Keandra goes quiet at once.
I hate that too.
I clean her face. Her hands. The shallow cuts along one wrist. The side of her neck where the wrap slipped and the storm kissed skin too long.
Every mark is small. Every mark enrages me. Because none of them should exist. Because she should have been under hidewhen the first warning hit. Because I should have dragged her inside myself rather than trusting obedience in a female already wounded in the places obedience touches wrong.
When I reach for her hand again, she whispers, “I’m sorry.”
The words stop me cold.
Not because I want them. Because I don’t.
I look up sharply.
She sits on the furs covered in dust and shame and the last trembling of fear, and yet the first thing out of her mouth after a storm nearly skins her alive is an apology. For disobeying. For needing rescue. For being foolish. For being one more trouble laid at my feet.
I set the cloth aside.
Then I cup the back of her neck and pull her forehead against mine with far less care than I have used for the rest, because gentleness is impossible in me right now, and any contact is better than none.
“No.”
The word comes out harsh.
She goes still against me.
I keep her there and close my eyes once against the rage and relief fighting inside my chest. No more seeing her half lost in open ground and understanding in one clean hideous instant exactly how much of me would burn down with her.
When I finally speak again, my voice is lower. Rawer.
“You do not apologize for being alive when I reach you.”
Her breath shudders once against me.
That almost breaks me more than the sight of her out there did.
I pull back only enough to see her face. Dust-streaked. Wide-eyed. Shaken. Real.
And alive.
That is the core of me. Not Kai. Not a hunter. Not command.
A male who will cross straight into violence and storm and blood if that is what lies between him and the female in his care.
Chapter 29
Keandra *
The storm passes in pieces. Not all at once. Not with the simple relief I expect, huddled under blankets in Kaiven’s tent, grit in my eyes and small cuts burning on my skin. It eases in waves. The screaming wind drops to a hard hiss, which fades to a steady scrape against hide and ground. Even that thins until the sounds of camp return one by one. Voices. Movement. A child crying and soothed. Tors checking damage. Maira calling to one another through the dark.
Inside the tent, the quiet feels heavier than the storm did. Kaiven cleaned my cuts, wrapped me in fresh cloth, made me drink water, then more. He spoke only what was needed. Hold still. Drink. Lift your hand. Look at me. He is angry. Not the cold public Kai anger I already know how to read from a distance. Not violence aimed outward. This is tighter. Lower. Closer to the bone. I can feel it in the way he moves around the tent. Too controlled. Too deliberate. Like if he stops controlling every motion, something larger will come out.
I sit on the edge of the bedding with the fresh wrap pulled around me and try not to shake now that the worst of the fearhas passed. I failed. That is the thought that keeps returning. Not because I got caught in a storm. Because I stayed when I was told to leave. Because I wanted so badly not to be the fragile wife sent inside, I became something worse. A burden he had to cross a glass storm to retrieve. A mistake the whole rasha now knows how to name.
Kaiven says nothing while he strips off the outer layers ruined by grit and storm cuts. The sight of him half-bloodied, dust-streaked, and still moving as if his own skin hardly matters makes the shame worse. He went out into that for me. Took the force of it. Carried me back while I could barely keep myself upright. I press my hands together so he will not see them tremble again.
Finally, because the silence is becoming unbearable, I say, “I know.”
