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Gently brushing her thumb against his cheekbone, Blair’s eyebrows drew together. “That isn’t true, Kaien. You’re a healer, and a damn good one. You take care of other people even when you don’t have to, even when it’s not easy, just like you took care of me. You hold the clan together.
“You solve problems, you create backup plans, and you try to reason crazy vampires out of suicidal missions,” she hummed with barely contained tears for him. “You’re a good man.”
“A good man who failed his family.” Kaien’s eyes hardened. “That day, I vowed I’d never fail her again.”
“That’s why you do so much for her, isn’t it? Why you never complain?”
Kaien remained silent, the truth speaking for itself.
“You said you were paralyzed,” she recalled. “How long did it take to heal?”
He took a breath, returning glossy eyes to hers. “We can heal from broken spines, but it’s an arduous and painful process. I was still so young, and it took months to recover from the initial wound, then several years more to break free from the fragility—the atrophy—that accompanied it.”
“It must have been horrible.”
“Compared to watching my parents die, mending a broken spine was nothing.”
Outside, an owl’s somber hoot broke the night calm, drawing her attention away from Kaien and to the world outside his bedroom. It felt almost surreal, the reminder of life outside their cocoon, but Blair knew this couldn’t last forever.
Biting her lip, she inhaled a steadying breath and broke the ice of what’d occurred this morning. “We need to apologize to Remmus.”
She sensed the literal shock that ran rampant through his psyche, the emotion spilling into their nascent bond. When he abruptly slid out from beneath the covers, she felt inexplicably bereft in his absence. Following his move, she braced a hand against the mattress and pivoted to face him.
Drawing the sheets up and over her bared chest, she silently observed as he jerked on a pair of basketball shorts. A tick worked in his jaw before he turned those warm brown eyes to her with barely concealed ire.
“Whatever for?”
Gone was the raw emotional intimacy between them. Outrage shrieked across his features, an irritated line forming between the sandy blonde slashes of his eyebrows. His hands fisted on his hips, the musculature in his torso tensing in a way that made her want to skim her fingertips over the chiseled flesh.
“For nearly killing him over something that wasn’t his fault.”
Blair tried for logic, trying to placate to the reasonable Raeth who stood lording over the bed. In this, however, his rational façade was splintered.
He bared brilliant white teeth, scowling, “You’rethe one who decided to get familiar with my best friend. What the hell did you think I’d do when I saw another kissing my mate?“ A tick worked in his jaw before he spoke again. “How would you like it if I decided to play around with Celeste?”
Blair felt her incisors sharpen at the theoretical slight. As it was, she barely refrained from loosening a primal hiss that scratched up her throat with malevolent haste.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Then you understand my perspective. Why did you take his blood? Why did you let him—“ the words caught in his throat, and he swallowed as though tar coated his throat. ”—kiss you?”
The hurt in those words gutted her.
“I wanted to know if it was merely your blood that incited such a response within me, or all Raeth blood. It’s been ages since I’ve fed from one of you, and I had to know.”
“And?”
“It’s just yours.”
A gleam of masculine satisfaction inked over Kaien’s features, wiping clean the whispers of anger. Then, he narrowed his eyes. “And the kiss?”
She huffed out a sigh. “I felt nothing for him, Kaien.”
The Raeth’s lips jerked into a smirk, then bloomed into a seductive smile. “I’m glad to hear it, though I’m certain Remmus will mope for months.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Blair repeated, frowning. “I’m sorry, Kaien. I don’t know what I was thinking. But please, apologize to him. I’ll do the same.”
His ravishing smile disappeared. Deep within her, Blair’s heart yearned to appreciate it again, the expression so rare and fleeting that it was almost legend. She tugged on the material of the comforter, gathering the courage to speak.
