I eased myself up to sit, keeping Veyka in my arms. I tried to move her as little as possible, afraid of hurting her more. But then I saw her leg. Her calf hung from the knee socket at an unnatural angle, her shin exposed where the solabear had ripped through her leather leggings with its fangs.
Still, no blood.
Ancestors be praised.
I had been in situations like this before. Pinned down with injured soldiers. Injured myself. There was no place for panic. I summoned up the battle commander, and shoved down the roaring beast.
I forced myself to take stock of the situation. Veyka was not bleeding. Her pulse was strong. Her fae blood would keep her alive. But I needed to know where in the Ancestors-damned hell we were.
The realization took only a few painful seconds. An ice cave turned solabear den. Above our heads was the tunnel we’d fallen through. The angle was steep, but not so sharp we couldn’t have climbed out. But with her leg like that, Veyka was not climbing anywhere. At least until the next morning.
The solabear was dead. I’d ripped out its throat with my bare hands, my beast’s sharp claws poking right through my skin. I had never done that before—a strange, partial-shift. But I had not been thinking. When the solabear began to drag my mate away, thought and strategy had ceased to exist.
At least we would not have to contend with the solabear returning to its den.
The cave was about the size of a large bed. One way in and one way out, typical of a solabear. At our feet, there was a pile of freshly shredded snow and claw marks in the wall. No bones or half-eaten animals; the solabear had not been awake long before it attacked.
The ice around us glowed faintly blue, reflecting the light from overhead. But it would not last long. Veyka was still unconscious; that might be better for what I had to do.
I cut away her legging from mid-thigh down. She’d be cold later, but I needed to see what I was working with. It was worse than I’d thought, the bone below her knee was snapped in at least two places.
She did not make a sound when I set the bones back into place, securing them with a leather strip cut from the tatters of her legging. I checked her pulse again.
Da dum. Da dum. Da dum.
I listened to it for far longer than I needed to determine it was regular and strong.
I covered her with my own cloak—hers was providing a barrier between her body and the ice. Then I shifted into my beast form and curled against her side to share my warmth and to wait.
One hour turned to two.
Neither of our companions appeared. They might not realize what had happened. Even if they did, reaching us would be treacherous. Night came early north of the Spine in the winter. Already, the blue glow of the ice was receding.
Another hour passed. It was fully dark.
In the third hour, I began appealing to the Ancestors. It had been too long. She was still not awake.
She’d taken an injury to the head. Her body was healing itself.
But I needed to hear her voice.
Veyka. Veyka, please,I pleaded through that shared space in our minds that I’d ordered her not to touch.
The irony of it… I had been in an enchanted sleep for weeks. I did not remember what had passed between us before I awoke in Avalon, but Veyka did. Her feelings for me were strong, fully developed. She loved me.
This was the worst thing I had ever experienced.
Worse than my own torture, or hearing about my mother’s. Worse than the bloody battlefields, the innocents I had killed when I was new to my power and could not control it. The beating of my heart synced with Veyka’s. If hers stopped, I would know it because so would mine. There was no world that I wanted to live in, no realm human or fae, without Veyka Pendragon in it.
Is this what it means to love?
A low, pained groan slid into my consciousness.
Veyka.
I shifted in an instant, on my knees before her. It was fully dark. Even with the sharpness of fae eyes, I could not see anything. My wolf form was slightly better. But then I could not talk to her. But I could, through the bond.
Veyka hissed through her teeth. “I think it is broken.”
