Page 38 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Twenty-Three

He understood that he needed to give her space, but it wasn’t easy.

Taevas could only stew in their nest, his body in open rebellion against him, and listen as she moved in and out of the house.

No doubt she was plucking their breakfast from the bounty of her garden.

He could smell strong coffee brewing. The urge to call out to her was immense and only got worse as the minutes ticked by.

By the time an hour had passed, Taevas worried he’d begun to truly lose his mind. He stared at the ceiling, his body one great, useless ache, and tried to get his brain to work as it usually did.

Normal Taevas wouldn’t have had the issues he currently did.

He would’ve taken charge of his Alashiya, charmed her into doing exactly as he wished, and figured out how to get home by now.

Normal Taevas would’ve had her neck-deep in the marble soaking tub already, her troubles as light as the bubbles covering the surface of the water as he handled the fucks who’d tried to kill him.

When that was done, he’d return to find her soft and even sweeter-smelling in the nest he’d built them, ready to greet him with drugging kisses.

They’d have dinner in the sprawling atrium, and when it was done, he’d lay his napkin in his lap, finish his wine, and order her to ride his face until he suffocated.

But Normal Taevas, the one in control of all things, was dead in a ditch somewhere.

That left Weak Taevas to pick up the pieces.

It was a miserable job. The more he thought of how in the gods’ names he was supposed to get out of Birchdale with his Alashiya safely beside him and get back to the territory that so desperately needed him, the more he felt like he was drowning.

My wings are useless, he thought with brutal practicality. They might be permanently useless. I can’t shift. There’s a dragon around, no doubt hunting me as I lay here. I’m ill and wounded. My Shiya doesn’t understand that she’s mine now, or that she’s in danger every second we linger here.

If he dwelled on the horror of what had been done to his wings, what might’ve been taken from him in those weeks of captivity, Taevas knew he’d lose what little remained of his control.

A dragon’s wings were his pride, the shelter of his mate and young, the thing that allowed them to soar higher than any other creature. To have them damaged beyond repair… It was more than a physical blow. It was psychological torture.

He swallowed. Vael does fine, and he was a child when his wings were broken, which is even worse.

Crushed beneath his family’s bombed dwelling during the final, pitiful years of the war, Taevas had pulled Vael out himself.

He never mentioned it, but the sight of the boy’s mangled wings and the shellshocked look on his face after days in the rubble surrounded by the shattered corpses of his clan haunted Taevas still.

He’d personally seen that Vael received care from a healer, who painstakingly knitted the delicate membrane, nerves, and fragile bones back together. It’d gone as perfectly as it could’ve, and yet Vael still struggled with pain, spasms, and regular physical therapy all these years later.

It hadn’t stopped him from becoming a soldier, then an elite member of the Isand’s Wing.

Although his resilience wasn’t the most important reason Taevas admired Vael, it was one of them.

He’d never said it, but Taevas considered Vael one of the strongest people he’d ever met — far stronger than him.

After the war, despite the rare assassination attempt here and there, Taevas had never considered that he might be similarly injured.

The loss of his wings, even temporarily, was yet another reality he flinched from.

However, since it wasn’t something he could hope to fix with the resources at hand, it was cowardice he was content with.

His other problems were not so easily shoved aside.

Clenching and unclenching his claws in the nest’s blankets, he thought, If I can’t access a phone, then we have to leave. We’ll drive somewhere far from here and find a place to make the call.

An m-gate, a tear in space-time wielded by a select few witches-for-hire, would be arranged immediately, given the right code words.

If for some reason he couldn’t get through to his people, then he’d settle for Lee Seymour, the de facto alpha of the Shifter Alliance and old…

well, friend wasn’t the right word, but it was close enough to do the job.

The only problem was that he hadn’t seen any hint of a vehicle outside. He tried to remember if he’d seen one, but came up blank. Alashiya had walked to town, hadn’t she? Taevas let out a low groan.

A soft rustle of fabric made him crack open his eyes. Alashiya stood in the doorway, her expression unreadable. In her hands were a steaming mug and a shallow bowl with a spoon sticking out. His chest tightened.

Even angry with him, she’d brought him breakfast.

Taevas was used to luxury. He spent his days surrounded by people tripping over themselves to give him his every whim. But that wasn’t the same as being cared for. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d allowed anyone to do that.

Maybe not since Isa died, he realized. How very long ago that was, too.

“I made you yogurt with oats and wild honey. I figured something simple would settle in your stomach better,” she told him, bare feet whispering across the old wood floor.

She managed to avoid any creaky boards as she wound her way around drapes of fabric, boxes of bobbins, and antique furniture in the crowded room.

Wanting her smile more than any food, Taevas replied, “You spoil me, minu metsalill, but the only sweetness I crave is you.”

Alashiya pursed her lips. “Does that line work on the thousands of other women you mentioned?”

Damn you, Weak Taevas. Normal Taevas wouldn’t have made such a profoundly foolish strategic blunder as to mention any other women, let alone thousands of them, in the presence of the one he wanted above all.

Now that his Alashiya was angry with him, of course she used the conversational dagger he’d given her.

Sounding a mite strained to his own ears, he answered, “Is it pushing the limits of your tolerance to ask that you forget I said that?”

She knelt down with his meal and set it on the floor beside the nest. Several curls tumbled from the ribbon she’d wrapped around her hair, obscuring her expression as she dipped her head, her focus on the task. “Probably.”

Desperate to pet her, to feel her warmth against his palms and paint his scent on her skin, he clenched his fists in his lap. He wanted a repeat of the previous night, but he’d take anything she gave him.

“Then I will tell you this instead, metsalill: I haven’t been with a partner in years. Everyone else became irrelevant to me the day I sent word to the atelier that I wished to speak with you.”

She froze there, one knee on the floor and her eyes hidden from him. In a soft, disbelieving voice, she asked, “Really?”

“Really.” He dared to loosen one fist. Using just the tips of his claws, he guided her curls out of her face and back behind her ear. Their eyes met and he swore he saw the spark of the divine in her gaze — some raw, nameless magic that made him so pale and weak and needy for her.

To think she believed even for a second that he thought he was better than her!

Swagger, confidence, power — these things he had in spades, but Taevas had never, in all his life, been blind to his failings. He’d always considered it an intensely valuable skill. Ego clouded judgment and made tyrants.

It was the thing that made him loved amongst his people, he believed. The fact that he understood he was no better than any of them, only in the right place at the right time with the perfect amount of righteous outrage, was what made him Isand.

In fact, he was keenly aware that after all he’d said and done, there wasn’t a chance he was worthy of her. He would claim her even if the blood on his hands never washed clean, but he would always know he’d stolen a treasure from the gods themselves.

“You were right earlier. Adon isn’t real,” he murmured, letting his hand fall, “but Taevas is — and he worships you, my Shiya. I would kiss your feet and make a sacrifice of myself for you if you’d let me. Is it any wonder I become a terror when I think of you being threatened?”

Alashiya’s expression softened for a moment before she shook her head. “This is crazy. You know that, don’t you? What we have is chemistry and an extremely unlikely coincidence. It feels more meaningful than it is. Than it can be.”

Normally, Taevas wasn’t religious, but when it came to her, he couldn’t make sense of any of it without the divine.

“I don’t believe that,” he protested. “And I don’t think you do, either.

We’ve been tied together for a decade, metsalill, and the gods simply got tired of us fumbling around, trying to follow the thread.

Now we’re together. There’s no going back. ”

“Why not?”

He stiffened his spine, ignoring the pain, and leaned in to press a kiss to the shell of her ear. “Because I won’t allow it.”