“I do,” she agreed. “At least it makes me…”
“Caring?”
Airk still wasn’t looking, but she shook her head anyway. “No. Useful.”
He did glance over his shoulder at that, bright eyes so like hers taking in her expression and maybe more than she wanted him to see. “You do not see yourself as useful?” he asked.
She glanced at the door she’d closed behind them. “A dormant phoenix with no powers?” she said in a low voice, because the dormant part was still a secret. “I’m no more helpful than a human. Fragile and in the way.”
He stiffened as though he didn’t like that description. “Power does not always come from a physical ability.”
“It doesn’t come from physical weakness, either,” she pointed out. Then shook herself out of what could become a big funk if she let it. “But I refuse to be sidelined.”
“Sidelined?” he asked.
“It’s a phrase from modern sports that means not allowed to play or removed from the game and left to the side to merely observe but not participate.”
“I see. You wish to be helpful.”
“More than helpful.” She blew out a breath, wanting to explain but sure he didn’t really want to hear it. “You were there when Pytheios killed my father.”
Airk nodded slowly, almost reluctantly.
“My parents’ mating bond hadn’t solidified, so my mother didn’t die with him. She was pregnant and ran to save us. She taught us to survive even while she grieved every single day for him. Kept us a secret. Until Pytheios found her and killed her, too.”
Angelika swallowed. In her dreams every night, she still saw her mother the last night they were all together, lying in that burning field dying.
“I thought that was the worst that could happen, but then Maul—” She cut herself off before her voice broke.
“They told me,” Airk said quietly. “The legend about hellhounds being reincarnated souls of warriors with unfinished business is true.”
True, and a huge revelation.
“Did they tell you how Maul turned out to be the soul of our father? Pytheios killed him, too. Again.”
But Angelika hadn’t been there that day.
Pain speared her through the heart, and she gasped silently, breathing through it. Something that had happened out of the blue at least once a day since she’d learned of how Maul had died.
“I should have been there. I should have had a chance to say goodbye to him.” Her sisters had. She shook her head. She wanted to rail at the fates who, for some unknown reason, had prevented her from taking her place beside Meira, Kasia, and Skylar in this war. “I might have no fire, no power like my sisters, but I am going to make a difference in this war.”
“Healing people is a way to be helpful.” Airk seemed to be offering the option to her, and she would love to have kissed him for the effort. A sweet kiss this time.
“It is,” she agreed. “But with the accelerated healing shifters have, I’m rarely needed in any capacity that way. Never in a lifesaving one. A Healer with a universal blood type is the one who makes a real difference around here.”
Airk said nothing. Not that he could. She wasn’t wrong.
“That’s why I wanted to discuss our mating that night,” she said. “It seemed like the only thing I could do to make a difference.”
He shot upright, rolling over and swinging his legs to dangle off the high bed, to stare at her with that inscrutable, immovable expression of his.
“I refuse to discuss mating with you.” The words came out flat.
Well, hells. He didn’t have to be mean about it. “I wasn’t going to propose or anything,” she snapped. She hadn’t actually proposed the last time. She’d only wanted to bring the option up. She couldn’t help a muttered, “Even if rejecting me wasn’t very forward-thinking of you.”
Silence.
She ducked her head, pretending to be focused on fixing the bandage now dangling and loose. They sat quietly, the room thick with unspoken words as she continued to work.
“Why do you wish to mate me?” The words sounded almost offhand, as though he was asking the time of day.
Her hands stilled in their work, and she blinked at his leg. “Like I said…to make a difference,” she repeated. “For my family and for our people.”
“Is that all?”
Angelika’s eyebrows tried to crawl into her hair. Did he sound…disappointed? “I mean, physically, I think we’d—”
“No.”
He clapped his hand over his wrist, but not before she caught the shimmer of a shift.
Yikes. His dragon was way closer to the surface than she’d realized. She should be nervous of that. Unnervingly, she wasn’t. Instead, that visible display only gave her another arguing point.
“You know, a mate would give your dragon an anchor,” she pointed out. “You could try to shift—”
“The time for that passed long ago.” He was speaking slowly and quietly now. Not a good sign, given that the way he appeared to keep control was to never lose it. “If I shift, I go feral, and your sisters’ mates will have to put me down. Are we finished here?”
She glanced at the bandage, which had started to unravel again with how tense he’d gone, then pulled the stool closer and started rewrapping it. Again.
“Okay. Then maybe I can travel with you to help reach out to dragons from the White Clan. I’m a people person. Plus, they might be more willing to listen to both a phoenix and one of their royals. Maybe I’d have…er…a little more success in convincing others to our side.”
“As opposed to my lack of success, I take you to mean?”
She cleared her throat. “I believe that’s the third settlement that”—how to word this to avoid discouraging him—“wasn’t interested?”
“That chased me out violently is what you meant to say.” He was back to that unshakable calm.
“What if—”
“I refuse to negotiate this with you further.”
She shouldn’t have pushed. “I didn’t think we were negotiating. I was just—”
“Angelika.”
What would it be like to hear him say her name like that, growl it, if they came together?
Good grief, girl, get your mind on the problem and not…sex. Maybe she needed a few rounds with her vibrator. It had been a while.