Page 17 of Bound

His mother had been so pleased. Had almost embraced Garran just as tightly.

So he’d told the rest of it.

His half-blood mate. The way she had looked at him.

She stayed quiet. Took hold of his arm and pushed him down into one of the cushioned chairs favoured by guests if the slight wear upon the arms was any indication. When had he last visited properly? More than a quick meal for supper only to hurry back to his cottage with talk of early mornings and long days filled with chores to look forward to.

“You’ll have to find her, of course,” Kessa declared as she took the seat opposite. “Talk things out with her. Maybe... maybe things are just a bit jumbled if... if her blood is as you say.” She was trying to be delicate, but he’d grappled with the concept just as she was doing currently. It wasn’t supposed to be possible at all. Wasn’t that the point of the bonds to begin with? He knew there were some that... dabbled with the foreigners that came to their city. With their ships and their strange ways, and they were welcomed for the prosperity that came with them. But children did not come of those dalliances.

Or did they?

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“I’m going to make us some tea,” Kessa insisted, rising from the chair she’d just taken. “Then we’ll decide what you should do.”

We will decide.

Typical Kessa.

As if she was going to have a say at all.

Yet he’d stayed. And he’d listened. All about being careful and not frightening her, and of course he’d have to find her, and how could he have been such an idiot to think that it was all right not to?

Until the tea grew cold and there were three swallows left in his cup, but he could not bring himself to drink them.

Not when...

He’d left. Cursed that he’d stayed so long when it meant there was little time to fly. To begin a cursory search over the trails he knew well. The ones he did not. Until it grew too dark to see much of anything at all. What use was a bond that would not drag him to her? To pull and tug until he was beside her. Where he belonged.

Where she belonged.

Mustn’t scare her. Had to listen. She was a woman first, a mate second. Or so Kessa said. Which seemed backward and a ridiculous distinction, but that Kessa insisted would make sense as he settled into his role.

North. Maybe a little eastward.

A direction, even though he almost hoped that the labourers were wrong, and it wasn’t her at all. Shouldn’t he be glad if she was not exiled out here alone? If she had people, a family, a...

His stomach twisted.

Parents, maybe. A sibling. But not... not a...

He landed. A barn. A house.

Pastures.

Her.

Not alone. With a man that was allowed to touch her, to talk with her. That she touched in return.

It hurt. In ways he had never known it could hurt.

But he did not retreat. Found that he couldn’t. Not when she was there.

At last.

It shamed him it had taken so long to find her. That the bond was so tenuous that it had proved no help at all. It was enough that he’d questioned if the feelings had been real, that he had not conjured them into being simply from sheer force of will.

But when she turned, when she caught sight of him, everything settled. Every doubt he’d harboured began to quiet.