4. Plan

It could have been worse.

It might have been her father.

Or Oberon.

Coming to drop off her trunk at Athan’s doorstep and remind her she was being pruned from their family line.

She did not want to go out. Let Athan deal with it alone while she chastised herself for not dressing so she might appear presentable—prim and chaste, because they certainly had done nothing untoward.

Not that anything could be considered so when they were mates, and yet mortification spread through her all too easily, uncaring of bonds and laws and the apparent change in decorum.

But they were arguing, and that mattered to her.

So she went out, full of embarrassment and a tinge of resentment, because she was trying and this was only making it worse.

“Lucian,” she murmured, because both men were on the doorstep, Lucian’s arms crossed as he took in Athan’s appearance and found it utterly lacking.

Only for him to dare to smirk at her when he saw her in the borrowed sleep shirt.

“Well,” he said instead, abandoning the crisp tone and role as fierce protector. “This changes matters.”

Orma tugged the shirt further down her legs. “It certainly does not.”

“Really?” He stepped closer, peering at her the way only family could. A bit teasing, a bit mocking, but with just enough concern that she did not rush forward and shove at him for being wretched. “From my view, it does.”

Athan’s posture shifted as Lucian calmed. No longer defending his home and his mate. Just... waiting. To see what she would ask him to do.

To see if she would ask Lucian to take her home.

She should. After she’d dressed, of course.

“Did you tell Mama?” she asked, because that pressed at her most. She’d worry, and Orma didn’t want that. She also did not want her caught up in the fantasy that Orma was off, perfectly healed and holding off visiting because of some mated joy.

“This morning,” Lucian affirmed. “She has questions.”

Orma grimaced. “Naturally.” She swallowed, wondering if she should invite him in. It felt too presumptuous—the house wasn’t hers, and she did not know if Brum was only courteous to strangers that happened to be mates, so she dared not lead him into the kitchen to share in the meal. “Were we hard to find?”

“Not very.” Lucian flicked an errant bit of debris from the sleeve of his robe. He should be at the Hall by now. Or enjoying a morning off with Firen. Not here, looking after her again. Guilt made her shift, but both men looked at her as if it was her leg that was bothering her. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. You needn’t come back until you’re ready.”

His attention on her was sure, and she knew the cost of what he was offering.

To meddle. Intervene, if that was what she wished. Which meant Athan could go to the Hall and lodge a formal complaint, and Oberon would use it to strip Lucian of his remaining privileges, still resentful of his mating to Firen.

He loved her. Would fight for her. Not just because of kin and blood, but because he liked her. Always had. Even when he was older and it was somehow beneath elders to acknowledge care for the younger.

Orma leaned against the wall, because it was possible her hip did hurt. Her knee as well. Athan moved toward her, but she shook her head, wanting to talk to Lucian on her own. “How am I supposed to be ready?” she asked. Everything had gone wrong for Lucian once Firen had come. Or... maybe it had gone right. But he still lost his father. His mother’s visits were limited.

She did not want to lose her parents. All she’d known.

She scrubbed at her face and waited for Lucian to give her what wisdom she lacked. “I don’t think you can be, Orma. They’re going to react however they please. And there might be consequences, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.” He glanced toward Athan. “I don’t know him, though. So maybe it isn’t, and I’ll fly you home right now and we barricade the doors and let him pace around a bit while you decide what you want.”

Athan frowned, but he looked to Orma rather than argue with Lucian. “That won’t be necessary,” Athan offered, and there was pain in the bond, and only some of it was hers. “If you want to go home, you can.”

She did, and she didn’t.

While she was here, she could pretend everything would work out as best it could.

Once she went back, once they met him, once it was all real and pronouncements were made that could not be unmade...

Her arms came about her middle, and she shook lightly. Lucian reached for her, but Athan was quicker, and he retreated with no vocal objection. It was Athan’s place, so long as Orma wanted him to be there.

“I don’t know what I want,” Orma confessed, her eyes meeting Athan’s. Lucian deserved better—her thanks and her appreciation that he’d found her. That he’d weathered her parents’ initial reactions.

She might not know what was best, but she knew she could not stay in the cocoon of Athan’s home forever. She needed her things, at the very least. Needed her medicines.

And her parents deserved better than a daughter that disappeared the moment she had become brave enough to seek out her mate.

