Page 50 of Lost and Bound
“Can I put my shirt back on before you finish the lecture?” We’d found a patch of grass between the trees, but it still had plenty of pebbles and redwood needles embedded in it, which were now partially embedded in my back. “No spleen. Got it. I’m assuming I can live without it, since here I am, right? I mean, who needs a spleen, anyway?”
“Keeping all of your originally issued organs is generally advisable,” Arik said primly. “But yeah, you can live without it. And no, you can’t get up,” he said, planting a hand on my sternum. “I still need to look at your spark. Hold still. And no more stupid questions while I focus,” he shot over his shoulder at Nate.
Behind his back, Nate stuck out his tongue and mouthed something that looked like ‘I’m Arik, and I know everything,’ his face scrunched up in a way that was probably supposed to imitate Arik’s smugness.
I choked back a laugh. Fuck, I’d forgotten how much I genuinely liked Nate, when I’d had the leisure to appreciate him. I hadn’t really enjoyed fucking him much, maybe because I’d been so guilty the whole time—even though objectively he ought to have hit most of my buttons.
My previous buttons, anyway. The Jared who’d owned his very own spleen had been all over topping cute twinks until they squealed.
This Jared apparently had other interests. Maybe that was what the spleen did?
Probably not.
And besides, Nate belonged to Ian now, and vice versa. It hurt my ego a little to know how quickly Nate had gotten over me, and how little he’d really cared about me. I’d thought he was kind of in love with me.
I schooled my face back to normal before Arik could notice my expression and closed my eyes, trying to let the kind-of-uncomfortable sensation of his magic creeping through my body wash over me instead of making me twitch.
Shit, maybeIanhad thought Nate was kind of in love with me.
My eyes popped open, all the calm I’d been cultivating fleeing in a hurry. Aww, shit. Ian hadn’t seemed all that pleased when Arik airily announced that morning that he and Nate didnotneed anyone’s alpha mates present during the exam, thank you very much, and that we’d see them in a couple of hours.
Matt had just shrugged and maybe looked a little relieved, and Calder had frowned and nodded. We’d been eating breakfast in the pack house’s oddly deserted kitchen. Matt had probably told everyone to keep their distance for now, but it still felt wrong and lonely, without any kids running in and out or councilmembers bickering over their coffee. I had yet to encounter anyone but my cousins and their mates.
Ian had put down his own coffee cup, humphed, and left the room, stopping only to grab Nate around the nape of the neck and plant a firmly possessive kiss on him before he stomped off to sulk.
Or possibly fix the porch. I’d mentioned it when we came downstairs, and Ian had gone all red and said something unflattering about my handyman skills. He’d want to show me up.
And sure enough, as Arik, Nate and I were filing out the back door, hammering and cursing drifted through the house from the vicinity of the front door.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Matt muttered as I passed him, a small smile playing on his lips. “Ian’s always so productive when you get him all competitive.”
That warmed me all the way into the woods, despite the chilly bite to the air and the gray overcast threatening imminent rain.
Anyway, Ian wasn’t thrilled, and maybe it should’ve dawned on me sooner that he wouldn’t be.
Christ.
“Hold still and stop freaking out,” Arik said. “I’m almost there.”
At least worrying about Ian had distracted me. But now that I tuned in again, I could feel the tendrils of Arik’s odd, fizzy magic wriggling through me, like skinny, excitable little worms.
Oh, fuckinggross. I swallowed down bile. Why the fuck had I put that image in my own head? The—not worms, they werenotworms, not even a little bit, dammit—all seemed to converge on a spot right at the crown of my scalp, until my skull felt like it might pop off…and then they vanished.
Arik took his hands off of me again, looking immensely smug. A lot like Nate’s imitation of him, in fact.
Dammit, I wasn’t going to laugh. Arik was in the process of proving to my family that I really belonged to it, to them, and he deserved better from me.
On the other hand, that would make Arik my family. And family got teased.
Family. My stomach churned with nerves. I could have one again, if Arik made it so. I lifted up a little, as if straining to hear him would bring about the result I wanted.
“You’re definitely you,” he said, and I let my head thump back into the dirt, closing my eyes again. Savoring those words, and the Armitage earth beneath me, the life in the grass, the hush of swaying branches above me as the wind swept through, the goosebumps on my skin.
Alive. I was alive. And me. And free. And…home, for real.
“You’re completely certain?” Nate, and I couldn’t read his tone. Anxiety? Maybe. Disappointment? That had to be my own paranoia and guilt.
“Completely,” Arik said, with reassuring confidence. “A life spark can’t be split without leaving a clear trace. If your—that fucker had tried to make two Jareds, two real Jareds, and then killed one of them, this one would be—there’s no technical term for it. Let’s go with all fucked up. I can’t explain the shifting thing, sorry,” he said, anticipating my next question. “That’d take more work, and it may be out of my area of expertise, if what they did was chemical as well as magical. Anyway, Jared, you’re whole, except for the spleen.” To my surprise, Arik patted my leg, impersonal but somehow comforting. Like a competent doctor with a freaked-out patient. “And who needs a spleen, anyway.”
