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Gently combing his fingers through her hair, he sighed. With everything she’d told him, he could understand why she was constantly moving, flitting from one place to the other. With her newfound strength, no mortal could catch her unawares. No master could chain her. Blair no longer feared the slash of the whip or cowered beneath cruelty.
Freedom beckoned to her, her heart yearning to explore and to be free of the entrapments of society. Leaving behind the tyranny of her oppression, Blair had decided to wander the world. Nina accompanied her on occasion, teleporting to Blair whenever the clan could spare her.
“After Nina turned me, I vowed to never be entrapped by man nor master again, free from beneath the thumb of others.” A feminine chuckle sounded across the sheets. “I think I’ve done a pretty good job, don’t you think?”
“Can I be honest with you?” Kaien hesitantly asked after a moment of silence.
“Of course.”
“Sometimes, when we run from our problems, we call it something else,” he said, stepping out on a very fragile limb. “It’s a race you’ll never win. Staying and fighting—addressing the heart of it—that’s what’s difficult.”
Blair didn’t move, all the playfulness that had been on her face a moment before gone. “And you think I’m running from my problems, Kaien?”
“I think you’re running from confronting your problems.” He shifted so that he was on his elbow. “There’s trauma in your past, but just because you’ve chosen to refocus elsewhere, doesn’t mean it’ll simply go away.”
In that moment, Kaien thought he’d ruined everything between them, and his heart sank. But then she spoke.
“Running is easier.”
“It always is.” His features pinched. “I’m sorry I called you Nina’s pet.”
That gorgeous smile returned with a vengeance. “I’ve called you worse things.”
Chapter Eighteen
Pillowtalkwasonething that Blair had never experienced before. In all her centuries, she’d never stayed long enough after intimacy to find out firsthand what it meant.
There was a shadow in Kaien’s gaze as she looked at him, something that he struggled with but hadn’t yet spoken aloud. Blair wanted to make it easier for him.
“I’d ask you what you’re running from, but I think you have the opposite problem.”
He frowned. “What’s that?”
“You’re standing still.” She raised her eyebrows. “I may be scared of facing my past, but you’re locked in it, trying to fight your demons by overcompensating in the present.”
The thought hit home in Kaien’s eyes, his features pinching. Blair watched as he processed the idea, his attention turning inward. Through their mating bond, his bewilderment slowly turned to acceptance.
“I think you’re right.”
“What are you fighting, Kaien?”
A myriad of emotions crossed his face before he sighed. “Incompetence. Powerlessness. Failure. Take your pick. It’s all three.”
Her stomach clenched at the pain in his voice. She wanted to roar at him that none of those things were true, and that she had been as utterly wrong as he was now to ever think them. Blair could clearly see how much impact he had, the lives he saved, the difference he made every day.
Telling him was not the same as making him understand. Reaching out, she took his hand, willing her feelings and support through their connection.
“When my parents were murdered, I charged into battle without a plan, intent on avenging their deaths,” Kaien said. “I was young and stupid, and I paid for it. I didn’t even get a single strike in before Rhasos paralyzed me.”
His eyes closed, and the residual feeling of helplessness swam through their bond. “Everything below my neck was this absolute void of feeling, an inescapable numbness that was somehow also painful, and I panicked. There was nothing I could do to help. Nina and Aiden fought against him while I lay there, unable to move.”
Her heart sank as Kaien replayed the horror of his parents’ deaths, the anguish and sorrow that rooted deeply within the memory. Blair cupped his cheek, needing the touch to both soothe him and ground herself.
“After Aidan was knocked out, Nina was forced to fight alone,” Kaien whispered. “That was the first time I saw the darkness that lived within her. The destructive side of her gifts. They were powerful, potent, and ruthlessly savage, and I promised myself I’d never let them swallow her.”
A sad smile, full of melancholy, tugged at his lips. “I am three minutes older than Nina. Firstborn son, heir to my mother’s healing gifts. But Nina—she’s done so much more than I have. She became a sovereign at the age of twenty-two, little more than an adolescent in our society. She defeated our parents’ murderer. She took vengeance when I could not. Fates, she’s even organized an international peace treaty among the immortal breeds.
He scoffed, the sound of it oddly defeatist. “Everything I have in my life is because of my sister.”
