Page 66 of Feral

It wasn’t until that moment when he remembered that that word belonged to him, that Zach was hisname,that he realized he was supposed to understand. And respond.

Gently, he touched a hand to her soft mouth, tried to recall the shape it had taken as she said his name.

“Zach?” she asked again, a frown marring her pretty face now. “Are you okay?”

She lifted her hand to pull up his eyelids and spoke some more words that he didn’t fully grasp, but he got the sense from them that she was concerned whether he was having a negative reaction to what she’d injected him with.

Gently, he closed his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand to his chest where their connection hummed like it always did after he’d rutted her. It took more effort than he’d thought to make his tongue curl in the right way.

“Zach,”he said. It came out hesitant, with the start of the word sounding sharper than it had when she said it.

His mate stilled in his grasp, her eyes widening with shock. And then, without warning, she burst into tears.

Zach rumbled in concern, reaching for her to try and make the crying stop. It pulled on something deep in his gut, unsettling him in the worst of ways. But despite her open-mouthed sobbing, she was smiling.

“You speak!” she wailed. “Oh, Zach, you speak! It’s really working.” She didn’t resist his pull when he wrapped his arms around her, and to his astonishment, she used the new closeness to place wet kisses on his cheeks and mouth as she laughed and cried and hugged him.

He didn’t always understand his female, and this whole crying-while-laughing thing was a new, disturbing development—but the bond in his chest hummed with her happiness, and that was all he needed.

* * *

“Scared.”

She looked up at him from where she crouched by the riverside, empty bottle in one hand. “Yes.”

“Why?” he demanded, frowning at the unpleasant tones reverberating through their bond. Her anxiety had been increasing ever since Jerome had announced it was time to leave.

“I’m scared we’ll get caught. That they’ll take you away from me again,” she said softly. “Or that our friends will get hurt.”

“I… will protect,” he ground out, irritable that his limited vocabulary made it hard to convey to his mate that she needed to stop being afraid, that there was no need so long as he was with her.

She smiled a sad little smile that didn’t make him feel nearly as good as her smiles usually did. “I know.”

“Then why?” he asked, his frustration deepening. The bond had been out of tune all day, and it set him on edge. She’d even cried when he rutted her—an experience he was wholly displeased with. Gasping and sobbing from taking his knot, that was perfectly fine. Good, even.

Crying,while their bond whined agonizingly in his chest? Not fine. Not good.

“I want you to see something,” she said, voice gentle. Leaving the unfilled water bottle by the side of the river, she stood up and grasped his hand lightly in hers.

He allowed her to lead him into the woods in the opposite direction of the camp. She kept walking until they came to a small clearing, where she finally stopped in front of an oblong mound of upturned soil. The afternoon sun reflected off a smooth river stone set on on end of the mound.

“We buried Beau here. He gave his life to free you. Each one of the men here have given up their lives to flee across the border to an uncertain future. They are willing to die for us—and I think, before we’re finally free, more of them will. Or…” She breathed in deeply. “Or it could be one of us. And if that happens, if you die… then I can’t go on. I can’t go through losing you again. I won’t survive it. There is… so much pain and death around us, and I don’t want you to make me any promises you might not be able to keep.

“But I want you to know… I wouldn’t have made a different choice, even if I’d known everything that would follow. I would still have tried to save you.” She looked up at him. “I get it now. I understand this mate thing. You didn’t claim me because you were lonely. You claimed me because for whatever reason, we belong together. I am proud of that. I am proud of being yours, even if you never fully recover what they took from you.

“These men… they have given everything for you because of who you are. Because of your honor, your integrity—everything you were. They’d never tell you that. They’re stupid alphas who’d never show another male their emotions. But I can tell you that for them. They love you. And I think, once upon a time, you loved them too.

“There is so much death in our world, but… we have been blessed too. I want you to remember that; we will suffer and we will hurt, and we might even die. Don’t promise me the impossible—just find a way out of the darkness and share the glimmers of light with me.”

Zach stared at the grave as his mate’s words penetrated through the fog like a spoon parting thick molasses.

He remembered then. His brothers in arms. The many battles. The final deed that had sealed his fate.

He remembered the man he’d once been. Honorable. Strong.

Whole.

CHAPTER 28

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