5. Read

“You sure this is how you want to do this?”

Yes.

No.

He was right to ask. She’d changed her mind at least three times already.

First had been the kitchen table. But that had become a... nice place for her. Somewhere to share and learn as she watched him cook. He’d even let her handle one of the smallest knives as she cut one of the shrivelled roots she’d handled and come to learn were not in fact spoiled as she’d first feared.

So not the table.

Not outside either. Because what if the papers blew away in the breeze and someone else found them and they saw, and that was intolerable.

She’d caught a glimpse of one page, and there were diagrams.

Rudimentary, without shape and shading like a true artist might have done to represent a living person, but it was enough to make her stomach roil at even Athan seeing them.

Which meant inside. To a sitting room that held yet another over-large cushion next to a plush armchair, the fabric worn thin in places. Her mother would have allowed no one to see her furniture in such a state, but Athan merely brushed his hand over it fondly. “I’ll share,” he offered, although the setup clearly suggested this was his seat and the Brum sat on the pillow at his feet.

The chaise, then. The cushions were stiff from disuse, but they might yield with a little time on her part. There was a hearth and a table with a lamp, and it would be quite cosy in the wintertime.

Now it felt stuffy and closed in, and the hearth was just empty stone and she glanced about the unfamiliar room.

Which made Athan ask her again if she was really ready.

Which she wasn’t.

But she was also tired of the delay.

Things were still new between them, but they were less strangers and more... not friends exactly. Not mates, either. Companions, perhaps. While she dressed in the washroom and Athan kept Brum to common areas.

It had felt so strange having a man climb into her bed. She tried to think of it as theirs—it helped a little when she’d gone up and found that his coverlet was across the foot of it. But the pillows were hers, and the days and nights spent inside of it, and she peeked over shyly more than once to see him settled there.

“Comfortable?” she asked, because they could switch it back. Or... they could move to the other room. That would be better, wouldn’t it? Rather than fetch the haulers to play with the arrangements.

He’d already lowered the lamp, so he was just a dark figure aside from the wisps of a bond happily settled against his skin. Twining and pulsing because he was looking at her. Was reaching inward to see how she felt in turn, and she shivered a little to feel so exposed and yet...

It wasn’t troublesome. Wasn’t intrusive and horrid as she’d feared.

It was... nice.

To be seen. To be cared about.

The sitting room was wrong. There were no sweet memories there to counteract the bad ones to come. It had potential, but it wasn’t there yet, and she’d not have it become a room she actively avoided.

Which left only one other place she could think of.

Athan followed, arms full of books and papers that made up only a reasonable start, according to her father. Some from the beginning. Some from the end.

She was perilously close to crying already, and Athan could not carry her up the steps, and her wings gave a half-hearted swish when she thought of simply flying up the stairs and asking her hip to take her up there.

“Just let me...” Athan began, but she shook her head. Up she went. Slow, but determined. They needed this behind them. He needed to know who and what she was, and she needed to stop worrying herself sick that he’d think less of her once all the parts of her were exposed.

But there was more, wasn’t there? He might read about it. See pictures that an unskilled healer had attempted to create of her person, but someday there would be more.

Glimpses of her in a bath. An open door before a shift was fully pulled down. Those little happenings that came from living with a person. When knowledge became something more. When it was skin and bone and mate that lived with it all, and there would be no more talk of lovely then.

They were not dressed for bed, but they weren’t exactly in day-clothes. It was a delightful sort of in between as Athan continued to spoil her by sending his patients to another healer if their needs were immediate, or in asking to be given a sennight as he settled into this mating business.

He said it all with a smile, and the people at his door would smile back, often offering an embarrassing tease about those first early days and how exhausted he must be.

Orma was horrified the first time it happened, but by the fifth she had only a lump in her throat as she nervously cast a look at the back of Athan’s head.

Then he would soothe her through the bond. Reminding her they were just fine, and people could think what they liked.

He was getting better at that. She’d had far longer to understand the workings of the bond, but it rarely felt an advantage. It was a friend to him, working with him rather than against her every effort to control it on her own.

She didn’t resent him for it, but she could admit, if only to herself, there was a little bit of envy.

Athan kept pace with her on the stairs, even though she gestured for him to move ahead. “I’m in no hurry,” he answered, which was infuriating on its own. She felt watched and bothered and he was capable and strong and did not need to remain with her. He could have made the trip there and back twice over if he wanted to, but instead he took each step as she did while pushing patience at her.

She gave the bond a tug and was gratified how his head popped up to look at her. “This is silly,” she insisted. “Just... go.”

“I could,” Athan agreed. “I could fly up there and come back to get you, and we would establish that I am faster than you and it’s more convenient.” She rolled her shoulders because it was true, and she did not need to be reminded in such a manner. “I would prefer that you come to realise I’d rather go with you at your own pace than speed about and make you feel incompetent.”

“But it’s a waste of your time,” she protested, stopping so she could look at him fully.

For once, he actually looked affronted. “Respecting you and you capabilities is not a waste of my time.”

She flushed deeply. He was missing her point. Or maybe she was missing his. “I don’t like feeling...” she began, then huffed out a breath. He waited. Let her speak. Surely his arms were tired holding all those papers and notes and he was going to get frustrated with her, either with her slowness or by her insistence that he move on and there wasn’t really anything she could do, was there? It was always going to be wrong, and... “You’re going to tire of me,” she finished, because that was the truth of it. Either by what she said, or what she did, or what she couldn’t do. There would come a day, perhaps this season, perhaps the next, that he would long for someone else. Someone better.

