Page 18 of When Death Called Life Home (When Deities Awaken #1)
Chapter 18
A Familiar Friendship
ALORA
T he field was further away than Alora thought. The afternoon passed by by the time she and the two beasts reached the entrance that still had a vine holding the overgrown brush out of the way. Her ice dagger remained, hidden by fallen leaves. She didn’t pick it up, a part of her holding onto her stranger's rule of no weapons within the field. Even thinking about disrespecting the rule caused a sickness to fill her stomach.
The puma’s pace quickened and Alora followed suit. They passed by the headstone, Alora’s gaze briefly lingering even though her footsteps never faltered. Alora exited the field on the opposite side, ducking beneath low hanging trees and through sharp thorns for another hundred metres before the puma slowed, sniffed the air and then sprinted forward towards a small boulder.
No, not a small boulder, a figure, large and bulky, curled on their side and covered in what she could just make out in the fading light as blood. A pile of clothes sat to one side of them. A square of rocks to the other.
Upon closer inspection, the figure still breathed, however shallow those breaths were. They were alive. Though, for how much longer was questionable. Alora sped up to join the puma at the victim’s side and sucked in a sharp breath at the state of him.
There didn’t appear to be an inch of his skin that wasn’t covered in cuts. Rough-edged cuts that would heal horrifically on Earth, as though the assailant used a blunt object to cause them.
His back was in the worst state, surprisingly. Alora couldn’t distinguish which shredded pieces of skin attached to what, or where any of the bleeding came from.
A glance at the puma and Alora fell to her knees. She nuzzled his shoulder, then his neck, then his head. Each time she grew more and more urgent until a pained noise left her that split Alora’s heart in two. The Commander, as Tauriel had called him, the puma’s partner. His guardian, and with each passing second that he didn’t receive medical attention, she watched his life drain into the ground. The forest swallowed him up like he was just another source of energy to it.
Pressure ran down Alora’s arm as the forest spirit surged for the body, leaping from her hand and onto the grass before it gripped Alora’s fingers and pulled them to the man’s back. Alora resisted at first, but the urgency in the beings movements overruled any hesitation in touching the wounds. Blood encompassed her hands the moment they pressed into the raw flesh and she had to hold in the urge to dry heave at the feeling of mutilated muscle. The touch drew no reaction from the commander, something that didn’t bring Alora any reassurance about his outcome. She glanced at the forest spirit and threw it a ‘what now’ look, but the being simply stared at where their bodies were connected, waiting.
You are Life, the voice of the jaguar slipped into her mind again and eased her building panic. Life never fears Death .
A split second later and grey light glowed around her own skin, building to be blinding before it pulsed away from her hands in continuous waves. She moved to yank her hands back only to have the forest spirit wrap vines around her wrists and keep them there. She stared at the light with a mix of horror and awe. The colour and motion of it mesmerised her into a statue-like focus. Enough so that the forest spirit had to use the vines to pull her hands away at some point and then shove them to the grass beneath her, that same energy pulsing deep into the ground. Alora caught on quickly to what needed to be done when her hands were placed back onto the shredded skin. The forest spirit disappeared when it realised she understood.
Hours passed. Long, tiring hours filled with nothing but the two movements. Hands to skin, hands to grass. The puma and the jaguar took to circling them, constantly scanning the trees and bushes for any threat that could surprise them in the dark. Alora knew the puma’s attention was split. She noticed her golden eyes on the man frequently, not that Alora worried about it.
The moon reached its peak when Alora felt a wave of exhaustion fall over her and her hands fell to the grass one last time. She forced herself to shove the damaged energy from her body and into the ground. The man’s back still had large wounds, but his breathing had evened out. What the forest spirit had shown her how to do saved his life, she knew that in her heart. He’d be dead if she hadn’t come looking for him.
She could freak out over the fact she’d now used the strange magic that’d tried to injure Kallias to heal a total stranger later. Sleep called for her, begged her to accept its embrace. Alora almost did, then something caught her attention. The approach of her beautiful jaguar. His emerald eyes softened and focused on her. He grew closer until his head pressed to her forehead and she found herself finally closing her eyes.
