Page 40 of Keeping His Mate
“What about you?” she asks, lifting her chin to meet my gaze. “Tell me about your parents.”
“Well,” I start, “my mother’s soul took its final rest after contracting the virus that ravaged our people. It took Varrek’s mother as well. My mother went not long after Varrek’s mother. They were sisters, you see,” I explain.
“I’m so sorry, Bruvix,” she says, squeezing my hand.
I squeeze back, silently thanking her for the contact. “My father, he is a good male, but stubborn…aloof.”
“Hmm, who does that sound like?” she asks, her tone teasing.
“I pleaded with him to leave Trovilia with us. To come here and begin anew.”
“He didn’t want to?”
“No,” I reply, huffing a breath at the memory. “He refused to spend his remaining days away from my mother’s resting place. He said he could never be happy if he could not visit with her each morning.”
Her eyes widen. “Wow, that’s incredibly romantic, and also heartbreaking.”
I nod in agreement. “It is. I hope her nearness continues to give him the comfort he requires.”
“I’m sure it does,” Elle-noor says. “Do you miss him?”
“I do,” I tell her. “Knowing he is where he wishes to be makes it easier, however.”
She smiles, and it makes me forget my own name. “Okay, enough about the past. Did you have a good day?”
“Yes, it was wonderful,” I reply.
“Really?” she asks, bending her knee and placing her pointy chin in her palm. “What was so wonderful about it?”
“Well, most of the day was fine. Adequate. But when I came home to you, it turned wonderful. That is always the case,” I tell her.
Her long eyelashes flutter closed as her cheeks turn pink.
I look down at her wide brown eyes, always shining with curiosity and love. “Kay-teh asked me about you today. I saw her after her witch lesson, and she asked how my heart feels about you.”
“Oh yeah? And what’d you tell her?”
I tap my claws on the outside of the mug, enjoying the memory of the conversation. “I told her that you are...the one I never expected to find.”
“You scare me, you know?” Elle-noor replies. Then visibly gulps. “Because you feel like everything.”
I run a finger along her cheek and down the slope of her tiny nose. “I do not want you to fear me, Elle-noor. There is nothing I would not do to keep you safe.”
“No, not like that,” she says, her gaze dropping to the ale. “I just wasn’t expecting to fall so hard so fast.”
“This is… a bad thing?” I ask, worried about her answer.
“Not bad. Not at all. Just a surprise.”
A comfortable silence stretches on, but eventually, Elle-noor breaks it. “Um, I was thinking of going to feed Nanay and Stanley tonight. Will you come with me?”
This does not come as a surprise to me. I have seen her body deflate slightly when she watches the tr’gorys on the feed. It is interesting to her but is not the same as seeing them close. We still have not been able to track the mother on any of the cameras. She finds this as puzzling as I do, and while my solution is to merely leave the mother alone and forget about her and her litter, Elle-noor wishes to get close to them and observe them with nothing to protect her from a sudden attack.
“I do not like it,” I tell her honestly. “You are in great danger each time you face them. Especially a mother with her pups. You do not know of what they are capable.”
“Yes, I do!” she exclaims. “I don’t take any of this lightly. I can do this in a way that’s safe. I promise.” When I do not immediately respond, she says, “I understand why this is hard for you. I’m sure it triggers all kinds of memories of your friend who was killed.”
“That is not it,” I tell her. Those memories are certainly not good ones, but that is not what rattles my bones each time we approach the falls, knowing a tr’gory will probably show its face. I suppose it is time to tell her the real reason. If I am going to woo her, if she is to become my inara someday, she should know how I got these scars she is so fond of.