He dropped the books on the stairs. The notes. The papers tied in their twine that shuffled and protested and threatened to scatter all the way back down to the first storey. “What are you doing?”

He reached for her.

And it wasn’t the slow, careful movements she was used to from him. The wondering looks and the patient silences while he worked out what the bond was telling him.

This was reactive. Frightening and exhilarating as he pulled her into his arms. Not for the embrace she’d readied herself for as best she could, not a kiss to the top of her head while he poured reassuring words into her heart.

Instead, he pulled her to him. Lifted her high enough where he might meet her in the middle.

And kissed her soundly on the mouth.

It was wildly inappropriate.

She was sickly, after all, and he’d promised her time and wanting and to respect her bed.

She did not know what to do, either with her hands or with her mouth. He was clutching her upper arms, and it should have hurt, except that it didn’t. Not when she settled on holding onto his shirt and tentatively... cautiously...

Seeing how it felt to kiss him back.

It was not how she imagined it might be. Back when she would indulge in fantasising about such things. They’d sit out underneath the largest tree in the courtyard. He’d take her hand. He’d ask if he might kiss her. Just once, he’d say. And it would be chaste and just the brush of lips against lips. She’d smile demurely and say it was quite nice, and they might do it again someday.

This was not like that.

This was frustration and...

He was making some sort of point. But the bond was tangling, trying to insist on something else other than his intent, and it muddled it all until all that was left was a rapid flutter through the cords between them. A tug and a pull in her heart that this was right. She wasn’t broken after all. Orma could feel and she could know passion as any other woman might, and it made her hands leave his shirt to delve into his hair. And that wasn’t proper, was it? She wouldn’t like if he pulled at her hair, would she?

Except he moaned when she did it, and he pulled back, which she didn’t want at all, settling her back on her feet but not releasing her. “Stop deciding I’m going to be horrid to you.” Not a request, not a plea. As close to a demand as he’d ever given her. She was breathless and shaky, and to her great horror, she wanted to wrench him back to her. Make him kiss her again because it made her feel...

Made her feel like the desirable woman she wasn’t.

“Not horrid,” Orma countered when she’d wrestled the pulsing bond into settling enough so she might answer him. “Tired.”

His hand came to the back of her neck, and he pulled her closer. Leaned his forehead to rest against hers. “The same,” he insisted. “If there has ever been anyone did that to you, I am sorry for it. But a mate does not tire of their other half. It simply isn’t possible.”

Those were the romantic promises set deep within the literature handed out to every young person who chafed and wondered at the bond.

She glanced down at the scattered papers and books. Her father would be horrified. Treasures, he called them. And it was a privilege to hold such knowledge in their home, and they should treat every one of them with respect. “Not everyone is happy in their bond,” she murmured. He might not know that. Perhaps his parents had been one of the fortunate. They cared easily and quickly, and it all settled with little fuss. They would have told him to expect the same, brought him up on stories of their meeting and the joy that followed.

She thought of Lucian’s parents. Even her own, although those occasions were few. They were dedicated. Committed, to be certain. But it wasn’t easy.

Or maybe it was. When they were alone, with no one to watch them. To judge. When they could kiss and forget and tell each other to set aside worries and expect it to be possible.

She would if she could. Didn’t he know that? If she could just shove doubts and old experience aside and accept him at his word?

“No,” Athan granted. “Selfish people can make selfish mates.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and urged her to look at him. “You are not selfish.” He said it with such certainty. He’d known her for such little time, and yet... he knew.

“Neither are you,” she answered back because there was a glow in her chest that told her it was so. He was kind and generous, and he wanted to care for her.

Wanted her to care for him.

Not as patient and healer. But as mates.

She wanted to kiss him again, not to banish sour feelings, but because her skin prickled all over when he looked at her that way. As if she was precious to him, as if she mattered more than anything in the entire world.

Her foot moved, and she stepped on a bundle of papers, and she glanced down, distracted. He’d dropped them because of her, and she could help to pick them up again.

“I’ll get them,” Athan insisted as she began pulling at the papers. A few had broken free of their ties, so she shoved them back where she thought they belonged.

“Let me help,” Orma urged. “I just...” her hip gave a twinge, and her knee threatened likewise, so she sat on the step and pulled it out straight. Athan saw. Or maybe the bond sent flickers of pain, and he frowned at her.

She didn’t rub it, didn’t pay it any mind, and just kept picking up the papers while he attended to the books.

He kept looking at her, then glancing away when she met his eye. He was nervous about something, and it was an odd sort of reversal. It left her strangely calm, and she stood with only the use of the wall and a flutter of her wings to get her upright. “Orma,” Athan said at last, when she managed another two steps while he lingered. Waiting. For what, she couldn’t say.

“Yes?”

He rubbed at the corner of a book. “I do not regret it,” he blurted out. “Kissing you. But I might if you disliked it. If you were not ready for it.”

He did look at her then, his eyes earnest. The bond should have made her feelings quite clear on the matter, but perhaps it had been as murky for him as it was for her.

