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But he didn’t let himself think of that as he laid Zee on the bed and stretched out next to her. The metallic scent of her blood was heavy in his nose, but he forced himself to ignore it for a while longer. She wasn’t bleeding now and although the wound was tender—he’d heard her wolf’s whimpers as she tried to clean it—it wasn’t causing her serious pain. That would have forced her to shift so she could tend to it. Biology and instinct always won out.
He was hoping that would be the case here too.
Right now, her instincts told her she was safer in wolf form, because she could run, because she didn’t have to look at him, talk to him.
The bond that had been between them from the very beginning was still there. Neither of them could eradicate that connection, and he’d use it. Her instincts would be telling her the same thing his own had told him for the past ten years, instincts he’d alternately ignored and damned to hell.
They were meant to be together.
They would have spent the last decade together if he hadn’t been a fool, if he’d just listened to his gut instead of his pride and everything else.
“I’ve missed you,” he said in a low voice. He hadn’t forgotten there were others around them, in the bar below them, moving around on the street in front, in the area out back. He could easily distinguish the voices coming from downstairs, pick apart individual conversations, even separate heartbeats.
Although he had better hearing than the typical Atargarian, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that some of the water-borne could hear him if he didn’t take care. “Every minute, of every day, Zee. Even when I told myself I hated you. I lied, of course. I could never hate you. Every time I saw a woman with long, dark hair, I’d looked twice, hoping it was you, hating the woman for not being you, hating you for making me wish for you so much even when I was so angry. Not that I had any right... ”
He talked.
Even as his eyes burned with fatigue, when the noise from outside shifted from the quiet hum of early morning to the chaos of a busy summer afternoon, he continued to talk.
He heard Meridia’s voice enter the bar downstairs, and Donner’s.
And still, he talked.
But there was no change and he knew it was time to admit defeat—not that he was leaving her behind. No, he’d simply carry Zee in her sleepy, battered, bloody wolf form, down to his rental car and leave without saying a word to anybody. She was his—in the end, that was all that mattered to Niko Whelan.
But the Prime of Appalachia had to take other things into consideration.
Meridia would be pissed, but the Regnar of the Atlantic wouldn’t want to risk open hostilities with Appalachia unless there was no other choice.
Decision made, he sat up and looked around the room, wondering what he should take. Clothes, of course, but what?
Hot, prickling energy hit the air and he sucked in a breath. Niko barely had time to turn before the wolf’s form started to change.
A sharp scream came in the middle of it, more of a growl at first, then rising to a high-pitched wail at the end.
When it was over, Zee was huddled on her side, one hand on her wound, the other clenched in the comforter, fisting spasmodically.
Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, breaths coming rapidly.
And once more, blood scented the air.
Fuck.
He’d hoped she’d relax enough in his presence that instinct would take over and let the change happen, but he’d been so focused on her shifting—and his worry over whatever it was that Phoenix hadn’t told him—that he hadn’t taken her wound into consideration.
Sweat beaded on her brow, cheeks pale and devoid of the warmth that normally colored her skin a soft, mellow gold. Her normally sweet scent had soured, acrid with the tinge of pain and panic.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he whispered, stroking a hand over her hair.
She didn’t react.
He told himself it didn’t matter.
The first-aid kit was under the bathroom sink. He had it in hand and was almost back to Zee’s side when he heard the footsteps outside the apartment. His nose alerted him to who was coming before they even reached the door. He deliberately chose the far side of the bed, hoping that the added distance—and Zee’s pale, limp form—would remind him why he couldn’t rip out the Atargarian male’s throat.
It would be bad politics to kill the Regnar’s second.
But if he touches her again...
