Page 66 of Ember and Eclipse
He didn’t say anything, only stared at her as if he had never seen her before. Like she was an oasis in a barren land.
“Are you—Do you need… Water!” she finally managed and pushed herself up despite her back aching from the awkward way she had fallen asleep.
Making quick work of pouring clean water into a cup, she didn’t realize she was shaking until water spilled over the rim. She took three deep inhales before returning to the bedroom. He was messing with the bandages around his shoulder and neck when she pulled the curtain aside that separated her room.
“Stop it. You’ll open up the wound.”
An annoyed growl rumbled through him, but he ceased nonetheless.
“Can you drink this?”
He tried to sit up but then closed his eyes, his body shaking with the effort.
“I’ll help you,” she said hurriedly, but he shook his head. Painstakingly, he propped himself up.
“Stubborn,” she muttered as she handed him the cup. But it was the fact that he was looking up at her as if he was expecting her to run at any given moment that made her back away.
“Thank you,” he rasped after he managed to drink some.
“Can you speak?”
“Yes, I can speak.” His voice was stronger that time, but there was a sense of wariness.
“Then explain.Everything.”
Sighing, he splayed his fingers. “What do you want to know?”
“When did you know?”
“Know what?”
She inhaled slowly, collecting patience. “That I’m your… that we…”
“The night I wanted you to kill me.”
“Whenexactly, Devdan?” she pressed through gritted teeth.
“Right before I sensed my pack mates.”
Her brows furrowed as she thought back to that night. He’d caught a rabbit, risked a fire, shredded the meat, and stored it away. He’d taken off his thicker coat and weaponry before fighting her. And he’d taken out her stitches. He had done all that forher. Because she wouldneedthose things and wouldn’t have anyone to remove the sutures later. “You were going to let me go, let mekillyou even before you knew?” she asked breathily.
“Yes.” He said it so simply.
“Why?”
“The Lunae of my packbelongto the Othonos family. We are bound to them through blood and curse. When they give us an order by the very nature of the curse, wemustobey. If we don’t, it not only means our own life is forfeited, but the lives of every pack member. That includes mates and… children. A mortal can’t be a pack leader, but in every other sense, they have full control of us.”
“That’s why you said you would continue to hunt me. Youhadto.”
He nodded and took a long sip from the cup before continuing. “If I was dead or dying, incapable of carrying out the mission, through no fault of my own, then it wouldn’t have mattered. The only way for you to get away would have been to kill me. I tried thinking of other ways, but there was no clear path that didn’t endanger the innocent Lunae of my pack while also allowing us both to live. I even thought if I delivered you, I’d have fulfilled the order and maybe I could help you then. There were just too many unknown variables to include how Asear would treat you or if he would order me to carry out some other task that would take me away.”
Rel took in the information, her fingers absently pulling at threads of the quilt. “But that doesn’t explain why you would let me kill you.”
“It wasn’t right. What little I was told about you, most of it was a lie. They made it seem like you did that unprovoked. My dealings with witchkind made believing that all too easy. I’ve witnessed, been the cause of, and suffered enough injustices. Each day that passed, I realized I couldn’t deliver you into the hands of the person who tortured you. That would make me no better than Asear himself or a malwolf. In the end, I’d have had to live with your blood on my hands, and to me that was not a life worth living.”
She could tell by the change in his voice and how his hand kept drifting to the bandages that he was in pain and uncomfortable. Both from the conversation and the injury. Not to mention, she had been given so much information she felt like she needed to sift through it, dissect it.
“Let me clean your wound and rebandage it. And I’ll see what I can find for the pain,” she said as she stood up.