She hadn’t been ready. Or thought she wasn’t. Was there a difference?

But now that he had, and they had, she wasn’t sorry for it. Not for his boldness and not for her newfound knowledge.

That she liked kisses.

Liked his kisses.

She swallowed, nervous and exhilarated all at once. “I don’t need you to,” Orma offered back, turning so she could climb the last two stairs on her own. “Because I don’t.”

And she smiled softly when the bond burst with something that felt a little bit like love.

◆◆◆

Her chosen place was her bed. Which felt a great deal more like their bed once he was situated beside her. Under the covers, she said once she’d inspected the room and tried to decide what would make her feel best. Not just her, it had to be both of them.

He didn’t question it, just tucked himself in and let her fuss and fiddle with the blankets until she was comfortable.

The shutters were open, the summer breeze catching and filling the room, threatening to ruffle the loose papers if Athan was not careful with them.

She contemplated shutting that too, afraid their voices would catch and carry to some passing by, but she couldn’t abide feeling stifled and stuffy.

And the blanket was necessary. For hiding. Just in case.

“How would you like to do this?” Athan asked, as she kept to her side and he to his.

She frowned, looking up at the ceiling. She didn’t need to look at them at all. But then she wouldn’t know how much he knew, and what more she needed to tell him.

Her throat ached.

She closed the distance between them and was welcomed by his arm coming about her, stroking through her downiest feathers. It tickled, and she squirmed lightly until her attention focused on the book he’d chosen first. The cover held dust about the edges. A cleaner came and wiped down each shelf every so often, but that only did so much to combat age and time.

She’d given him no answer, and his fingers delved and smoothed, applying a delicate pressure that deepened as he sought the tight knots at the base of her wings. Then up toward her shoulder. “I could read aloud,” he offered. “Or we just read it together?”

What she wanted was to scoop them all up and burn them.

They were hers, after all. Little bits of her spread out on parchment and vellum, ready to be analysed by any with access and the ability to read.

“It doesn’t need to be today,” Athan reminded her, not for the first time.

It did, though. Because she’d woken, tired and achy, and she’d wanted an elixir.

And he’d said no. Not until he knew what was safe to give her.

And round and round it went.

She did not want to delve into the texts until she felt better. He refused to make her better until he looked at the texts.

Until she’d been in tears and he’d given her a hunted sort of look because he wanted to help, wanted to give her anything she wanted, but he needed her safe. Couldn’t she understand that?

Then he’d hugged her until the tears dried, and she’d agreed.

Which meant not burning them all in the kitchen stove.

And letting him see all of her, splayed and naked, if only on a page.

“You read to yourself,” Orma said at last. “I’m going to close my eyes and peek every once in a while and see where you’re at.”

His arm about her tightened. “All right.”

He’d have agreed to anything if he thought it would help her. If it meant she wouldn’t burst into tears and demand he give them back to her father for safekeeping.

She felt the conflict on his side. How he wanted to know so he might be a better mate for her. How little he wanted to open it. To begin. To know.

There’d be no going back, afterward. But maybe...

Maybe they could go forward.

She thought of the kiss he’d given her. The one they’d shared after she’d realised what was happening.

She wanted him to be bold with her, she realised. To be kind and thoughtful but also...

To want her.

Every part.

She rubbed at her nose before she nodded to the book. “Let’s get this over with.”

He opened it.

And she was too curious not to read the first of it. The handwriting was small and precise, and she’d made the right decision not closing the shutters so they’d have crisp daylight to read by.

There were lots of little details. Things she could not have remembered. Her height, her wingspan. How responsive she was to the first doses they’d plied her with when she’d cried for the second hour because the bond was cutting her in two.

This was elaborated upon in greater detail. She couldn’t remember the questions they’d posed to her. Was it a sharp pain, or dull? Cutting was an interesting word, did it mean it was a slicing pain or stabbing?

Evidently, her answers had not been satisfactory, and in subsequent days, they’d questioned her again—her responses becoming less coherent as they administered more of the numbing potion.

The ingredients to which Athan moved the book so he could peer at the contents more intently.

She expected to feel his outrage through the bond. There was a tension in his body, which she only knew because she was half lying on top of it. She did not go so far as to tangle her leg over his, but it was still far more than she’d expected she’d want of him.

His emotions were quiet. Contemplative. Which made her nervous for different reasons. If she would become a case to him rather than a person, and it was a gnawing sort of worry that made the next passages less horrific than they might have been.

It was the first posit that surgery might be required. Bonds must have a physical component—he’d theorised on the subject for years. And in a child so young who was responding poorly to the medication, an exploratory exam might become a necessity.

Athan swallowed, but that was the only reaction he gave, turning the page with a sombre look in his eye.

She should keep quiet. Let him keep going without prolonging the process with questions. But there was a strange pull at the bond that made her anxious, and she released a tremulous breath before she shifted, pushing the book slightly to the side so he would look at her instead. “I’m fine,” she reminded him, trying to smile. Trying to soften the serious nature of the texts with a promise that she was all right. Or... mostly all right.

They’d used to do that. When she’d wake from her drugged stupor, they’d give her a pat and assure her that no permanent harm was done.

They had to stop after a while, because... well... because.