She rubbed at her nose, then her chest where the bond thrummed its own displeasure. Athan wasn’t supposed to offer any sort of separation. He was supposed to insist she remain exactly where she was. This was home now, and the rest didn’t matter.

Except that it did.

Because she was still Orma, and she still loved her parents.

“Are they very angry?” she asked Lucian, wanting to prepare herself.

“They knew he wouldn’t be what they wanted for you,” Lucian reminded her, blunt as usual. Presumptuous of him, to assume she’d have discussed that with Athan already.

Accurate, though.

“I think they came to terms with it a long time ago.” He rubbed the back of his neck and gave her a sheepish glance. “I wouldn’t expect a supper invitation for a long while. You’ll be on the outs.”

She sniffed, and Athan reached out and pulled her hand away from her chest where she’d rubbed her skin pink. “I’d be in good company, though,” she murmured, presenting a tremulous smile to her cousin.

He sniffed, looking a little too much like his father as he did it. Not that she would ever tell him—she might be many things, but she wasn’t cruel. “The best and the worst, if we put it to a family vote.”

The day was full of sunshine and warmth. It should have been a comfort, even if all she felt was dread in the pit of her stomach. She needed to be grown. To make the decisions that would dictate the rest of her life, and all she wanted to do was hide. Put it off a while longer. Make friends with the Brum and pretend that was the most important thing she would ever do.

Lucian leaned closer, which offered no privacy, given Athan’s place beside her. “Have you any clothes to wear? You didn’t rip them all to shreds, did you?”

It was the sort of teasing that would earn him a glare and a sharp word from her mother, and it made her face heat as she tried to muster even a glimmer of her mother’s outrage. “They are perfectly fine,” she stated primly. Not that it was his business. Because it wasn’t.

They could have ripped their clothes from one another in a fit of passion if they wanted to—they were mates, after all.

But she couldn’t meet his eye, and she could feel Athan looking at her, and it made her flustered all over. He’d been sweet to her. Kind. Promised her the bed was a sickbed for as long as she deemed it so.

But she wouldn’t be expected to say that, would she? That was private. Between mates.

“Good. Then I won’t offer to pick you up anything before you go home.”

He would have. Without complaint.

But better to tease her, to even anger her, than to allow her to sniffle and cry against the wall of a house that wasn’t hers, but was supposed to be.

She opened her mouth to thank him, but he was already taking a few steps back. Looking at the house. The building beside it.

How it stood separate and apart.

“You’ll keep anyone contagious away from her, yes?”

Orma paled, creeping out so she could look at the property again. Was that why it was positioned so? To keep sickness away from shared walls and possible contamination.

But... this house shared a wall. And she could not afford to contract an illness—not if she wanted to live long enough to...

Well.

To do anything at all.

Suddenly, it was not so daunting to return home. To make it an escape rather than the confrontation she’d feared moments before.

Maybe the Brum could stay here. And Athan could work here. And maybe he wouldn’t mind coming to visit her in the tower after all, after he’d washed himself.

Thoroughly.

Perhaps more than once.

Wasting sickness could kill a grown man in less than a sennight. How long would it take for her?

“I would never put Orma at such risk,” Athan promised, first to Lucian, then turning to her. He’d be able to feel her anxiety, feel the itch in her skin that told her to go home, to wash, to protect herself from threats she couldn’t see, couldn’t detect. “Next door is the infirmary. That is true. But I had not intended to offer Orma a tour unless she requested it. And only then after the cleaners had seen to it, and I was certain the worst it had seen was a birth, not the plague.”

He tried to force some levity into his tone, but his eyes were serious.

He would protect her. Always. She needed to trust him, if only in this.

She wanted to. Orma wanted this aching, panicky feeling to retreat from her limbs and heart. “Her safety is paramount,” Athan continued, reaching out and rubbing his forefinger against her wrist. Checking her pulse or offering comfort? She couldn’t be sure, and it troubled her.

“Well, good.” Lucian nodded, seemingly appeased. She wanted to be. Desperately. But it was more complication she hadn’t considered, and it bothered her deeply.

What if he took sick going about his duty? She could not nurse him. The Brum certainly couldn’t. So what then?

“Will you come to supper soon?” Lucian asked, addressing his query to Orma. “Firen is ready to burst. It was everything I could do not to have her follow me.”

Orma nodded, because she didn’t know what else to do. There were too many uncertainties, and it was possible Firen and Lucian would be the only family she had left after today.

