Page 81 of Immortal Bastard

He caught her hand and stopped walking. Her initial reaction to pull away vanished as he tightened his grip, not because he held her with strength, but because part of her instinctively deferred to his guidance.

“I’m sorry if I’ve not been sensitive to your needs. Don’t mistake my clumsy handling as any sort of detached indifference. You’re always my greatest concern, Delilah.”

“So you’ve said.” His brow tightened, and she realized he was trying to express himself, so she eased off the sarcasm. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“I’m a solution-oriented male, and I’m used to finding resolutions in a concise manner, involving as little emotional trappings as possible. I’m used to only thinking for myself. I’ll try to adjust my way of thinking, taking your way into consideration as well. You can see now how differently our minds work.”

She nodded, not at all eager to revisit the black-and-white landscape of his conscience.

A strange, heart-wrenching sound of distress screeched in the distance and her spine stiffened, all of her attention jerked to the startling noise.

She stopped walking and Christian glanced at her with concern, immediately filtering through her thoughts.

“Shh!” she said, as if that would help her concentrate. He was in her head, but not making a sound. The faint chirp simpered again and she had to strain to hear it. Her senses pinpointed the location and she pivoted, bolting in the direction of the pained cry.

“Delilah!”

She ignored Christian’s call, her focus devoted to the faint wail of distress that pulled her deeper into the wooded tree line and away from their intended path. He shouted for her again, but she kept moving. The cries became easier to follow once under the shade of the tall cypresses.

Her feet moved swiftly over the layer of fallen pine needles, shots of emerald, evergreen, and piercing shards of sunlit blue blurred at her periphery. Her heart raced as she zeroed in on the weak cry, and nothing else registered as she moved faster than she had ever moved in her life.

Delilah wait for—

The snap of their severed mental connection came after a swift, subconscious command she hadn’t realized she could order. Her body shifted into fight or flight and she put all her focus on the pained cry howling from the woods.

The hollow of her mind where Christian’s presence had been, flooded with new information that guided her toward the wounded creature. She hunted the sound, her heart racing as if she could sense the creature's pain and fear, somehow processing it as her own.

When another cry shrieked, there was a fatal ring to the pained chirp. “No!” She doubled her speed. Christian’s desperate call for her to stop was as lost as the wind through the trees.

She stilled, turning left, then right. Her head quirked to the side, eyes closed, ear tilted toward the canopy above as she listened, but the pained cry had stopped. She sniffed the air, her brain cataloging and sorting a thousand sources in the span of a second. Her senses fanned out into the woods, blanketing the forest floor in search of the tiny creature. When she caught the slight murmur of its fluttering heart, she bolted, not stopping until she located the injured fledgling.

Crashing to her knees, careless of the brush that created little cushion for her landing, she leaned over the broken bird. Her shoulders rounded as she gently scooped the delicate critter into her palms.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She cradled its fragile wings in her open hands as she mumbled words of compassion to soothe the animal. Its tiny heart beat so fast within its small breast, she did not wish to frighten it more. “I won’t hurt you.”

The tiny, green warbler lay on its side, eyes wide, beak open as it tried to sing one last song. “No,” she gasped, rocking her body to soothe the poor, dying creature.

Cushioned by the bed of needles and detritus, she stared into the bird’s beady, black eyes as they bulged with panic. “Be calm. I have you,” she whispered, drawing the wounded bird close to her heart and protectively warming it. It must have fallen from the nest.

The underbrush crunched, and her attention snapped to the trees, protectively using her body to shelter the tiny bird from whatever approached. Christian stood at a distance, watching her with a peculiar look.

Her tear-filled gaze lifted to his. “I think it’s dying.”

Christian nodded silently.

She turned her helpless gaze back to the nestling. “We have to help it.”

Its feathered belly puffed as it quickly breathed, panicked in those last moments of life. Its beak opened on a silent cry, too weak to go on. Life escaped its tiny feathered body, and there was nothing she could do to prevent such an inevitable end.

A broken sob fled her throat as a tear rolled down her cheek. Its little heart stopped and the life vanished from its black eyes. She held the unresponsive feathered body to her heart and wept, the loss deeply personal, far beyond her usual love for animals.

Christian lowered to the ground and gently pulled her to him. She needed his comfort in that moment. “It is life, pintura.”

“He was only a baby,” she cried, pressing her face into his neck.

Christian gently ran his hand over her back. “It’s in God’s hands.”

“It was just an innocent fledgling.”

---