He cupped her cheek and smiled back at her, but there was too much sadness in his eyes to make it sincere. “Really,” she urged, wriggling a little higher so she could be the one to look down at him. Her chest was pressed against his, and she should care about that, shouldn’t she? Make sure there was proper distance. Maybe even squish one of the pillows between them.

But he was upset. She could hear the bond more clearly now, and they’d scarcely even begun. “We don’t have to read it,” she reminded him, and it felt good to have reversed their roles. She reached out and smoothed her forefinger down his cheek, then pressed it to the line between his brows. That earned a ripple of amusement through him, and she was glad of it. “We could go play with Brum,” she offered, and it wasn’t because she was cowardly. It was because he hurt, and she wanted to help.

“Brum watches the fish in the stream at this hour. We would bother him.”

“We can’t have that,” Orma agreed, trying to think of something else they might do.

Take a walk. Show her the infirmary. Anything at all, really.

“I need to read it,” Athan countered, smoothing his fingers through her hair and rubbing at the tense muscles in her neck. “I need to understand.”

Her throat burned. “I lived it, Athan,” she murmured. “And even I don’t understand it.” She took a breath and forced herself to meet his eye. “If it’s answers you want, they will not be in there.”

He smiled at her gently. Patiently. “All right,” he amended. “Then I want to know what was done to my mate, and I don’t want her to bear the burden of having to tell it to me.”

She wilted, her forehead resting against his chest as what little strength she had left her. She swallowed back the fears she’d already confessed to him. The arguments.

Instead, she nodded and settled back into his side. Let him hold her for a moment longer before he brought the book back and continued on.

◆◆◆

It took her longer than it should have to realise what he was doing.

She’d thought it had just been affection—little touches that soothed the bond and the haggard emotions the text instilled.

She’d stopped reading after it became a list of formulas. The description of herbs was not so bad, but having to read about ratios and weights and then the administrations themselves—most particularly how unfortunate it was that the one that held the most promise was also the one most often to induce persistent expulsion from the patient.

Not her name.

She’d closed her eyes after that. Her head ached, but she did not know if it was a phantom pain, the sort that was remembered rather than experienced afresh. And Athan’s fingers delved, petting and smoothing. Sometimes against skin, other times the fabric of her not-quite-day dress. Too thin, her mother had said. Suitable if Orma was going to layer it properly, but Orma liked the softness of it against her skin when she hurt, so it had become one of her favourites when there was no company and nothing to pull her from the house.

Athan seemed to like it for the same reasons she did.

Except she peeled one eye open, and it was a diagram of the threads she’d described to them. The points and curves over the wrist, the twist at the elbow. He was tracing them, but on her.

It made her insides squirm, but she did not know if it was in an affront to the process, or because he was tickling at the cords he couldn’t see. They were thicker than they had been. A little brighter. Shimmering in the sunlight. So very real and yet... not. Look at them too long and they would dim. Describe them in too much detail and it felt a sacrilege. These were sacred, and they had been poorly depicted by a pen and ink.

Athan glanced at her, then back down at her wrist. Her sleeve had pushed up toward her elbow, leaving him delicate skin to explore. Except it wasn’t her skin, was it? It was the bond he wanted to feel. The nature of what tethered them together. That should bother her, shouldn’t it? Perhaps his methods were softer, more gentle, but he still was testing her, was trying to poke at something ancient and mystical.

She almost pulled away, but his hand went about her wrist. Not tightly, not restraining. Just... holding her. “Can you feel them?” he asked. And she almost groused that he should keep reading if he was so interested. But she didn’t. “When I touch?”

He thought she could tell what was the bond and what was the distracting sensation of his skin against hers? The brush of fingertips against flesh she’d no idea could be so sensitive. He trailed his fingers back from her wrist, up toward her elbow, this time watching her face for any hint of reaction.

She wanted to squirm. To remind her of their vows. She was not an experiment, and he...

His thumb found the soft skin of her inner elbow and he pressed ever so lightly where the threads coiled.

She gasped, eyes wide. Alarmed and... intrigued by her own responsiveness.

She had played with them as a girl. When they were friendly and just a part of her—no different from picking at her own feathers or idly investigating her toes. She’d stopped after it had all grown horrid and painful. Tried to forget. Didn’t see beauty any longer, just the source of so much terribleness.

The bond pulsed.

Her blood followed.

He was watching her rather than the book, and she fought down the urge to come closer to him. To curve along his side, to seek the same point on his arm so he could feel it for himself.

The bond was heavy in her chest. If she moved, if she did that, she would be inviting far more than kisses. The knowledge of it was like a stone in her stomach, a keen awareness that she must tread carefully.

She didn’t want to.

She wanted to pluck the book from his hands and indulge in her newfound sensations. Wanted to trace patterns into his skin and urge him to do the same to her, until there were no thoughts, no pains, just a sacred art meant just for them.

Her breath caught in her throat and Athan stilled. “Orma?” he asked, and even that made her heart race all the more, and she swallowed, her mouth too dry and her thoughts too lurid.

This was not supposed to accompany those awful texts. Those must be separate. Exploration could not feel like experimentation. Nothing he did to her could come from the expense of her younger self.

“I don’t feel well,” she told him, which was true. She felt sickly all over, her muscles tight and her heart beat too quickly in her chest.

He closed the book and sat up, his expression changing immediately to one of concern.

