Page 77 of Sheltered in the Storm

“I will leave you here to tend to your true mate,” N’Morasaid. “Do we have an agreement that I will not seek you out again, and you will not seek me?”

“How can you demand that of me?” Fury swept over me. “Look what you have done to my Calla. She is innocent in this matter.”

“That is true, and for her suffering I am sorry.” N’Mora dipped their head. “But we all have survived this meeting. Perhaps someday we will do more than merely survive.”

My monstrous self would have preferred to follow through on my intention to rend N’Mora limb from limb, but my hearts knew Calla would not want me to. She was wiser and more good, and so I would follow her counsel. She had yet to steer me wrong. And as much fury as I still felt toward N’Mora, I knew the quiet bitterness of mere survival.

“I wish you a good life, then,” I said. And since I did not forgive as easily as my Calla would, I added, “And a swift departure.”

With one last dip of their head, N’Mora left through the opening I had made in the doorway and disappeared into the night.

“My Calla.” I cooed, holding her close and smoothing her hair back from her face. “My Calla, wake, please.”

She stirred. Her lashes fluttered but her eyes did not open. “What is it?” she murmured, her lips against my chest. “Are we home?”

“Not yet, my love.” I kissed her forehead. “I must remove this device. You are badly hurt. I need your permission to share my blood with you.”

“Of course.” She let out a sigh. “It’s all right. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

I could think of only one reason she no longer felt the agony of her injury, and terror like I had never experienced gripped me.

“It will hurt when I remove it,” I said, my voice rough. “But Iwill make it quick, and then I will heal you as best I can and take you home.”

“All right.” She snuggled close. A flinch crossed her features, and then they smoothed. “Then can we go back for more shells?”

In that moment, I came the closest to weeping as I had in my life. “Yes, my love. We will collect every shell your heart desires. The most beautiful purples and reds to be found.”

Before she could reply, my Calla lost consciousness again. Fury turned my vision dark around the edges. I breathed in her scent to calm myself. When I could think clearly again, I broke the cuff around her ankle into pieces and flung it and the chain away from us.

Cradling her in my tentacles, I rose and gathered every piece of fabric I could find in the abandoned bunkhouse. To my surprise, I located a mostly intact medical kit in a dented locker. I did not trust its contents to be viable or labeled correctly, even the painkillers that might have given my Calla some relief, but the scanner worked and the bandages were sealed and clean.

When everything was ready, I sat on a thin mattress in the center of the dirt floor with my supplies around me and my mate in my lap. Even unconscious, she smelled of pain.

N’Mora was very lucky I treasured my Calla’s love and counsel above my own monstrous needs.

Carefully, I coiled the end of one tentacle around the bomb’s bolt-like top, braced myself, and pulled it from her flesh. Blood gushed from the wound. My Calla made a pitiful sound that seemed to shred my hearts. My tentacles thrashed in grief and rage.

Cooing, I pressed a handful of cloths soaked with my own blood to the injury. I held her close as my blood went to work trying to heal her. Finally, she stopped groaning and went quiet again.

I understood how need for vengeance warped a person’smind, but I could not comprehend how N’Mora could inflict torment on someone so good, who had done nothing to deserve it. And even after all her suffering, my Calla had put herself between N’Mora and me, knowing she risked death to do so, for N’Mora’s benefit. She wanted N’Mora to have peace, perhaps because we had known so little of it in our lifetimes.

“You are far better than either N’Mora or me,” I murmured, kissing my Calla’s cool, damp brow. “And yet you love me. You are a wonder and a miracle I will never take for granted.”

Her capacity for kindness was not the only wonder and miracle of the day. Within the hour, the wound stopped bleeding. Another hour later, she had healed enough that I felt I could bandage her wounds and move her.

Before leaving the bunkhouse, I burned everything that had our blood on it. I washed Calla’s blood from the bomb in the sea, destroyed the detonator, and left the inert device in the broken locker where I had found the medical kit.

Then I dressed my Calla in her flight suit and myself in my own clothing, put her pack on my back, and carried my mate home.

CHAPTER 27

CALLA

More than a weekafter N’Mora’s attack, Vos and I returned to our inlet.

I’d wanted to go sooner, but Vos insisted we wait until I’d recovered enough to protect myself in case something attacked us. Nothing did, however. Nothing even came near us as we made the journey to the shore. No snakes, no kaory, no…nothing. Even the carrion birds in the trees made themselves scarce.

During one of our rest breaks, I sat on Vos’s lap, pressed my lips to his ear, and murmured, “Where are all the predators?”

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