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Rand didn't answer with words or thoughts. Just feeling. He shared relief that they'd survived the nightmare, that Dovia had a chance of healing from her emotional scars, the way she would the physical. It didn't matter about his leg or how the rest of him felt; Rand wanted to give Cai blood, wanted to nourish him, give him back his strength. Body, mind and soul. Maybe not fuel his sharp tongue, but he supposed that was part of the whole package.
Cai gave a half laugh, but it had a note of despair to it. Rand moved his hand to the side of Cai's throat, feeling the pulse. "You were still, by the water," he murmured. "Quiet, inside and out. Keep being that way with me."
No acid sarcasm, no attempt to push him or anyone else away with his inappropriate humor, his endless running monologue of jokes and one-liners. Rand wanted him to lay down those weapons, lay down all weapons, and simply...be still. With him. "You can do that."
Cai's gaze had shuttered, but he hadn't looked away. A muscle was flexing in his jaw and his body was...tense, but not stone-wall tense. More like electric-wire tense, ready to conduct electricity with the right contact.
Taking it as the invitation it was, Rand did as he wished. He dropped his touch to Cai's side, caressing the hard curve of biceps, the shallow valley between every rib. He wasn't emaciated, but there wasn't a spare ounce of soft flesh on him. Touching the bone structure reminded Rand that they were all breakable. Maybe the boon of mortality was that he only had to go through the pain of being broken a certain number of times before the body and soul called it quits. Cai didn't have that luxury.
"Sit down before you fall down," Cai said gruffly, easing them both to the forest floor, using the tree as their backrest. "You're having my fucking blood. No argument. Shut up and drink it."
He'd lifted his wrist, but Rand clasped it, holding it between them. His gaze shifted upward. "Someone told me it's better from the throat."
"Did they? Sounds like a way to try and take advantage of you."
"It worked. Have you ever watched the way wolves approach the alpha in a pack, vampire?"
"No. They're a jumpy bunch. They tend to scatter when they sense me."
"Hmm. Well, you can always tell the alphas in a pack. Tail high, direct gaze, ears up. They just project it."
"Because it's hard to mask it, to pretend to be something they're not?" Cai supplied, recalling their earlier conversations. Rand tightened his grip on his wrist.
"Yeah. But if he doesn't want to fight, an alpha approaching another alpha goes through some of the same rituals as the non-alphas in the pack. I'll show you sometime. When we're both a little less beat all to hell."
"Okay."
Rand smiled a little at the simple response. When he brushed his thumb over Cai's lips, the vampire let his fang score the knuckle. "Let me feed you, wolf. The leg thing is messing with my head."
"You shouldn't let it. Your blood will help. I know it." Rand shrugged. "And if it doesn't heal all the way, it's a small price to pay for getting Dovia back."
"Not a small price. Not if I never get to see you run again, like you did the night you chased that deer."
Rand pressed his lips together, and Cai's hand slid to his nape, drawing him forward. "Take it from wherever you want it," the vampire said.
He wanted the throat, but thinking it over, Rand settled for the wrist. He couldn't say exactly why, except when he bowed his head over the offering and felt Cai stroking his hair, saw his eyes closing in an expression of relief, Rand knew it had been the right choice. Their souls were out and exposed, too raw. Keeping it quiet, gentle, that was what was needed.
He had to bite with human canines, but experience breaking through skin with wolf fangs made it quick. Cai didn't seem bothered by any pain from it.
The blood was nourishing, as potent as ever. And a surprising comfort food. Lord Brian probably had an explanation for that, related to the bond between vampire and fully marked servant. But Rand didn't need to understand the whys right now.
He didn't take as much as Cai wanted him to, but he took enough that, when he eased back, Rand felt steadier, the pain of the leg less bothersome. Still there, but less distracting. He was certain a good day's sleep would help their respective wounds heal, so he squeezed Cai's arm, a silent reassurance when the vampire watched Rand adjust to sit hip to hip with him, still favoring the leg.
"Let's just lie here for a while," Rand suggested.
Cai nodded, but his gaze remained on the leg until Rand eased them down and turned them both on their sides, Rand behind him.