Athan was touching, but it was different. He felt her temples, her neck, then frowned at her and she scrambled up, her skin too tight. She didn’t feel at all herself, and she blurted out a need for the washroom and scampered off before he could voice any objection.

She didn’t need it. Or, at least, all she needed was the cool water the tap provided her as she washed her face and hands. When that wasn’t enough, she even brought it up to her elbows, trying to cool her skin from where he’d touched.

Tears pooled as she took slow, deep breaths, willing herself to calm. She was fine. Everything was fine. This was natural. He was her mate, and he was attentive and kind, and it wasn’t wrong for her to feel the pull toward him. It was good. Instinctive.

She was hiding. She could acknowledge that with a rueful glance down her person after she’d washed her hands a second time. He was going to worry, and then it would lead to tucking her into bed and telling her they’d resume in the morning.

All because she couldn’t handle a few touches on her skin.

Or maybe that was the trouble. If she hadn’t liked them, she could have put an end to it with a few firm words, and that would be all.

But this...

She scrubbed at her face and refused to sink into a huddle.

There was nothing wrong with her. If anything, this was a good thing. Proof that she could function physically as a mate should.

Then why didn’t that only bring so much comfort? The rest was hollow and frightened. The girl she had been rather than the woman she wanted to be.

That woman would go back. Would lean over him and kiss him thoroughly. Wouldn’t be afraid to do whatever the bond urged of her, not when it meant more of those lovely feelings.

She needed to go back. Maybe not to be as daring as that, but she could feel his worry through the bond. He didn’t follow, didn’t knock on the door and ask her to come out again. He was giving her space to think, to calm, and she was grateful for it.

But she couldn’t abuse his patience, either. Orma wished she felt more herself, but it didn’t seem any amount of cool water was going to help.

She straightened her dress and grimaced at the transparent patches where the water had dripped.

A breath. And then another for good measure.

And she went back to his room. Their room.

He looked up immediately, eyes moving over her in search of some physical source of her distress. She almost wished there would be something for him to find, something she might blame other than her own failing self control.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. He’d moved to her side, sitting at the edge of the bed with the book and papers tucked neatly on his night table.

She wanted to go to him. Stand in front of him until his knees parted and she could situate herself between them. Feel his hands settle on her waist as she tangled her fingers in his hair, urging him to look up at her. She would hesitate. Let him wonder at her intention. Then she would lean down and wait just a moment more, until the bond thrummed and pounded in his chest in time with his pulse, until he was the one weak and wanting while she revelled in her newfound power.

Except... that wasn’t her, was it?

She’d apologise and ease into the bed behind him, and let him hold her hand and list off a few of her ails and let him fix her. Or try to. Because that was comfortable, even if it wasn’t the same as desire.

“What happened?” Athan asked, still watching her. Waiting for her to do something. Say something. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

The way he said it, the tinge of pain in his voice was enough to get her moving. Not to saunter and seduce, as her fantasies insisted, but to comfort.

Her fingers twitched to reach out and touch him. But that felt too similar to her earlier impulses, so she settled on sitting beside him on the bed. Close enough for their shoulders to touch, and that was all right. She’d sit just the same if it was Lucian beside her. Or Firen. Someone close but not...

“You didn’t,” she assured him. Wanted it to feel more true than it was. He hadn’t meant to prompt such a strong reaction, of that she was certain. She certainly hadn’t expected a simple touch to become a torrent of...

She rubbed at her throat, then down to where the bond still gave a dull throb in her chest. A reminder. She curled her fingers together and stared at them, not knowing if she could actually explain herself to him. Shouldn’t the bond do it for her? Let him know that she’d been... that he’d...

She felt altogether too young and too old, all at once.

He nudged his shoulder against her, and she shifted her gaze just enough to catch the edges of his smile. “You can talk to me,” Athan reminded her. “The point of this is to understand you better, not just your history.”

Orma’s lips thinned, and her hands tightened. “It is embarrassing,” she settled on at last.

Athan settled his hand on top of her conjoined ones. “What is? Reading the texts?”

Well, it was, but not when she compared it to her response to him petting at threads he could not even see.

She shook her head ever so slightly, wishing something might interrupt them. That the Brum might navigate the stairs and burst in, pushing his enormous head between their legs in need of sudden and urgent attention.

Lucian’s father coming to give formal pronouncement of her disownment, formalised in the court.

Anything, really.

But all was quiet. No patients needed him, the Brum was busy with the fish in the stream, and she had only to sit and let shame slowly poison her.

He gave her hands a squeeze.

“I liked it,” she admitted, because to refuse was to make up a lie and an excuse, and she did not want that to be their habit.

“Liked what?” Athan asked, his voice quiet. Gentle. If he was surprised at her answer, he did not reveal it, only waited patiently for her to expound.

There was the urge to rise, to pace, to fling her feelings as some sort of accusation, but she shoved it down, trying to make herself clear and precise so they might move away from this dreadful topic.

Then huffed out a breath, frustrated with him. No, with herself. For feelings she didn’t want, and yet now that she’d discovered them, haunted her.

The bond was no help. Nudging and reassuring, or was that him? Asking her to trust him. That she needn’t be afraid to tell him anything, that there was no need for embarrassment, not between mates.

Which was absurd. Even her mother did not like to be watched undressing—that’s why she had a screen situated in her room. They had separate bathing rooms. Not everything must be shared, even with a tether glowing brightly in colours that matched so prettily.

