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“Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself? Let me heal you.”
I just caught her hands and looked deeply into those beautiful eyes of hers. “Do you see what I mean now?” I said, hoping to all the gods and ancestors that she did.
Her gaze quickly slid away from me, however, and focused on my legs. “Just let me take care of you. We’ll talk more later.”
It wasn’t exactly a satisfactory answer, but it wasn’t a “no”, either. It was a temporary truce, and I could live with that.
Chapter 13
Ayla
“Hold still please,” I said tersely, even though Kai absolutely didn’t deserve it. But I was still cranky, still affected by the argument that'd just happened.
One moment I’d been sleeping more peacefully in my human form than I had in years, the next it was like every cell in my body was on high alert, screaming at me to get a move on.
I’d snapped awake in less than a second, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Kai was in trouble. Flinging myself out of my bedroll, I threw on my pants and tore off through the forest.
He’d been hurt.Grievouslyhurt. I’d been so livid at the idea of someone having hurt him that I’d lashed out at the soldiers who tried to attack us with levels of magic I didn’t even know I was capable of.
That was something I’d begun to notice. Ever since we used our bond to heal my magic, it'd been growing stronger by the day. It was fizzing through all of my limbs, making things that would normally take intense concentration incredibly easy.
“I’m going to run a diagnostic spell,” I continued, knowing that Kai was suspicious about my magic now. I didn’t want himto sense something and then freak out, as that could just end up hurting his leg even more.
I realized I’d definitely broken the trust we’d just begun to form, and honestly, I deserved it. I hadn’t realized it until he’d said so, but my cursing him without permission robbed Kai of any real agency.
I’d thought I was doing the right thing when I did it, and I still wasn’t quite convinced it was the wrong move. But his words, the utter horror in his voice when he told me he didn’t consent, gave me pause that I'd never had before.
I’d fucked up, but what could I do now other than heal his leg and try to find our way to my coven?
“All right.” His tone was…strange. I couldn’t quite read it. After another couple of beats, I realized that he’d partially shut off the bond we shared. No emotions bled through it.
That hurt more than I'd anticipated.
Swallowing, I did as I said, making sure there were no deeper issues within his newly healed leg. I hadn’t really had time to digest what had happened, but a shifter regrowing a limb that quickly was nearly impossible.
We were good, and alphas were even better, but usually it would take a week or more to regrow a leg from the knee down, especially if the bones had to be redone. That meant a week, a whole lot of regeneration potion, and an obscene amount of food.
Thankfully, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with his new limb. It was just a combination of cramp and strained muscles from running on it so hard and so fast. It was easy enough to fix all of that, especially in my empowered state.
Meanwhile, the entire time I worked I could feel Kai’s intense gaze on me. I knew that we’d just had a pretty serious fight, but it made me blush, regardless. If I didn’t know better, I'd think he was trying to memorize all of my movements.
I already missed his easy touches and his smile. I’d hurt him, I knew that, and I didn’t take that lightly. But was saving him from that emotional hurt worth condemning him to die? I was inclined to disagree.
It didn’t take long to fix, and once I did, Kai let out a grateful sound. He rolled his foot this way and that before pulling himself up.
“Are you ready to keep going?” he asked cautiously.
I nodded and rose. Kai offered his hand, but I noticed it too late. It made it look like I was ignoring him, but I wasn’t, I was just…distracted.
It would probably be easier if I just flat out told Kai about the curse, but whenever I talked about it out loud, it just seemed to escalate. It’d started with the sudden death of my nanny when I was a mere babe, barely old enough to comprehend it, but then it escalated as I grew. Deaths grew more violent and were far more frequent. I wasn’t aware of everyone who’d fallen to the effects, but I knew it was enough that whoever was left of my family had taken me to a group of witches they thought could help.
Goodness knows, the witches tried. When I was living with my coven, they’d had a streak of bad luck a mile wide, with many of them getting injured, disappearing, and a handful even passing away in freak accidents.
I bore the scars and weight of all that pain on every fiber of my being, and I'dneverallow Kai to come to harm like that.
“Yeah,” I said softly, feeling miserable. Was there any way to win in our situation, or had the Shriek irrevocably ruined everything?
I supposed there was really only one way to find out, but it was the process that terrified me. The longer I left the curse between Kai and I unbroken, the more tempting it was to keep it that way.
