“No,” she said. “Just the clothes I’m wearing and a small bag for the kids.”
Tyr muttered something that sounded profane. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to borrow some things for you from ... a friend, all right? It’ll only take a minute.”
Drooping with exhausting, Cela slumped against the back of the seat. The car lurched into motion, moved for a few minutes, and then stopped.
“You can stay here,” Tyr said. “I’m just going to run up and get some things for you. All right?”
“All right,” Cela murmured.
But she sat forward to look out as he left the car and went up the walk to a small house. The seat belt jerked at her lap, and she impatiently pulled it out a little with her hand, giving her more room.
Tyr knocked on the door. Cela watched as the door opened. A woman with curly brown hair stood there. She leaned toward Tyr as he spoke, nodding with occasional glances at the car.
It was only then, stirring out of her weariness, that Cela realized why Tyr had reacted in such an odd way to finding out about the children. He must think she was still together with their father. And she understood it because she found herself reacting with violent jealousy to seeing the mate she had known for all of twenty minutes standing in close proximity to a woman he clearly knew well.
We shall snap her neck with our beak!her griffin snarled.
No we shall NOT. She is just a friend, as he said.
As if to give the lie to her hopeful rationalizations, there was movement behind the woman in the doorway. A child, tall enough to be eight or nine years old, came charging out of the door and wrapped her arms around Tyr’s waist.
“That’s his daughter,” Cela said under her breath. The little girl’s comfort with him left no doubt in her mind; as a mother, she knew exactly what she was seeing.
She swallowed hard. She had no cause to be jealous herself; had she not borne another man’s children?
I hate this,she thought in exhausted misery.I hate everything about this.
But she had nowhere else to go.
The brown-haired woman vanished briefly and then reappeared with two cloth bags with handles that she held out to Tyr. More words passed between them. Cela forcibly restrained her urge to claw her way out of the car and knock that woman away from her mate.
She is helping us,she thought at her griffin.Stop it.
Tyr turned around at last and came back to the car. He opened the back door on the opposite side to Cela’s. “Here you go, I’m not sure what all she put in here, but she saidthere’s a basic set of things for both you and the kids. I told her you were an old friend from out of town who didn’t have anything to?—”
“Who is she?” Cela interrupted. “Your mate?”
Tyr flinched. “No—she’s my—my ex. We’re not together anymore.”
With that, he closed the door and went around to the front. Cela shut her eyes briefly, feeling small and mean.
When he opened the driver’s door, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize, just—let’s get you back to my place and get some food in you, okay? And then you can explain to me what’s going on. You’re fresh off the island, right?”
“Yes,” she murmured, sinking back in the seat.
“What’s your name?”
That’s right, she hadn’t even told him. She would have laughed if she had the energy. “Cela.”
“Cela,” he murmured, as if tasting it.
“And you are Tyr, right? Or Terry?”
“Tyr,” he said.
After that he was quiet, and she drifted again, but it was only a short drive before they pulled up in front of a house.
