Page 28 of Griffin Undone
“Good. No, let me,” he said as I reached trembling hands out to grasp the tray. I crossed my arms over my chest and allowed Arik to settle the tray directly, carefully on my lap. His gaze traced my face, seeming to see everything. “Not feeling so good, huh?” He nodded to the full tray. “You need to eat. People think psychic energy isn’t real energy, so it must not tire you to use it. But you might as well have run a marathon, or a couple of marathons.” His lips quirked. “You’ve burned through a ton of calories in the past week.”
Bacon.Oh God, I hadn’t allowed myself the luxury of bacon in forever. And butter. Eggs. And grits with a translucent crust of what I assumed was sugar. Suddenly my belly button felt like it was trying to gnaw through my spine. I had the fork in one hand and a piece of crispy bacon in the other before a glance up at Arik stopped me. “Uh…thank you.”
Amusement danced in the surreal silver of his eyes. “Eat.”
I was halfway through the food before I thought to ask about Grim and Sun. Arik straightened where he sat on the edge of the bed. “They’ve gone back to the clan.”
“The clan?” And because I had way too many questions to ask only one, “When will Grim be back?”
“He won’t.”
I hid a frown behind my water glass as I took a sip. Arik didn’t miss it, however. He nodded toward the food. “Keep eating. I’ll explain.”
I finished off my last piece of bacon. Where was the coffee? I reminded myself to ask. Handling mornings without coffee was like marriage without sex—why bother?
Not that I knew anything about that, really.
“The Archai live in clans, congregating together for support and safety. Community. The largest of the clans happens to be here in the Southeast.”
Convenient. I’d managed to get myself “changed”—what had Grim called it? Triggered?—in proximity to the largest Archai clan. What would’ve happened to me if I’d been somewhere else?
“Sun and Grim live with the King’s Clan.”
“But you don’t?”
“I’m here to train you.”
I didn’t miss the fact that Arik hadn’t exactly answered my question. “Train me to do what? Are there other students?” There had to be more like me, right?
Arik reached for my fork. “You’re not eating.” He speared a couple of pieces of fluffy scrambled egg and raised them to my mouth. I stared, frozen, too off guard to even part my lips. No one had ever fed me, not that I could remember. No one had cared if I ate. Now here was this über-sexy man—male, Archai, whatever he was—coaxing me with bites of food he’d cooked. For me.
Unbelievable.
I pushed away the schoolgirl-crush silliness and accepted Arik’s offering. I couldn’t hold his stare, though. He was too much, too intense.
“I can do that,” I said, reaching for the fork. The warmth of his fingers as they brushed mine sent a shiver through me.
I cleared my throat. “So…training? What am I learning?”
“To use your gifts, protect yourself. How to live as an Archai.”
So they weren’t just healing me and dumping me on the side of the road. I guess that was good to know. Still, I kept my gaze on the last bite of eggs as I asked, “Once I’ve learned what I need to learn, will I go home?” Back to my empty apartment and lonely existence. Despite past experience, I couldn’t help the tiny flare of hope that rose inside me, the hope that maybe, just maybe, this new life meant I wouldn’t be alone in the world anymore.
For a moment some emotion I couldn’t name crossed Arik’s face, then, “Going back isn’t an option.”
That flare got the slightest bit bigger. “So…where will I live?”
“Right now? Here, with me. Training works better that way. Later? We’ll see.”
The hope imploded with only two words:We’ll see.The weight of those two words landed on my chest like two feet, crushing everything beneath them. Was my value based on how well I performed in training? Because I’d never lived up to expectations. Never. And the thought of losing even the chance at something more than the life I’d known…
I shook my head, cursing the tears that sparked in my eyes, hating the struggle to breathe. “I…I can’t—”
Arik’s frown softened with concern, his hand coming to rest over mine where I hadn’t even realized it lay clenched, knuckles white, on the quilt. “You can. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
“Right.”
Arik squeezed down for the briefest moment. I dared to meet his eyes and found them intense, probing…almost as if…
