Page 86 of Earth-Bound

“Do,” insisted Broadmire.

Just when I thought Randall would argue with him about it all night, he grabbed Broadmire’s neck and dragged his boyfriend’s head down so he could reach his lips and proceeded to kiss him incredibly passionately.

I looked away. My gaze was drawn straight to Joe. There were no longer lines of pain etched into his face and he wasn’t that grey colour of death any longer, but he was paler than normal and his eyes were red-rimmed.

I pressed my hand to his cheek and felt immense relief and gratitude that he was here with me. My mate. I could touch him again.

“How do you feel?” I asked, and stroked my thumb gently over the short hairs of his beard.

“I feel much better.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. That awful feeling has gone. The feeling that the house is trying to choke me, it’s gone completely.”

“Thank God.” I risked looking over to Randall and Broadmire. They were no longer kissing but Broadmire was leering down at his mate and seemed to be very pleased with himself – whether that was because he’d destroyed the spell that was killing Joe or whether it was because he’d just got to touchhis mate a lot, I wasn’t sure. Still, I thought it was a suitable time to ask, “What do you think the spell was?”

Randall considered. “I’d guess it was tied to you in some way. Did Mulgrave ever give you any hint that he didn’t like earth spirits or something?”

I shook my head. “He liked me. He wanted to mate me.”

Joe’s hand tightened around my own and he looked incredibly displeased by the suggestion. It soothed me a little to have my mate be so protective of me. It meant I sounded a tiny bit smug when I said, “I would never have mated him, and I told him that. I was waiting for my fated mate.”

Joe muttered, “Too right.”

I said, “I think the spell might have been a punishment for me, for refusing him. It made you sick. It made it impossible for you to come near me or touch me. Even the plants didn’t want to touch me.”

“You mean he cursed you never to be able to touch the people you loved?”

My throat felt suddenly tight and I had to try and breathe steadily so I wouldn’t sound choked up. I’d come so close to losing my mate, I had felt it, and I didn’t know what I would have done.

Randall was leaning into Broadmire, who had his arm protectively around his mate. Randall said, “That’s sick,” and from the way he said it, I knew he was thinking of what it would feel like if he reached out to Broadmire and the troll shied away from him.

We all stood quietly and there was a sombre mood. All of us were thinking the same thing. I was clutching Joe’s hand asthough I’d never let it go and I wasn’t so sure that I ever would. Perhaps I’d hold my mate’s hand for eternity. I didn’t want to be further away from him than this.

I was sure that Joe and Randall were thinking about what that spell had been intended to do: murder the mate I’d been waiting so many years for. Mulgrave hadn’t even known who he was; he’d just been angry and jealous and had set a spell, not even knowing when it would take effect.

There was a lot of hatred in that spell, and I almost felt sorry for Mulgrave. He had been so bitter. He couldn’t have been happy.

Broadmire, it seemed, had not been dwelling on the same gloomy thoughts as the rest of us. He broke the silence.

“We’re going to need to fix that floor. You broke two of those floorboards, Terrund.”

Randall cried, “Broadmire, seriously?”

If I’d been inclined to take offense at Broadmire’s attitude, I lost the inclination the moment I heard my mate’s startled laugh.

Instead, I gave a rueful look and said, “Sorry about your floor. I’ll see that it’s fixed. As good as new.”

Joe squeezed my hand. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

How I delighted in that little word ‘we’. So small and insignificant to most people, but it meant the world to me. Me and Joe: we’d fix it together.

As I was musing on the perfection of our union, Joe began to gather his senses. He said, “Right, if that spell is gone, we can bring the plants back in now. And I guess we won’t have to swapthem in and out of the bedrooms any more. They should thrive in here now.”

Broadmire asked, “My plants going to grow?”

I swear Joe rolled his eyes just a little. “Yes, they’ll grow. We can still come and check on them until you move in here. I’ll give you instructions of how to take care of them when you live here.”

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