Page 41 of Sunder

There was no need to cry. She’d done plenty of that ages ago.

They were just trying to help.

Just like he wanted to do.

Which is why she couldn’t let him.

He squeezed her hand, and she allowed it. Watched his throat bob, watched him struggle with his own words, and she should offer him something. A promise. An explanation.

Anything.

But she did not have those. But she reached out with her free hand and took a piece of something off her plate. She did not taste it, but she chewed it thoroughly before she swallowed, just to show him she was fine.

He was fine.

He did not have to look so heart sore.

Athan smiled at her gesture, but it was dim and preoccupied. But it was enough to get him off the floor and back to his own seat, although he ignored his own meal in order to stare at her and watch her pick up another piece of her own.

“That should not have happened to you,” he added as she chewed, as if it needed saying.

“The bond should not have woken so early either, but it did,” she reminded him gently. “They wanted tohelpme. Because it hurt. Every day. In more ways than I knew possible.”

His hands curled, and she was aware of the tendrils of anger flittering through him. At her? Or them? She could not tell. “I should have been sent for,” he insisted. “I should have been there.”

She had to be gentle with him. “They did not know you. Did not know your age. What might happen to me if you came, and you felt the bond, too? You’d take me away, and they’d have no cause to stop you. Can’t interfere with mates, yes? Regardless of the circumstances.”

He looked sickened, and she could not blame him. She hadn’t understood before. What they were truly worried about. She thought mating meant friendship and hugs. Everything else came out in stilted conversations as she grew older and finally asked why she could not go find him.

She wasn’t too young for a friend.

She was vastly too young for the rest that would naturally follow.

Or so her mother had explained with tears in her eyes as she held her close and told her how sorry she was, for everything that had happened. That would happen.

“I would havenever,” Athan bit out, full of the indignation she’d expected.

“They did not know that,” Orma soothed. “Could not have known that. I did not talk much of you, even when they asked. I thought... it would help. If I just kept you to myself. Maybe it did, I don’t know. If they’d known you were not the grown man they feared.” She shook her head. She’d been so young, and she’d learned not to begrudge herself for choices she’d made steeped in fear and confusion.

Athan might.

She glanced at him, waiting.

For him to grow cruel?

For his frustration to turn to shouts and blame?

But, if anything, he appeared sickened.

She took a breath and allowed her fingers to stroke over the tendrils of the bond. His eyes were closed tightly so he could not see the action, which allowed her to work in peace. It warmed beneath her touch, and she pushed what reassurance she could toward him. She was here. She was alive. What did the rest of it really matter?

Athan scowled, which was not her intent.

“It matters,” he stated firmly. She had not meant to push so hard that he would feel her thoughts so completely, and she sat back in her chair, chastened.

“Sorry,” she murmured, taking another bite to appease him. Bread that time. She was sure of it.

He sighed, shaking his head as he wrestled with his own thoughts. “I don’t... I am...” Lucian would be pacing by now. Athan was tugging at his hair and taking deep breaths before he looked at her. He’d wanted to make her happy. That was all. And now he was miserable, and she did not know how to change that. “I am trying to understand you,” he finally finished, his eyes earnest and still so terribly sad. “So I might be a better mate to you.”

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