It wasn’t the dreamless sleep she hoped for.
Each second she slept, she was aware of it, images rolling like a movie. Memories. Not hers, though. No, these memories were from the gaze of a smooth moving predator. The one who’d accompanied her the last day. These were his memories; she watched him growing and learning and sharpening his skills. Every bit as intelligent as humans were. He grew with siblings, three others, though each disappeared before he reached half his current size. He explored on his own, accompanying another feline on occasion but only long enough to feed and then they parted. Each memory flickered by until she saw herself. A rush of overwhelming need to be close fell over her. A wish to press into her, protect her, comfort her.
Then her eyes flicked open and a blue sky stared back at her at the same time that she felt every cell of her body. It hurt . Gods, did it hurt. Needles pressed over the layers of her skin, pressing in until she swore she felt it in her bones. The slightest move and she whimpered.
“You healed me.”
Alora jolted at the sound of the man’s voice, his familiar voice, and another whimper left her.
“Apparently.” Gods, even speaking hurt.
“You healed me.” His words didn’t sound happy the second time.
“You’re fucking welcome,” she muttered and squeezed her eyes shut, uncaring that she both shortened her vocabulary and spoke a profanity in the same sentence. A shadow moved to cover her face, drawing her eyes back open and revealing her mysterious stranger. He was even more ruggedly gorgeous when pissed off and awake.
“That’s why you’re in pain, idiot. Why the fuck did you heal me?”
Alora’s gaze dropped to his lips as he spoke the words, swallowing. At least those two movements didn’t cause her pain, or perhaps the view helped as a distraction. “Would you have preferred to die?”
“My preference has no say when it ends with yourself in pain because of me,” he snapped and grimaced from the force.
“Despite your stalker ways, you do not know me!” Alora exclaimed, snapping her attention back to his eyes. Such familiar eyes.
Something passed over his face, a pain that wasn’t from his physical wounds. It pulled Alora’s brows together. She watched him try to bury it. He sat back away from her, though his arm stretched out in a peace offering. This time Alora didn’t hesitate and reached for it, wrapping her hand around his wrist for a more secure grip. He pulled her up in a quick motion. Her free hand pressed to his chest and prevented their heads from smashing together.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Alora muttered. “For being your knight in shining armour.”
“I don’t remember saying thank you,” he replied back.
“If I hadn’t just stopped you from dying, I would smack you.” Alora watched as his face cracked and a laugh filtered into the space between them. His breath clouded in the chill air, a visualisation of the humour she’d brought him. It, alone, dulled the pain within her body to manageable. The new crinkles in the skin of his face made her wonder if that sound, this view, was a rare occurrence. He looked at her, a new, tiny sparkle to his grey eyes. He took a moment to assess her, and she copied him. Hers, however, more to check on his wounds.
“Knights in shining armour are overrated,” he hummed when he finished his assessment. “I much prefer a damsel in tight clothing with a healing touch.”
“Does this damsel get a name for using her healing touch to save your life?”
“Since when have damsels wished to know their stalkers' names?”
“Oh, so you admit you’re my stalker now?”
The man grinned wickedly down at her, a million promises in his gaze that not even Alora could separate enough to pinpoint which each was. He finally hummed, “Ascian.”
Ascian lifted their joined hands and adjusted his grip to hold her fingers while he placed a kiss on her knuckles before he turned it palm up and looked over the scars. Alora couldn’t stop the amused smile that blossomed on her face. She’d experienced the gesture too many times to count on Earth, at least the first part of it, and yet this time it felt completely different. Genuine and intentional.
“I don’t suppose I need to tell you mine,” Alora stated quietly. If the tombstone was any indication.
Another grin flashed and Ascian shook his head. “No, Miss Alora, you don’t.”
Her resolve against him melted the second her name left his lips. Her own sweet seduction like the sirens faerie tales spoke of, calling sailors overboard with their harmonies. Alora would drown for him, deep down she knew that as truth.