She nodded. Her lips shaped the wordsI knoweven though her heart was slamming against her ribs and her hands had gone cold and useless in her lap. She did know. He would protect her. The clan would protect her. That truth was carved into her deeper than any fear.
But another truth had just walked into her safe little world and sat down at the edge of it, and it wouldn’t leave. Port Eyeja was no longer an isolated little outpost. The wider universe was coming to Hothrest, whether she was ready for it or not.
His hand covered both of hers, warm and enormous and impossibly gentle, despite the deadly black claws. His voice hardened as he looked back at Sorrath over his shoulder.
“Tell Baralt to send me everything he knows about the new ships and the activity in the port. Everything.”
CHAPTER TWO
As soon as Sorrath left, Njkall turned back to his mate. Polly was still sitting next to the low table, the fallen root back in her hands. She hadn’t picked her knife back up. Her knuckles had gone pale around the pale flesh of the tuber, and although her breathing had steadied, her eyes had that distant, glassy look he hated more than anything in the world.
He knew where she went when she looked like that—back into the horrors of her past. He would have torn the throat out of every male who’d ever hurt her if they had been within reach. But they weren’t. There was only her, and a peeled root, and the awful helplessness of a warrior with nothing to fight.
Patience,he reminded himself. It was the only thing that ever worked with her. Push, and she retreated. Wait, and she came to him.
But waiting felt unbearable this morning, and he understood why. It wasn’t only the news from Port Eyeja gnawing at him. It was the memory of her body against his in the dark, soft and warm and trusting, and the cruel jolt of her bare skin when the furs had slipped. It was the ache in his kotra that lingered evennow. It was the way she’d looked at him with those wide grey eyes when he’d told her that he wanted her, and the way that truth had frightened her.
He had spent the better part of a year learning to sleep with his mate curled against him and doing nothing about it. Some nights he thought the restraint would kill him faster than any weapon ever could.
He knew that there was arousal mixed with her fear, but he also knew she wasn’t ready for what he wanted. Perhaps she never would be. And if that was the price of keeping her safe, then he would pay it and count himself lucky for what she gave him freely. He just needed, badly, to hit something right now.
“I think I should go down to Port Eyeja,” he said, reaching a sudden decision, and her head came up.
“Why?”
“To see it for myself. Baralt’s reports are good, but I’d like to get a feel for how things are.” He crossed to the wall shelf and pulled down a leather weapons harness. “To see how much things have changed.”
She watched him arm himself, and some of the distance left her eyes as she came back into the present. That was good. Giving her something to focus on outside her own head was always good.
“Why don’t you come with me, little one?” he asked, keeping his voice light, but he knew the answer before he finished asking. He saw it in the way her shoulders drew up towards her ears and her fingers tightened on the root.
“I can’t,” she said. “I told you that Yasmin’s coming with the baby.”
“Yasmin would understand.”
“I promised.” Her chin lifted a fraction in that stubborn way he’d come to love. “We’re going to work on some jewelry.”
It was a good reason. It was even a true one. But it wasn’t the whole truth, and they both knew it. The whole truth was that Port Eyeja was full of strange alien males and the kind of ships that had stolen her from her planet, and she would sooner walk into a snowstorm bare-footed than walk down those streets today.
He didn’t say it out loud. There was no kindness in forcing her to admit a fear she was already fighting.
“Then work on your jewelry,” he said. “I’ll take your latest pieces with me, and bring back some of those sweet cakes you like.”
Relief softened her whole body, and it lanced through him, that relief, because he’d let her off the hook without making her name the hook. She rewarded him with a small, real smile, and it was worth more than most things he’d won with a blade.
“The ones with the red seeds,” she said.
“The ones with the red seeds.”
He crossed back to her, bent, and pressed his mouth to the top of her dark head, breathing her in for one selfish moment. She leaned into it the way she always did, trusting and unafraid, and the contrast between that trust and the heat still simmering in his blood made his jaw clench.
Patience.
“Stay warm, little one,” he said.
“I will.” She tilted her head back to look up at him, and for just a heartbeat it almost looked like she wanted to ask him not to go. Then the look was gone, and she picked up her little snowflake-handled knife. “Don’t forget the cakes.”
He left before he could talk himself into staying.
