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I shrugged. “It’s in my nature.”
“I know.” A smile ghosted across his face before he became serious with the memory. “It started as an ache right here.” He pressed his hand to the center of his chest. “The hollow pain grew. When she was near, it flared, burning on the inside. The only thing to quench the fire was her touch. Even so, the burning never ceased.”
“It sounds painful.”
“It was, actually. That’s how a Morgon male knows without a shadow of a doubt he’s found his one mate. The pain is acute, but when she accepts him, they share the fire, their hearts bonding one to the other. The release of the elixir transforms the pain…into pleasure.”
I swallowed, understanding completely. An aching need, pain, converting to pleasure. Something I couldn’t stop thinking about these days.
Lucius’s gaze fixed on me. “You wear his scent like it’s your own, you know.”
My heart jumped. “What?”
“Typically, this only happens with mated couples.” All-seeing eyes watched me. “But you two aren’t heartbound. Not yet.”
“Heartbound? To Kol? I don’t think so.”
He smiled. “Too rough around the edges for you?”
“It’s not that. He’s just too, too…isolated. Within himself. I don’t know if he wants a mate in that way.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. “True. He has definitely built walls between himself and the world.”
Walls. Yeah. I’d come to realize recently that I had my own. Mortared with endless hours of writing and copy editing, bricked with sleepless nights of research and investigating, topped with battlements made of innate stubborn will, and spiked with haughty, cynical feminist barbs that no man dared breach.
Until Kol.
“You know, Moira. When tragedy strikes, some of us are incapable of moving past it.” Lucius never rambled. His stories and musings always had a purpose. I listened well. “Some of us react to tragedy, by say, building walls to protect one from future hardships. When my mother died, I had my father and Lorian to lean on. The grief didn’t consume me as it very well could have otherwise.”
“Kol lost his mother?”
“Both parents. They were heartbound.” Morgon mates who shared soulfire also shared the beating of one another’s heart. When one died, the other soon followed. “His father died of a stroke at work one day at the office. As you know, Morgon couples who share soulfire are bound in such a way that one can no longer live without the other. The surviving mate’s death can take minutes, hours, even days.”
“How—” The question caught in my throat. “How long did Kol’s mother last?”
“Seven weeks.”
I gasped.
“She lingered so long, the sorrow ate the flesh from her bones and emaciated her, stealing her famed beauty. Worse, the lingering reduced her to weeping almost incessantly till there was nothing left of the joyful woman she was—only a hollow shell was left behind.”
Poor Kol. My heart constricted at the thought of him watching his mother waste away and die in misery.
“Needless to say, this devastated Kol and his brother. Kieren couldn’t stand it. He bid his mother goodbye after one month, leaving Kol to wait with her at the bedside.”
I found it difficult to swallow. “What about their sister, Valla?”
“You know of her?”
I nodded. “And I know Kol and Kieren had a falling out.”
“Right. Valla was only seven when they lost their parents. As the eldest of the twins, by three minutes, Kol took custody of Valla.”
“Was that what drove a wedge between them?”
“It was more than that. You’ll have to ask him. What I can tell you is that the lingering death of their mother struck Kol the hardest. Our families grew up together. And Kol was always a fun-loving boy, always laughing. Before their deaths.”
“Kol? You can’t be serious.”