What would it look like when they were both unclothed? Would it grow blinding? Or would she be so fixated on being with him, with the things they would do together, she would not even notice?

“Orma...” he sighed, elongating her name and adding a lilt to it. “Should you like to hear an embarrassment of mine first?”

She would have wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, except he still kept both of them captive. “Maybe.”

He hummed, accepting her feeble response with a smile. “Let’s see... I have quite a few to choose from. But perhaps we’ll save those for other days rather than blurt them all out at once.”

He tapped his thumb against the back of his wrist, making a great show of considering his answer. And something relaxed in her. A tension about her shoulders. Not all the way, but... enough.

“I know,” he declared. “My master was a hard man. Generous and fair, but strict in his beliefs. Most particularly on how one should live and comport oneself.” Orma blinked, not expecting that at all. Athan had an easy manner, and she would have expected much the same from the man he so admired. “He very much believed in the health of one’s diet. Small meals, portions routinely throughout the day. Fruits, fresh fish, never dried. That sort of thing. Was a nuisance, most especially when one of my first duties was to prepare those meals.”

“Did you do it poorly?” Orma asked, turning her head and watching his eyes turn wistful as he looked at the wall across the room. Remembering, surely.

“No. They were not difficult, only tedious. Half my time was spent on the market procuring the freshest produce. Then that was insufficient, and he insisted I take up gardening. We couldn’t be sure of the farmer’s methods, after all. There might be something nefarious in his purpose.” Athan’s smile faded. “He grew... strange. In his last years. There were glimmers of it, before, but by the end I hardly knew him.”

He was silent for a moment, and Orma did not know how to answer him. She’d been spared watching the rest of her family age. The passing of her mother’s parents. Her father’s were gone before she’d been born.

“Anyway, that is merely for context,” Athan continued, forcing a brightness to his tone that did not take long to become genuine. “When I received my first stipend as apprentice, I’d grown rather tired of his particular diet. I wanted sweet treats, and plenty of them. I couldn’t spend his coin on such things—I had to account for every bit of spending. But this was my own, and I am sorry to say I squandered a great bit on every stall that met my fancy, and I was so sickened by my gluttonous ways, I had to beg him for a tonic.”

“Did a lecture come with it?” Orma asked, a hint of a smile as she tried to imagine a young Athan and his newfound freedoms. She would have liked to share his treats with him. To watch his enjoyment, to feel it for herself through the bond.

“Naturally,” Athan affirmed with a broad smile. “Never did I think I could miss those, but I found that I do. It is a difficult thing, when suddenly you are the one grown and everyone comes to you for advice. For quite a while, I felt some sort of pretender. A fledgling in a man’s body, dolling out cures and tinctures and imagining I knew what I was doing.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “Until one day, I did know. And people got better, and I had a hand in it, and I have my master to thank for it.”

Athan turned his head and regarded her closely. “I feel that way now. Bumbling about without any idea what I’m doing is right.”

Her throat tightened, and she allowed herself to soften, her head coming to rest against his shoulder. “You are doing a fine job,” she soothed.

He snorted out a laugh. “Am I? It does not feel like it.”

Which was her fault. Because she felt things she shouldn’t, or... or at least, things she didn’t mean to. “I’m sorry,” Orma offered with a sigh, staring down at her lap.

Athan nudged her again until her head popped up and she gave him a rueful look. “I do not need you to be sorry,” Athan insisted. “I just would wish you would take me in your confidence.” He shook his head just a little. “But perhaps that is asking too much.”

It wasn’t. Or it shouldn’t have been.

He’d admitted to a lack of self control in his younger self, and that was all this was, wasn’t it? Not so different. Even if the embarrassment came in a fresh, sickly trickle as she imagined trying to explain it to him.

Perhaps directness could be her saviour. To blurt it out and be done with it, to put it behind them and let them move forward. Whatever that meant.

“I liked when you touched me. Too much.” She couldn’t look at him, but she put a little extra emphasis so he might understand.

If he made her talk about hearts racing and pulses in parts of her that had been quiet and uninterested for as long as she could remember, then she really would go watch the fish with Brum and leave him with his books.

They would have. The others. Asked her drug-addled mind to describe the feeling. To give words to the sensations, whether it be pain or something else entirely.

Tears welled, and she did her best to shove them down.

But Athan saw.

He always saw.

She wriggled and shifted and he let her go, let her rub at her face with her sleeve. She didn’t throw it back at him, didn’t ask if he was happy now that he knew and she was humiliated. But it took everything in her to still. To keep her place beside him while she fought down the emotions she didn’t want to feel.

He moved.

Stood.

And she wasn’t ready yet, had only the slightest rein on her composure.

But he wasn’t asking her to follow. Didn’t take her hand and pull her up, not even just into an embrace.

Instead, he sank to his knees so he might catch her gaze, and took her hands with her damp cuffs.

And placed kisses to each of her palms.

Before he placed them against his face, holding them there.

“Do you think you are alone in that?” Athan asked, his eyes soft as she struggled to hold such attention. “Do you think it is something to be ashamed of?”

Her heart beat too quickly, and she worried at her lip, struggling with her answer. There was no shame between mates—even she knew that. But that proved only so much comfort when faced with how strongly she... felt.

For him.

