“Kakkari knew,” Wrune said. “Solysi, I still would’ve found you. No matter where you thought you could hide.”
To anyone else, it would have sounded like a threat. So why did it fill me with a familiar bloom of warmth? A feeling I could grow into something solid?
“I need to be careful when I’m with you,” I told him. “Or else my gift might be uncontrollable.”
By the way his expression softened—ever so slightly, in a way that made my belly flip and flutter—I knew he understood what I meant by the words.
His grip on my waist tightened. Quiet grew between us as he stared up at me.
“I know your feelings all too well,rei Morakkari,” he finally said. “The need to escape. To hide. To run.”
“What?” I whispered, frowning. “Even now?”
He shook his head. “Not so much now,nik. When I was younger.”
I stilled on top of him, staring down into his red eyes. In the last week, it had become clear to me that conversation aboutthatparticular subject was off limits. He’d spoken of where he’d grown up, of course. But they’d been superficial remarks, like how cold the frost season got there or the layout of thesarukand how it differed from a horde’s. He’d even spoken of his grandparents, though it had mostly been a history of the family’s long line on the wild lands, a history ofVorakkars.
“Why?” I asked softly, spreading my hands across his chest.
“I know you’ve realized by now that I don’t like to speak of my father,” he murmured.
“Yes,” I whispered. All I knew about the Dakkari male was that he was buried in the northlands and that he’d purposefully named his son a word that meantruin, letting him carry that burden his entire life. “I know.”
“It is not because I did not love my father,” he told me. “I loved him greatly. Mypattarloved me, very much. His deep capacity for love is arguably the reason why he died. Not many know that.”
My brow furrowed. I felt a knot rising in my throat at whatever I heard in my husband’s voice.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “But I really want to. I want to understand everything when it comes to you.”
Wrune’s chest rose with his deep breath.
“And you will,rei kassiri,” he told me. “I’ll tell you everything you wish to know.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
“My father loved my mother,” Wrune told me. “My grandmother told me it was a love that not many experience. Or even witness. But they were deeply, deeply in love and had been since they were young. My mother’spattar, theVorakkarof Rath Rowin at the time, did not approve of it, however. My father was a bastard child, you see. His mother never told him who his father was and as such, he had no valid claim to anything within the horde. Most of all, its princess.”
“Your mother,” I whispered.
He inclined his head. “And so, my father worked his way up through thedarukkarranks. Being of no line, he knew the only way to win my mother’s hand was through his honor as a great warrior of the horde. He would prove to my grandfather that he was worthy of his daughter. And so he did. With time, he became the greatestdarukkarof Rath Rowin. No one could defeat him, not even theVorakkarhimself.”
I heard the pride in Wrune’s voice and I gave him a soft smile. I shifted on him, my legs tightening around his hips. “And so they married,” I guessed.
“Lysi,” he rasped. “They did. And only a short while later, mylommabecame pregnant.”
“With you,” I murmured, though I was surprised when he shook his head.
“Nik, with my sister,” he told me. “Though Kakkari took back her breath in my mother’s womb and she was born still.”
I bit my lip, my throat tightening with realization.
“It was another year until my mother grew heavy again. With me,” he murmured. His lips twisted. “You know what happened next.”
His mother had died giving birth to him. He’d told me that the night of ourtassimara. The night he’d given me his name.
“Mypattarwas…mikira’ta,” he said. “That was the word my grandmother used when she told me this. It means devastation. Complete and utter devastation. My grandmother took care of me until mypattarcould even bring himself to look at me.”
The space between my brows pinched, feeling the gruffness in Wrune’s voice wiggle its way into my chest.
