Page 12 of The Dragon's Emberlinked Mate
My jaw dropped. Had he really just offered to switch jobs for me, someone he just met? Not that I could let him do that. He’d earned the prestigious position.
“Okay, well, now this conversation is just getting silly. Of course you’re going to remain Commander. I just—” I looked around the room. “I have a lot to learn about what it means to be mated to the Commander, I guess. Who would have thought you’d end up with an unemployed mate with no skills and no job prospects? Hell, I’ve only lived a percentage of your life.”
Saying it out loud had the reality of my words setting in. I was nowhere near the person Emmen deserved. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in a century I would be, after I’d accomplished something…anythingwith my adult life. But fate was funny like that. They didn’t care if I was ready or not. Emmen was my mate. Done. It was up to me to be the best mate that I could.
“Hey.” He tucked a finger under my chin until I looked at him. “Nobody talks about my mate like that. My mate is brave, fierce, loyal, and amazing.”
I snorted. “Your mate is lost and confused, with no direction.” I bit the inside of my cheek.
These were not things I spoke about. Not even to my brother. Probably because my brother was actively helping the clan with a super-important project while being a parent. He was an all-around badass. Meanwhile, I was not.
“Do you think I’ve never been lost, confused, and with no direction at some point in my long life? I think I’ve spent more of my life unemployed than I have employed.”
“It’s different, Emmen.”
“It is not, Rhythe. This is an important conversation for us to have, but not today. Today, you need to rest. Let your body heal. Show yourself some grace. You just ran into a wall.”
I groaned and let my head fall back, eyes closed. “Am I ever going to live that one down?”
I didn’t even have the excuse that I was drunk or sick or even that there was bad weather. I was distracted by my own freaking thoughts. Embarrassing.
“Probably not,” he said, still massaging my feet.
I put a hand over my heart, and each time, a little electric shock ran through my palm. “Damn it, Emmen,” I muttered.
“Yes?” he teased.
“I died.” It was the first time I allowed myself to say it.
He jerked as if I had slapped him.
“I died, right? My body wasn’t healing fast enough. You brought me back, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Those paddles—the human-made things—weren’t working. The voltage didn’t go high enough.”
I knew what he was talking about from television. For some reason I’d never believed that they were real. In my mind it was simply something they invented for a plot point. But no, they were very real and they’d been used on me.
“Of course, any higher voltage wouldn’t have been good for a human body. But you are not human, and your heart had stopped. I’ll never forget what that felt like—like my own heart had been ripped out.” His voice cracked as he spoke. “If I could’ve, I would’ve taken out my own heart and replaced it with yours so that you might live and I would die.”
I swallowed thickly, my throat constricting. “How did you… There was lightning on your fingertips…” At least I thought there was. It was still confusing to me, which things had happened, which were dreams, and which were hallucinations from my medical treatment.
He lifted his palms and an arc of lightning trailed between his fingers, one spark after the other. “One of the clan’s best-kept secrets.”
“Why a secret?” I breathed.
“Strategy. I remember a time when we were at war—when clans fought one another over territory or other nonsense. You never want to show all your cards. Long ago, the clan leader and I decided to keep this and other abilities our clan may have a secret. So I did. Malric knows, of course.”
“That’s… wild.” I thought I knew everything about the clan wars. It was sounding like I knew very little.
“Yes. It’s something.” He shrugged it off like it wasn’t the huge deal that I saw it to be.
“You used that to bring me back. What if it hadn’t worked?”
Emmen sucked in a breath. “Then I would have followed you to the afterlife.”
“Don’t… Don’t say that,” I whispered. “I should never have dragged you there. I was not in my right mind. I don’t even think I realized I was so close to dying. I just hurt so much and…” I shuddered as I thought of those moments in the hospital when the pain was all I felt and Emmen was all I wanted.
“The minute I realized who you were to me, I knew there was no letting you go. Ever. Had I not been able to save you…” He shivered. “I can’t even think about what that would be like. And so I refused.”
