Page 74 of Shadow Wings
Though he still had a finger under my chin, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t let him see my reaction, not when I didn’t,couldn’t, understand it. How long had he been waiting to tell me? Had he been afraid to say the words out loud? Was he afraid now? At his utterance of the wordmate, I’d felt a warm sense ofbelongingI hadn’t felt since Mother’s death or since I’d had a home. The sensation was stronger than what I’d felt at the elm tree, morepersonal.
Yet our past stretched between us. Not just the manipulative way he’d broken the Blood Oath.Hisdark, terrible years of enslavement. The barely scarring wounds left inside me. People with battered souls shouldn’t make decisions like this. Surely that could only lead todisaster.
He wasn’t asking me to sit next to him at a gathering or to make him nectar a few times or dance with him. Tyrrik was asking me . . . I frowned, realizing he hadn’t asked meanything.
I freed myself of his grip and looked at him. In the brief moment I’d spent with my eyes shut, he’d smoothed the expression from his face, and he wore the impassive mask I was most familiar with. “What does it mean exactly? That I am yourmate?”
“We are each other’s mates,” he corrected, a hint of a growl in his voice as emotion lit his eyes. “And it means we are made for each other. Drae only ever have one mate. They can only bear childrentogether.”
“So, we can just have children together.” Why did this stuff always come back to dancing the maypole? My fault for asking about children, Isuppose.
“Amongst other things,” he said. Tyrrik turned and took several paces toward the front of the cave before sitting on a shelf ofrock.
I simultaneously felt relief and a bone-deep cold at the distance. But I wasn’t done. “Like?”
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Tyrrik settledlike a raptor on a branch. Despite his obvious fatigue, everything about him was predatory. His inky gaze remained fixed on me. “You’ve felt the connection between us. I’m able to hear your thoughts, and you hear mine.Ifwe keep that bondopen.”
I flushed, remembering the time I’d severed the emotional tie with him when flying over themountains.
“The connection doesn’t just allow us to speak,” he said, glancing at his hands. “In our culture, the male is the protector. Thefemale—”
“Do not tell me I’m meant to be peaceful again. I have perfectly violent tendenciesmyself.”
“I was not going to say that.” He raised a brow, but his expression remained dark. “Drae females are perfectly capable of defending themselves. But their role in a mated couple is to balance the male’s violence, to ground him, and when they are threatened, to strengthenhim.”
Despite myself, I edged closer, not wanting to miss a single word. Leaning toward him, I asked, “Strengthen himhow?”
He glanced up, meeting my gaze for only a moment before lookingaway.
I studied the hang of his shoulders and bit my lip. Even though I was filled with confusion, the prominent feeling racking me was guilt. Tyrrik had divulged the truth to me, and I couldn’t find it within myself to give him what he so clearly wanted. Why did that seem like such a graveoffense?
“You have felt the push and pull of Drae energy,” he finally answered. “You’ve practiced pulling the tendrils of power that flow between us back intoyourself.”
Our lesson in the mountains felt like so long ago, but I remembered asking him how to protect my thoughts from the emperor. “Yes.”
He shrugged. “Instead of pulling the tendrils into yourself, you push them intome.”
I stirred uneasily at the thought. Putting more into the tendrils weaving between us? When I used my Phaetyn powers on Tyrrik, it was almost business-like, the same as I’d do for anybody with an injury. I saw the problem, and I healed it. But the tendrils of Drae power between us . . . they were different. I knew they were specific to us. The idea of expanding the threads of force that connected us, increasing them in size and strength so the attachment was more powerful, made me feel faintly unwell. I didn’t want to be chained to Tyrrik; I didn’t want to be chained toanyone. I changed the subject. “Anything else I shouldknow?”
“Plenty you should know, but not much you’ll wantto.”
I crossed my arms, irritated that he seemed so confident in his assessment. “Tryme.”
A ghost of a smile lit his face, and his eyes warmed. “Your sudden obsession with shinyobjects.”
My hand went to the top of my corset, and Tyrrik chuckled. Inside the corset sat my ruby and golden pill box. “What aboutthem?”
“It is a courtship ritual between male and female Drae, just as my scales reflect the color of your scales to show I am the right mate foryou.”
A courtship ritual.“Me collecting precious things does something . . . foryou?”
Scales appeared on his shoulder and climbed up his neck. “The way you care for precious thingsdoes.”
My face slackened. “You’re right. I don’t want to know anymore.”
His face closed off, and the guilt gnawing in my chest roared inprotest.