For the way his fingers could affect her so with a simple caress.

“I don’t know,” Orma answered as earnestly as she could. “No,” she amended, because that was the correct response. “I just... I was not ready. So soon.”

It wasn’t hurt that flashed through his expression, but resignation. And somehow that was worse.

“The kiss,” he finished for her, and his hands fell away, and her throat ached.

Yes. “No,” she amended. Because the bond was a fluttering, nervous thing, and one of them needed to be sure. Be precise. “You were playing with the threads. Did you not know? And at first it was simply pleasant, and then...” she did not want to continue, not with her face heating and him kneeling, already looking stricken when she hadn’t even finished. “Then I liked it too much,” she insisted.

“I frightened you,” Athan inserted, and Orma had to fight not to tug at her hair and allow her tone to show all the frustration mounting within her.

“It wasn’t you,” Orma managed to get out, and perhaps there was a sharpness to her tone, but she was trying. And at least she spoke at all. “It wasn’t the bond,” she continued. “ I frightened me. Because it’s too soon, and I’m ill, and I’m not supposed to be thinking about touching you, and being touched by you, and most especially not when we’re reading about all of my past!”

Her hands had fallen away during the middle of it, and now they were clenched into fists at her side as she crumpled forward. His shoulder kept her from becoming the tight ball she needed to be, and her forehead rested there as she fought to control herself.

He brought his hand up and rested it against the back of her head while she cried. She hadn’t even realised she’d begun until a sharp sob lodged in her throat, choking her. Then another hand came to her back, smoothing up and down while he told her it was all right, that she need only to breathe, that nothing was wrong. Most especially her.

“I want to be better,” she got out between the wretched tears that seemed to never stop.

“I know,” Athan soothed, his fingers skimming through her hair. Not her skin—he did not touch that, and she felt a terrible lurch in her stomach that he wouldn’t. She’d ruined even that, because she’d complained and now there would be no more caresses, no more gentle testing of their boundaries.

She felt so contrary, even to herself. She wanted it, but she was afraid of it. Afraid of herself. Of indulging in the bond that felt more enemy than friend. Orma took in a long, shuddering breath and squared her shoulders. Athan watched her carefully as she sat up, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve and insisting to herself there would be no more foolish tears. She was a woman, not a patient. Not a girl tied down and drugged, her responses measured and assessed.

“What are you thinking?” Athan asked.

The bond was tangled, or perhaps that was her as she flittered from one feeling to the next. She wanted to be like him—so sure of his course, that everything would turn out well if only they were patient enough. “Orma?”

“I want an elixir,” she stated firmly.

He sat back. Did not answer.

She reached behind her for the other book, the one with the notes from her latest treatments. Surely the recipe would be included, and he couldn’t argue about not knowing the contents.

She started fumbling through the pages, past diagrams and talk of scars and the salves that were showing disappointing results.

There were dates written at the top in blocky numerals, days and weeks and months, and there was a potion. Was it the one she wanted? She squinted at it, her tears blurring her vision and making it all far more difficult than it should have been, so she shoved the book at him and pointed, hoping it was the one. “There, see? Can you make it?”

Athan took the book but barely glanced at the page. “What are you hoping it will do for you?”

He closed it, and she would have been furious at him for it except that he kept his thumb tucked between the pages. “Talk to me, Orma,” he insisted, and she was rather tired of hearing her name at the moment. She did not particularly want to be her, and her hands were shaking as she tried to push past him, to climb back into the bed and tuck the covers over her head and be the child she felt she was.

But Athan stood, and he was blocking her, and he was looming. Not angry, she noted with a peek up at his face, but there was a strength to him she was not about to ignore. She had to appeal to his sensibilities as well as his desire to please her, and bullying him about it would not get her what she wanted.

“It will calm me down,” she answered, gesturing toward her tear-stained face and then putting his hands under his view. The shivering extended her from her fingertips to her elbows, and it was not beyond her notice that it was the same area that started this whole mess in the first place.

She should have brought them with her. Her mother kept those stores, and she’d neglected to ask for the last of them.

A mistake.

“Why?” Athan asked, and she did not mean to glare at him. She truly didn’t. But her heart was racing, and her throat was tight, and even so, that horrid pulse of the bond reminded her of touches and kisses and threads and skin, and it was awful.

“What do you mean, why?” Orma bit out, full of horror and more anger than she wanted to admit to. “Look at me!”

She thrust her hands closer to him, and he caught one, the other still holding the book. “I am,” he promised her. “And do you know what I see?”

“A mess,” she grumbled, rubbing at her nose with her sleeve and refusing to look at him. Not when he would not help her.

He brought her hand to his chest. To the place where the bond glowed beneath his buttons and laces. Coaxed her to rub there, as she did so often to her own chest. She should pull her hand back. Should ask him what his intentions were, because that was a presumption and an imposition, and why he should think she should want to was beyond her.

“I see my mate,” Athan countered. “I see her hurt and sad. I see her wanting her mate in ways that frighten her, and it saddens me.” He kept her hand moving until she was doing it of her own accord, her mouth growing dry as the subtle motion distracted her. “Saddens me even more that she thinks she needs to hide it away. Drink a potion until she feels nothing at all.”

Her lip quivered.

“You don’t need to hide from me, Orma,” Athan finished, his hand curling about her wrist to gently play with the thread there.

