“I am in charge,” he muttered, but he didn’t resist when I steadied him as he hauled himself into position with his good arm.
The movement cost him, his face went a shade paler, jaw clenched against what had to be considerable pain. But he managed it with something approaching grace, settling into the familiar leather with practiced ease.
I swung up behind him, careful not to crowd him but close enough to catch him if he started to slide sideways. The warmth of his back pressed against my chest, and I could feel the slight tremor running through his frame. Whether from pain, blood loss, or sheer stubborn determination to stay upright, I couldn’t tell.
“Comfortable?” I asked, checking that the safety straps were properly secured.
“Perfect,” Lincatheron replied through gritted teeth, his hands finding position on the saddle’s front grips.
“Liar.” But I kept my voice light as Kaelen prepared for take-off. “Just don’t bleed all over the saddle. Kaelen takes pride in his tack.”
His shoulders shook with laughter. “I make no promises.”
“Wonderful. Kaelen, take us home. And try not to rattle our wounded warrior too badly.”
“I’ll do my best,”Kaelen rumbled in my mind.“Though I make no promises about his pride surviving the journey intact.”
The ground fell away beneath us in a dizzying rush of green and brown, the wind immediately whipping through my hair with enough force to make my eyes water.
But even as we climbed higher, banking toward home, I could feel Lincatheron’s restlessness radiating through the air like heat from a forge. He kept shifting, subtle movements at first, then more pronounced ones as his warrior’s instincts clashed with his body’s limitations.
A slight turn to scan the horizon. A flex of his shoulders that made him suck in a sharp breath. Another shift as he tried to get a better view of something below.
Each movement sent a tremor of pain through him that I could feel echoed in the tension of his frame, the hitches in his breathing.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, as he craned his neck to peer over Kaelen’s wing. “Sit still, Linc.”
Lincatheron froze. Actually froze, going so rigid in the saddle that for a moment I wondered if he’d passed out entirely.
Then he twisted to face me, the movement sending another visible wave of pain across his features that he tried and failed to hide.
His brows lifted, mouth parting slightly as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. “What...” His voice came out rougher than usual, threaded with something I couldn’t quite identify. “What did you just say?”
I blinked at him, confused by the intensity of his reaction. “I said sit still, Linc.”
He pointed at me, eyes narrowing in exaggerated betrayal. “You did it again.”
I frowned. “What? It’s your name.”
“No, that—” He waved vaguely, as if the word had personally offended him. “That is anickname.”
I winced. I hadn’t even thought about it. The name had slipped out. But from the way Lincatheron was looking at me, you’d think I’d rewritten the laws of the universe.
“Uh…” Heat crept up my neck. “I—shit. I didn’t mean to. I?—”
“No,” he cut in.
I blinked, mouth open mid-apology.
Lincatheron sucked in a breath through his teeth, his eyes darting away for a second as if he needed to gather the nerve to say whatever was sitting on his tongue.
“I like it.”
My words stalled.
He glanced at me, the smallest shrug rolling through his shoulders. “It caught me off guard. That’s all. No one’s ever called me that before.”
“Oh,” I breathed out. The heat in my face doubled. “I mean, I can stop. If you want me to, I will. I wasn’t trying to?—”
