That thought flickers through my mind, the remembrance of having been trapped in the in-between of the Cataclysm’s portal running like a chill through me. Having never come across the like, I’m still uncertain if that portal was anchored in another dimension. Trapping me effortlessly … because without essence, I’m merely an empty, useless vessel —
A warm hand runs up my spine. I blink and find myself staring at the window, gazing sightlessly out at the bluff and the crashing surf. Disa’s journal dangles loosely from my hand. And … I’m shivering.
Rath reaches around me, not otherwise touching me, not caging me, but offering me his body, his presence. He places his hand gently between my breasts, fingers splayed where I once had a tattoo etched into my skin. A tattoo I have no memory of getting or having, but I’ve seen it — understood it — etched into my mates’ skin.
He breathes deeply, chest expanding to brush my back.
I breathe with him. The shaking eases, the chill slowly dissipating. “I guess being whole of body isn’t the same as being whole of mind,” I murmur.
“Zaya.” Rath’s gentle admonishment rumbles through his chest, further warming my back — though I know most of that is an emotional reaction, not physical.
I lean back into him, taking the moment of respite. I might be a slow learner, but I can be taught. If I think the lesson is worth learning.
The cu-sith is sitting on the bluff, facing back toward the house and looking up as if it can see me, me and Rath, through the tower window. And maybe it can. The wind churns through its dense green fur, but it doesn’t seem to mind.
“I used to perch in this window and read,” I say, still a little detached, my mind still trapped in that remembered nothingness of the in-between. “Didn’t I? The sill doesn’t seem deep enough now …”
Rath steps partly around me, opening the sash window. “You’d sit across the sill, one leg out. Used to scare the fuck out of me, but I convinced myself that if Disa let you do it, she must have thought it safe.”
He steps back and pulls a narrow, dense pillow out of the bottom of the armoire that I haven’t yet gotten around to noticing. Forest-green velvet. A match to Disa’s desk blotter.
“Now, I think …” He places the pillow on the sill. “I think she might not have even known you were up here with her most of the time.”
I meet his gaze, seeing the anger threaded through his words just as clear in his hazel eyes.
“Because she couldn’t protect you from her own fucking rejected mate, could she?” Rath says caustically. “Multiple times, correct?”
The drive to the estate gave Rath plenty of time to efficiently interrogate me — annoyingly, without even a hint of the tip of his cock — and quickly fill me in on how the last three months unfolded for him and the others. That included Reck’s version of the events that ended in leaving me behind, and his recounting that their sperm donor had killed my mother.
I shoved Reck away with as much force, as much essence, as I could muster in that moment. But that doesn’t seem to have appeased his brothers, who still hold him responsible for my kidnapping.
I try playing peacemaker again, but for my dead aunt this time. “I’m not certain Disa had any control over either of those —”
Rath snorts. “What she had was a fuck-load of time to put the asshole in a dark grave, even if she couldn’t have been the one to kill him.”
I open my mouth to protest.
Rath stops up my words, literally, with a kiss.
That move should piss me off, but I don’t really want to be having this discussion — or be coming to these conclusions — in the first place. My feelings for my aunt are complicated, even as I want them to be clear and locked away in the past.
The moment before I allow myself to completely melt into the embrace, I pull slightly away, whispering huskily, “All I want is to have you fuck me on this desk, then through every room in this fucking house. You and Rought.”
Rath grunts like I’ve gutted him. His gaze is bright, almost feverish. “The Cataclysm is going to come after you.”
“Yes. And I need more of the holes in my past filled in before I can formulate a plan to deal with him.”
“With us, Zaya. You’ll deal with him with all of us.”
Just for a moment, before I push it away, I can feel the energy radiating from the severed soul bonds in the armoire.
“With you,” I murmur.
Rath nods, stepping back reluctantly.
I settle in the windowsill, pillow under my ass and one leg dangling out the window. There’s an exterior casing to rest my foot on, but it’s nowhere near deep enough to stand on or use to stop myself from falling.
Rath runs his hands over his face, then over his head. His gaze rests on the piles of books on the desk. Then he sits down and starts searching for more information — about intersection points, about soul bonds. Specifically, about severing those bonds.