It caused a shiver to run through her whole body, and it wasn’t fair, wasn’t right, and he was being cruel.

The thought settled wrongly.

He wasn’t cruel. He was hurt, and he was trying, and she wasn’t.

Or maybe she was. Only her attempts were feeble and useless, and it was just so much easier when she could swallow a potion and sleep the day away and not have to wrestle with all of these feelings.

“Yes, I do,” Orma insisted. And she reached out and hit the book he was holding with a little bit more force than she intended, but his hold was steady and it didn’t budge in the least. “Those will show you that. If you learn anything at all, it’s that I need to keep it all to myself. Don’t share it, don’t confess it, otherwise it’ll get poked at and scrutinised and it won’t be mine anymore . ” She was panting, her breath sharp and panicky. But he needed to understand. “It isn’t safe.”

He tossed the book on the bed.

Tugged her up, so she was standing.

And grasped her face between his palms so she could not turn away from him. “You are safe with me,” he swore to her, the bond flaring and pulsing, and it wasn’t arousal this time. It was the assurance that only one mate could give to another. “Not to be poked at, not to be scrutinised, but to be treasured. To feel those things with you. To enjoy each other.” He did not kiss her, only tucked her into his body and held her tightly while she waited for her heart to calm and her breath to quiet. “I hate them for what they did to you.” It was a confession, softly given with his voice so low she would not have heard except for how closely he held her. “I shouldn’t, but I do.”

Her throat burned and her eyes along with it.

Orma opened her mouth, her platitudes ready. They were helping. They cared about her. He didn’t see her condition, and it may seem harsh, but it really was necessary. Every bit of it.

And if any went too far, pushed too hard, her parents always had them replaced. Always.

She couldn’t get the words out. They stuck and spoiled in her mouth, and she buried her head against his chest and breathed him in, letting the bond do its work.

Calm her. Soothe her.

In ways that an elixir never could.

Had she been wrong to ask for one? Something in Athan’s tone suggested she was. But those were the tools given to her, and he was not providing anything else.

Or... maybe he was.

To trust him. Rely on him. Tell him when she was frightened so he might comfort her.

Tell him when she wanted, so he might ply her with kisses and more of those caresses.

It seemed so simple and terrifying all at once.

“We shouldn’t,” Orma managed at last. “Hate anyone.”

His hold on her tightened. It was as close as she’d confessed to anyone that she struggled with bitterness. With a resentment too large and weighty to be carried on her own.

She loved her parents. Her family. Even the difficult parts. And yet...

“Maybe,” Athan countered, smoothing his lips against the top of her head. Not quite a kiss, not quite a nuzzle. Some delightful in between. “But that is something I will have to work on for a very long time, I think.”

She turned her head so she could breathe, and maybe so he could peek down at her if he wanted to. “We have time.”

She was rewarded with one of his smiles—sad about the edges, but sincere all the same.

“Let’s have a break, shall we?” Athan asked, when she’d calmed enough that her breaths came evenly. “See if Brum will accept company after all?”

There was no room for even a twinge of concern about the large beast and his preferences—too grateful was she for the respite. “Please,” she affirmed, and she didn’t even bother to protest when Athan plucked her up in his arms and led her out that way.

Let him tend her, if it made him feel better. Let him ferry her about if it meant his hands lingered a little longer on her waist when he set her down on the bench.

It meant she did not have to feel guilty when her head rested against his shoulder. When she realised the point of the footbridge because the Brum was sprawled across the wooden planks, his enormous paw dangling down and slapping haphazardly at the fish that passed by.

“He would soak himself, before,” Athan explained. Would wade into the middle of the stream and stay there for at least an hour, then he’d insist on coming inside to dry his fur by the fire. Not without first soaking me in the process as he climbed all over me to wipe it off.”

She brought her feet up and curled into his side, picturing it all in her mind as best she could. An exasperated Athan. A pleased Brum, taking advantage of Athan’s patience and good nature.

She was too much like the Brum, she feared.

Orma turned her head, frowning slightly. “So, you build footbridges for the Brum to make him happy. You’ll carry me about and feed me whenever I like, and are never slow to warm the kettle if I need a cup of tea.” There was a smile about his lips, as if she was recounting some of his fondest memories. “You never turn someone away without first hearing their need, then you work to set them up with someone else that might help.”

Her arm was tangled about his, and she squeezed it lightly. He was strong, his muscles firm beneath her palm, and she refused the niggling shame at how well she liked the feel of it. “Tell me, Athan. Who takes care of you as you take care of everyone else?”

He did not answer her immediately. Instead, he stretched out his arm and gestured to the garden. To the Brum. Then, finally, he turned his head and looked at her. “I have all I need right here,” Athan answered, voice perfectly sure of himself. “I am happy to do the rest.”

But it wasn’t right, was it? That was her role. Her privilege. To care for him as he cared for her.

For everyone else.

He nudged his shoulder against hers, so softly the tea he’d brought them did not even jostle. “I’m fine,” Athan insisted. “Truly.”

How many times had she said the same, knowing full well they were lies? But it was a comfort

She should accept that. Should give guilt no quarter in her mind and heart, but it didn’t quite work that way. She did not want to simply take from him. For him to survive on what few affections she could offer.

He deserved far more.

And maybe...

Maybe she did, too.