay, Mother found her, pretty sure we never would have met otherwise. She wasn’t considered a Saber; with most of the magic in her Seed repressed, she was never called to one of the castles. But she knew her wolf, and I just had to take one look at them… I was a different person then, and the world was a different place.”
“And I wasn’t even born,” I joke.
“You were born, just in stasis,” he corrects. “You would have liked her. She was quiet and shy and had none of your tongue.”
I snort. “My tongue is a curse.”
“Seth would disagree.”
“Which means nothing, because Seth contradicts everything, even himself. Did your brothers accept her?”
“Accept? They basically locked us in the dining room for six hours together. Jessamy was due to ride home, and I hadn’t got the courage up to say more than two words to the woman –”
I snort again, cutting him off. “You?”
“I was a different person,” he says. Very different, by the sound of it. “But I still feared that I wasn’t enough for her, that I couldn’t be what she needed.” His voice is so soft and caring it’s impossible to get jealous of the woman he loved so dearly and lost so tragically.
All his fears came true, in the end.
I find myself asking, “How did she die?”
And instantly regret it. Real smooth, Shade, real smooth.
He swallows, and I feel the rise and fall of his throat behind me. “Of a broken heart. Most Sabers don’t last long after being separated from their mates. First, she lost her unborn child, that was hard enough, but the fatal stroke was losing me.”
“But you weren’t dead.”
“I might as well have been. I thought she could handle our absence, and Thane failed to think at all. It took us years. Years where Thane was in control and I was lost in pain. Years of…” He pauses to swallow the next words back down. The wolf doesn’t add anything, though I’m not sure if it’s in argument or agreement. “Our distance was enough. MateBonds require this closeness, this sharing of energy, to survive. Our bodies choose each other and no one else. Years was too long. My mother was the same, after my father died.”
“But you’re still alive,” I say softly, hoping not to give the universe any ideas. “You have lived without a –”
He cuts me off, no hesitation in his voice as he leans forward and whispers, his lips brushing the back of my earlobe, “I’ve waited, but maybe because she was not my only mate.”
An unspoken, I was always meant to meet you lingers in his exhale. But I’d never say that aloud, never suggest that his child was fated to a horrible death. Or that his first love was some kind of universal trial run, teaching him to be an overprotective asshole in order to keep me alive.
I’m sure, without Jessamy and the way her death changed both Pax and Thane, I’d probably be dead for a hundred different reasons.
His need to keep me at arm’s length, which made Seth rebel and step in with Logan in the hall, then when I was in the stocks. The way Pax wanted to protect me even from Roarke’s interrogation methods. Hell, even the moment he removed me from Lord Martin’s ownership way back in the very beginning. All events in a push-pull dance he was doing with his heart and his past.
He straightens, firming his grip around me before clicking the horse into a faster gait.
“And I’ll never lose you,” he whispers. I don’t think he intended for me to hear it, but I catch the words before they’re ripped away by the chill winter wind.
The pain returns, but I press my eyes closed against it and will my mind to drift. Pax’s fingers lift the front of my shirt, finding skin and stroking up and down the length of my side. Like a mother lulling her child into sleep – and it works.
But the moment sleep takes me, my soul plunges into turmoil. Into the moment someone almost cleaved me in two. Almost.