Page 28 of Sunder

And she pitied him for it.

She waited for the lecture. About how he was different—his methods and experience far more advanced. The usual puff and bluster she’d come to associate with the others of his profession.

She did not know how she would tolerate it coming from him.

“I was told I would be undesirable as a mate if I became a healer.” He grimaced a little, shaking his head and looking down at their hands rather than look directly at her. “Then I found a starving and bedraggledfaoland took him in. So then I was told to prepare myself because surely any mate would come into my home and look at him and insist I get rid of him.”

Orma thought of her response, and even though he tried to hide just how he felt about it, she knew she had hurt him. That even now, he was waiting for her to pronounce she would notlive in the same dwelling as an over-large beast, and he’d have to make a terrible choice.

For her.

Not for her.

Because the bond would compel him. Would make the choice, perhaps not an easy one, but one with an inevitable outcome.

Whatever it took to keep her close.

Whatever loss was necessary, so she’d stay.

Athan swallowed and glanced at her, and it really was unfair how handsome she found him. How her heart fluttered, and she was forced to think of her own appearance and feel worse for his sake. “Is that why you waited? If you knew who I was, did you... did you find me lacking?”

He’d taken her words and come to the wrong conclusion, and she needed to correct it. But that would mean talking about forbidden matters, deeply personal.

Ones that would inevitably lead to talk of cellars and chambers and screams when even careful anaesthetics could not contain the agony...

Would it be so wrong to let small bits of untruth to lie between them? If it meant... if she could just...

“No,” Orma answered him. “I did not know... anything about the rest. I just...” There it was again. The confession Lucian had pulled from her, which was not quite so costly to offer this time. “I was afraid. Still am.”

His thumb went back to work on her knuckles. Circling. Smoothing. For his sake or for hers? “I am sorry. I did not know...” He paused, obviously weighing his next words. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

She waited for the glimmer that would inevitably follow. A mystery. Something to poke at and wonder about. An exciting a specimen if ever there was one.

Not a person. Not a girl, not a woman. Just a body with a puzzle trapped inside.

“I do not much care for healers,” Orma stated bluntly. “Always so sure of themselves, and I find they become mean and impatient when you do not respond to their liking.”

His shoulders tightened. “I do not believe that is why you were warned away from becoming one.”

He coughed slightly. Awkwardly. “No. It wasn’t.”

He seemed reticent to say more, and she wondered if she should pry further. Open him up as he was doing to her.

“I do not know what your...” she paused. Considered. “Brum is,” she finished, satisfied she had been correct in its name. “And I do not know if I shall live with you, here or otherwise.”

The bond flared. Pounded. A sharp tug, insistent such thoughts were absurd, but she’d spent far too long practicing how not to listen to be swayed by it now.

It was harder than it had been—she’d let it out far too recently. But she could manage.

Athan was struggling more.

“If he is your friend and your companion, I would not have you parted. Not for my sake, or for anyone else’s.”

She might come to regret that, most particularly since her glimpse of him had been short and her terror very real, but the sentiment remained the same. If Athan cared for it—him?—then she would not be the one to make such cruel demands.

Just as she could not tolerate if he made the same of her.

He smiled at her. A soft upturn of his lips that made her stomach tighten strangely. “That is kind of you.” He shook his head, his hair falling forward slightly. It was overly-becoming and terribly impractical. A healer should have longer hair so it might be bound, or shorter so it would not become a nuisance either caring for a patient or during flight.

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