Page 70 of Tharn's Hunt
I blink at her, startled by the sincerity in her tone. “You’ve done it?”
She nods, her lips quirking faintly. “Yeah. It’s strange at first, but it helped me. It might…it might help you too.”
My eyes drift to Tharn, the firelight casting flickering shadows across his face. He’s sitting so still, almost like he’s holding himself back.
His throat moves, and I swallow hard, my pulse pounding in my ears as I force myself to look away again.
It might help you, too.
I don’t know what’s happening to me. But I’m starting to think it's not a bond I can choose to form.
It's a door that's already been kicked wide open.
Chapter 20
NO, I WILL NOT PLANT-FACE. STOP ASKING
THARN
Iam a hunter.
Pain means nothing. Pain is merely a warning to the body. Avoid that which hurts. Step away from danger. Withdraw from the sharpness of a spear, the heat of flame.
But what do you do when the pain comes from within? When every beat of your dra-kir feels like a blade twisting beneath your ribs? When the agony has no source to escape, no threat to avoid?
What do you do when staying near what hurts is the only way to survive?
I press my hand against my chest, claws flexing involuntarily as another wave washes through me. The glow pulses beneath my palm. Once, I found the light beautiful. Now it mocks me with its intensity, a visible reminder of what binds me to Jah-kee.
Of what tears me apart when she withdraws.
"Brother." Rok's mental voice slides into the mindspace, his concern poorly masked. "The pain… I sense it is increasing."
I drop my claw from my chest immediately, squaring my shoulders against the cave wall where I've been standing guard while Jah-kee rests. "I am fine."
Rok's topaz eyes narrow, his head tilting in that way that means he sees more than I wish him to. "You are not fine," he projects, keeping his thoughts private between us. "The pain grows worse. I see it in the way you move, in how you wince when you think no one watches."
I bare my teeth in warning. "It is nothing."
"It is not nothing," Rok insists, his mental voice sharpening. "It is the bond. Unresolved, incomplete."
I turn away, unable to face the knowing in his gaze. Of course, he understands. He felt this too, once. Before Jus-teen accepted him. Before they sealed their bond.
My eyes find Jah-kee where she rests across the cave, her small form curled into itself. She looks peaceful now, the fever gone from her cheeks. Her breathing comes easy and deep. She will recover fully.
And then what?
"She avoids my gaze now," I project, the admission torn from me against my will. "Since the dark when she woke from her dream."
Rok steps closer, his presence steady beside me. "She is confused. Afraid. The bond is new to her, as it was to Jus-teen."
I remember all too clearly the way Jah-kee had gasped awake, her skin flushed, her scent heavy with something that made my dra-kir pound painfully. She'd looked at me with wide, startled water eyes, as if she'd seen me for the first time.
Then she had turned away, and has not looked at me directly since.
"I do not wish to frighten her further," I project, my claws clenching into fists at my sides. "She has suffered enough."
"And so you suffer instead," Rok observes, his mental tone softening. "As I did."
