Page 46 of Keeping His Mate
My fists ball at my sides. When I look down, I realize they are covered in Elle-noor’s blood. I rip a large chunk from the bottom hem of my tunic and furiously wipe the redness from my palms. The blood is starting to dry, though, and is proving difficult to remove. Frustrated, at myself, at Elle-noor, and… everything, I toss it into the waste bucket with a guttural scream.
“Both of you, out!” Kaiva yells, gesturing toward the door. She does not look up from Elle-noor’s wound, but it is clear she is speaking to Varrek and me.
My cousin follows me outside, close on my heels. I feel the wetness pool in my eyes as I run my claws roughly through my mane, not caring when I scratch the skin of my scalp. Bending at the waist, I grab a rock the size of my fist and hurl it across the width of the main path, into the forest. Then, because I cannot do anything else about the predicament I have found myself in, I pace. And pace, and pace, as Varrek stands with his arms crossed over his chest, watching me.
“Why do you stare as you do!” I shout at him. I do not want his judgment. I do not want his pity. But mostly, I do not wish to reveal how I’ve betrayed him.
He lets out a sigh, then drops his arms to his sides. “You will have to tell me at some point, but I can see how upset you are, and I will not force you to do it now.”
“It is fine,” I reply, flatly. If nothing else, telling him the truth will give me something to do until Kaiva allows me to return to my mate’s side.
I tell him of all that has come about. From the accidental consumption of the vakopurri berries that led to us finding Stahn-lee, to taking him in and Elle-noor nursing him back to health, to the day he destroyed my security server, causing us to lose a day of perimeter footage. I fill him in on what it was like seeing Elle-noor return Stahn-lee to his mother, and how playful the pups are when they are young. And last eve, when Elle-noor and I snuck out to feed them under the cover of night.
He says nothing until I finish speaking. Just nodding and following me with his rich, green eyes as I pace back and forth. He scrubs a hand down his face and clears his throat. “I should be angry with you, cousin. I should. And there is a part of my heart that is crushed that you chose to lie. You deceived me.”
I do not breathe. I remain perfectly still as Varrek readies to deliver a disciplinary strike that will surely leave me banished from the clan forever.
Then his lips quirk up on one side, forming a slight grin. A look I was truly not expecting. “If you had done this for anyone else, I would send you back to Trovilia, never to return. These choices you made could have put yourself and your clan in great danger. But,” he continues, “all of this was for Elle-noor. A human female. Your inara, yes?”
“I-I…” I stammer out a sigh. “Yes. She is.”
Varrek strides toward me and stops until we are facing each other, about an arm’s width apart. “It is all right. Discovering that you have an inara is an incomparable experience. It makes every drop of sanity, intelligence, and rationale leave your head.”
He is right. I have not been myself since Elle-noor’s arrival. “Yes,” I reply again.
Varrek nods once then turns toward the med room. “Come. Let us check on your female.”
We enter to find Elle-noor sitting up inside the med tube in the corner of the room.
“She’s all stitched up!” Aye-vah exclaims with a bright smile.
Kaiva helps her out of the tube and leads her back to the middle bed. “Yes, Elle-noor will be just fine. The bite was quite deep, but we were able to clean it properly, and now that it is sewn up, she shall heal nicely over the next several days.”
Then Kaiva looks at me. “You will keep watch on it for me, yes? And bring her back if her skin starts to look worrisome?”
I nod because I cannot currently form words. I am feeling too many things.
Kaiva and Aye-vah clean up the bloody wraps and used tools around the middle bed silently as I pull a stool over to the other side of Elle-noor. I whisper, “He knows.”
“It wasn’t Bruvix’s fault,” Elle-noor blurts to Varrek. “The whole thing was my idea. He wanted nothing to do with it. He just didn’t want me to go alone. But I… I forced him.” She continues to yammer on nervously. “I blackmailed him. I said if he didn’t help me with this, I’d…” she pauses, clearly trying to figure out this tale as she tells it, “I’d destroy his entire garden. Rip out every flower and plant by the root!”
Varrek turns to me. “Garden?”
I shake my head as I let out another sigh, not interested in addressingthatright now.
“Elle-noor, slow yourself,” Varrek says, soothingly. “Bruvix has told me everything. I am not punishing him. But you are forbidden from continuing these close-up observations. You are lucky your heart still beats in your chest.”
She bites her lip as her cheeks pinken once again, and she is clearly on the verge of tears. “Okay, that’s fair...but don’t you think if they wanted me dead, I’d be dead right now?”
“What are you asking?” Varrek replies.
She takes a breath, pushing back the tears, and says, “You know how vicious they can be. If they wanted to kill me, a human all alone in the woods, they could’ve done that. Easily. With a single swat of a paw. They didn’t want to kill me. This whole thing was a misunderstanding. A mistake on my part.”
“Are you saying you wish to continue these feedings?” Varrek asks, and my stomach drops as I wait for her response. Partially because I know what she is about to say, and I do not wish to hear it.
She does not speak the words, but the nod of her head says it all. “The other feedings went well. This time, the mother thought I was reaching for her pup, to take him from her, or something, but I wasn’t. I dropped my screen pad. That’s what I was grabbing.”
Varrek scoffs as if he cannot believe Elle-noor’s idiocy, or bravery. I’m not sure which. Then he walks in a slow circle before returning to the foot of her bed. “If you wish to resume these feedings once your arm is fully healed, I will not stand in your way.”