She looked after him, and it appeared he wanted to say more. But one glance toward Athan and he shook his head. “Don’t look so dour, Orma. This might be a good thing.”

She did not bother to asking him to clarify what he meant. It wasn’t about suppers or visiting her parents.

He wanted to believe Athan would be good for her.

Orma wanted that, too.

She watched him go, feeling a catch in her throat. It wasn’t forever. Firen wasn’t the type to say no if Orma showed up even tonight, with an empty stomach and a new mate and the desire for good food and company.

But it felt different.

Like she’d been left to a new life, one that felt strange and unnatural—not at all like she’d always hoped it might. As if pieces were trying to fit together, but she was going to have to hurt in the process of sorting it all out.

Athan brushed his fingers against her upper arm. “Why do you look so sad?” he asked, his voice low. Careful. “I only started arguing when he did. Should I not have done even that? He wanted to see you, and I wasn’t certain if you would be... ready.”

He picked at the fabric of her sleeve, and she waited for the earlier mortification to return. But it didn’t. Her feelings settling into a deep sort of melancholy that usually took at least a day to pass entirely.

Athan gave a hum, and that was the only warning she received before he leaned forward and scooped her into his arms, shutting the door with his foot. Even that was not enough to set her heart racing, to distract her, and she waited for him to put her back in her chair and insist she finish her breakfast.

Like a fledgling.

But he bypassed the table, and the Brum that watched them both warily as Athan opened the back door. But he did not insist Brum go outside, and instead took her out into the morning air.

To a bench carved into the side of the house itself. To the garden that was overgrown in places.

He sat beside her, not staring at her, not chattering away, just... sitting.

And if he was waiting for her answer, it was with a calm sort of patience that did not make her feel rushed.

The creek that twined through the garden made a gentle trickling sound. Soothing. There were insects that flittered about the greenery, a larger hum coming from a box in the far corner. There was yet another building, too small to act as a home, but it must serve a purpose. Isn’t that what Mama often said? Other people lacked the funds for something just to be pretty for the sake of it. It had to function in some way to make it worth the purchase.

Which then led to commentary about how fortunate they were, and she needn’t fret, because she would be provided for the whole of her life.

Would those promises still stand?

“I do not sit out here often enough,” Athan said at last. “Mostly because then I see all the work that needs doing, and I feel guilty I am not getting to it.”

Orma shifted in her seat. She lacked the experience to know what the plants needed. So to her it was a mass of green and deep blues, so dark they were almost black. Those were beneath a large tree that sprawled heavy limbs over the back half of the garden. Athan could not have planted it. Even she knew a tree of such a size would need generations to grow to such a span. There were bright mosses across half its trunk in shocking yellows and deep reds.

Was that on purpose? Or was that one of the things he should be tending to?

“You don’t have to stay,” Orma offered. He had better things to do than wait on her. Wait for her to sort herself out and be a proper person again. “I’m sure you had responsibilities today.” She nodded toward the building beside them, the one he called the infirmary. “People that need you.”

He said nothing for a moment. Did nothing. Which was fine. Would be just as fine as when he got up and left, leaving her to watch the leaves rustle in the breeze, watch the water trip over rocks and fallen debris as it made its way to... wherever creeks ended.

“I find it curious,” Athan answered. “That you think any of that would be more important than getting to know you.”

She should find it flattering, but she could manage only a miserable look in his direction. “You had a life, Athan. Before me. With important work. And just because I decided to come...” she wanted to say spy but didn’t. “There’s not much you can do for me, truly. So I should tend to my things as best as I’m able, and you tend to yours.”

He didn’t hum. Didn’t offer any sort of agreement. Just sank back more fully, his wing brushing against her arm as he did so. It should tickle. Should make her feeling...anything at all. “Is now when you would take an elixir?”

She blinked, considering her answer.

“Are you offering one?”

He stretched his legs out, his hands twining at the fingers as they settled against his middle. “Perhaps. If I understand what they are for. If I understand your mood.”

He gave the bond a little pull, as if testing to see if her sudden malaise affected even that. She didn’t need to be tugged and prodded about. She just needed time and a long sleep and it would pass on its own.

She told him that. She wasn’t angry, wasn’t irritated that she had to do so. Orma wasn’t much of anything at all.

He tapped his pointer finger against his other hand, his mouth pulling downward slightly as he considered.