Cai suddenly felt tense again, things bending, but in a stiff, rigid, old-man kind of way. Rand had wrapped an arm around his chest, his mouth against his nape. Touch was so easy for wolves. And not easy as in meaningless. Cai realized every touch Rand offered was sincere, the full weight of his personality behind it so whoever he was touching felt central...and centered. Dovia had gravitated toward it like a toddler toward a teddy bear. Cai had different feelings about it, but no less strong and real.
Rand's knees pressed into the backs of Cai's, his chest against his shoulder blades. Cai swallowed, his eyes closing. A part of him just wanted to go, to pull loose. Perhaps Rand registered his conflict, because his breath was a caress on his neck that matched the light stroke over Cai's chest, both soothing.
"What?" the wolf asked.
"Nothing." But it wasn't nothing. It was a nothing thing to most people that was so far from nothing for Cai, he couldn't bear to face it. He didn't think of these things, hadn't had to think of them. It was easier to ignore what you'd never had when it was never offered to you. But when it was offered, it could open this whole damn empty chest of nothing that could jump out, pin you to the ground and strangle you. Christ, how could he be strangling?
"Hey. Hey, easy." Rand started to move, but Cai grabbed his hand on his chest, kept him there, pushed back into him so he had to stay where he was, as long as he could. Without looking at Cai's face. He couldn't bear looking at anyone right now.
"Okay," the wolf murmured. "It's all right. I'm right here."
"Fucking spooning. I've never...hell." Cai tried to laugh, and it came out in that weird, strangled, hysterical note.
Rand simply kept stroking him. He was rocking him, too, a very subtle motion, but it helped as Cai tried to level out. His heart had a jumpy pace that hurt. Would have hurt more if Rand hadn't fanned out his hand and pressed it there,
absorbing it, somehow bringing it back down to normal.
"Rest a few minutes," the shifter urged. "We'll head back in a bit, but it's a nice night. Nice to be out here, just the two of us, like this."
"Yeah." Cai swallowed again, adjusted his head down and back and found Rand's bent arm there waiting, the massive biceps the perfect pillow. Cai closed his eyes and tried to relax his death grip on the guy's other hand. If Rand hadn't been a shifter and a third mark, Cai could have broken the fingers. "We got her. She's safe."
"Yeah. She is. Queen Lyssa might even pin a medal on you. She'll stab you with it first, but you'd have that coming. You did call her a bitch."
Cai snorted, the ground under his mental feet becoming less tentative. "A reward from Council vampires probably isn't a big step up from Trads. 'Hey, adequate job. We won't kill you this time.'"
"Well, what more precious gift could you give someone than their life?"
Cai turned his head enough that he was rubbing himself against the male's face. One of those wolf gestures. Rand made a pleased sound, crowding closer to him. If he'd been in wolf form, Cai thought he'd hear a tail thumping. Big puppy. But the momentary humor faded as he thought of Rand's words, the wolf's memories behind them.
"I'm really sorry, Rand. About your family." His grip on Rand's half-closed hand adjusted to his wrist, his thumb sliding over the scar from that time of dark despair in Rand's life. And Cai didn't question the fierce satisfaction of feeling his third mark overlaying it. "I can't imagine how hard it was to go on after that."
Rand said nothing at first, but he was still holding Cai, so he was okay. Just thinking. "Yeah, you can," he said at last. "Because the same thing happened to you. Just in a different way. Did you ever see them again, your family?"
He'd never spoken of it to anyone, not even Lodell. Hell, what he'd told Lyssa had been rote, the carefully structured bare facts that he could get through without opening deeper things that he always told himself he didn't feel anymore. But Rand saw the locked rooms, knew the lock on it was rusty and could be busted loose with one good kick of memory.
"No. It took me a hundred years to get away, and my parents were dead by then. My brothers and sisters may have had kids, and their kids had kids, et cetera, but I didn't look. Goddard told me if I ever tried to escape, he'd have the males killed and take the females in as potential breeders, regardless of their age. Even after I won my freedom, I couldn't...the idea of putting them at any risk... It didn't make sense, anyway. Not after so many years, you know."