If he suggested going to the infirmary to check her over, she would leave. Or... she hoped she’d have enough gumption to actually do it. “You asked what I longed for most with my mate.” Which was not at all what she thought he might say, and it was enough for her to turn her head away from watching the creek so she might better judge his expression.

“I think I should like to show you now.”

She wasn’t prepared for that either, and she opened her mouth to give her objections. It would be something intimate, she was certain. Something that would involve touches and probably kisses, and it irritated her that he would think to frighten away her melancholy with such tricks.

The bond would make her willing enough. Which was terrifying and irksome all at once.

She wanted to remind him of his previous declarations. About sickbeds and wanting and she had not altered her opinion about her readiness in the few hours it had been since they’d last discussed it.

But he was picking her up. His eyes bright and certain of his course.

And she was limp and tired in his arms, and she really had eaten little. Nor in the days beforehand, either—too preoccupied with Lucian’s suggestion to manage sleep or food.

But there was another part that... wondered.

That stilled her tongue and let him take her where he meant to go.

To show her his true nature. To know if he was the good, kindly sort of man she thought him to be, or if his patience was as limited as she feared.

Back to his room, and there was a knot of dread in her belly.

It worsened when he set her down on the mussed bedding.

When he climbed in as well.

When he lay on his side and pulled her into him, for her curves to match his as his arm went about her middle, her body forgetting what it was to relax, to be pliant and soft when he wanted her to be.

But then his voice was at her ear. Soft and gentle. He did not delve into her clothing, had not even kissed her yet.

“I thought of this for longer than I care to admit. Just this. When we would lie together in our bed, and we could tell each other anything at all. And my mate would trust me with her worries, and I would do all I could to ease them.”

Something bent inside of her. Wobbled.

Broke.

And suddenly she was soft against him, huddling and revelling in the way his arm tightened about her. Which should have felt silly and wrong because he was near to a stranger, but the bond flared and warmed and whispered just how right it was.

How it should always have been.

He didn’t tease. Didn’t mock. Just nuzzled against the back of her neck and it had no business feeling as good as it did. “What got you so tangled up and sad?” he asked again.

And it was easier, here. Even though it was daylight outside. Even though nothing had changed, she found her tongue loosening and the malaise yielding into a deep-felt sorrow. “I have to go home,” she answered him. “And I don’t know what that means. What will come of it.”

He did not answer her right away. Not with false promises and soothing placations. But when he spoke, he kept his voice carefully measured while his thumb worked against her. Not rubbing, just... circling. Her breasts were small, and she wasn’t even certain he realised he was touching the underside of one of them.

She should say something.

Didn’t.

“We could stay here,” he reminded her. “And you can worry yourself sick over it. Or we could wash and dress and go speak with them. Make a plan for what comes next, with all the information we need to make it the best outcome possible.”

The choice was obvious, but she was a coward.

And it took far more effort than it should to answer him, voice small. “I’m frightened.”

It wasn’t who she wanted to be. Bold and fierce and ready to conquer anything. But it was who she was, and it seemed ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

“I know,” Athan soothed, holding her close, and yes, pressing a kiss to the top of her tangle of hair. “But I am not. If you can make introductions with Brum, I can face your parents.”

Which wasn’t a proper comparison at all, but she accepted it as it was meant. He appreciated her effort and was willing to make the same.

She wanted to give her complaints. All the reasons they shouldn’t and she wasn’t up to it, and he should go to work or do... something. Just leave her there.

But she wouldn’t enjoy it. The knot of anxiety would simply tighten, would leave her shaky and starved, without the ability to sleep away the worst of it.

“What do you say?” Athan urged, this time placing a kiss on her shoulder. Which really was presumptuous of him, because that was for mates and they...

They were mates.

The subtle glow of their threads was knitted so tightly together she had to squint to make out the patterns.

They were tethered. Entwined.

And maybe she needed him to be better. To feel better. The aches she felt were physical rather than emotional. He listened.

He cared.

Not as her healer, but as the mate he was.

She swallowed thickly, feeling...

She did not entirely know.

But she did not want to waste away in this bed, nice as it was to lie with him. Not with the rest hanging over her. Tugging at her. Robbing her of her the peace she should find in his arms.

“We should go,” she murmured, testing her resolve. “We should,” she repeated, buoyed a little further because it settled rightly.

Most especially when his hold tightened as he hugged her to him. “Excellent.”

And he was proud of her, which shouldn’t have mattered, which should have influenced nothing at all.

But it did.

And she smiled.

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