“But he isn’t dead yet?” she demanded.
“As good as. It’s a matter of minutes, Mystique.”
“Take me to him. Let me help him!”
“No!” Reule held her in a grip of iron when she tried to wrest herself away. “Amando made me swear not to let you try. Kébé, the suffering from Jakal venom is horrific. He saw how you took on Chayne’s wounds. We can’t know if you’d survive. He made me promise…”
“Then break your promise! He’s in pain and doesn’t know what he’s saying! Let go!” She lunged hard against his grip, sending her braid whipping against her face. “Please!” She didn’t want to throw a tantrum, but couldn’t seem to help herself. Sobs wrenched out of her chest in hard rasps as tears fell wildly.
“Mystique, stop it!”
Anger overwhelmed Mystique. She gripped Reule with infuriated strength, and the workings of his body flared into her mind’s eye. Reule was the most powerful telepath and empath she’d probably ever know. This would be no easy task.
She was right.
Mystique felt the sudden seal of an enormous hand around her throat and she was jerked completely around until her back was flush to his chest and her breath was being slightly restricted by his powerful grip. He wasn’t hurting her, but he was making himself perfectly clear.
“Don’t you dare try to strong-arm me, little girl,” he gritted out in a savage warning into her ear.
“Then let me go to him! I can save him! Please! I’m begging you.”
“Don’t you think I want that?” he demanded, giving her a sharp tug. “Amando is Pack. My blood flows in his veins and his in mine. My mind is within his this very moment. I’m feeling him die. Don’t you think I want to let you go to him?”
“No! I think you’re choosing me over him! Please! Darcio, Delano, please!”
“Stop! I’m begging you, baby, please stop.” His voice broke and she abruptly stopped struggling when she heard the pain in him. He lost control over his emanation and suddenly she could feel it. All of it, driving into her. His grief and the agony of watching Amando die from the inside out. The wretchedness of the entire Pack. The knowing and the helpless fury. “You could never save them both, you know. Rye needs you too, and at least he has hope. You can’t possibly save him and Amando. Who will you choose? Can you choose?” He dragged in a hard, stuttering breath. “I’m making the choice for you. Don’t you see? That’s what I am meant to do in this world. Let me protect you.”
Reule scooped her up, her totally passive body telling him that she’d finally absorbed the terrible truth of the situation. He swallowed back his own torment and carried her over to where Saber and some others had laid Rye’s savagely burned body. The cosmetic wounds weren’t the problem. He’d taken a terrible hit, the pulse wracking his body for a while before Reule and Delano had figured out how to free him from the trap. They couldn’t even feel his mind anymore, and they were terrified of losing two Packmates in such a painfully short timespan. The psychic effect alone would be devastating. Reule wasn’t in a position to dwell on the personal ramifications, though. It was a luxury that, as Packleader, he might never truly have.
Reule dropped her down beside Rye. She curled up onto her knees and reached out for Rye. She stopped just before she touched him, hesitating as her eyes flowed over his big body. Reule didn’t need to be a telepath to know her thoughts. She was reconciling herself to the idea that if she committed herself to healing Rye, she would eliminate any hope for Amando. Reule already knew there was no hope. In another minute Amando would truly be gone. The backlash of his death would tremble through the Pack, including Rye, who might not be able to survive the devastation of it in his present state. Reule wanted to tell her to hurry, but he’d pushed her too much already. She was tired and feeling ill, and badgering her would be of no help.
She took a deep breath and laid her hands on Rye’s broad chest. She went straight for his heart and lungs, knowing what electrical shock could do to both. His heart was beating erratically, his lungs filling with fluid. His numbed brain couldn’t correct the problems. In a way, the current still lived within him.
But she would change that. She eased his heart into matching her own slower, steadier beat. She was smaller but he was generally healthier than she was, so it was a fair approximation. She emptied his lungs, coughing as her already smoke-abused chest absorbed the damage.
Reule stood quietly over her, as did the rest of the Pack. Silence reigned in the dark forest as though they were at worship, rather than fresh from battle. Rye became the center of Mystique’s existence. Pictures of his anatomy burst into brilliant color and detail. She marveled at how much she knew about the small structures whose delicate balance was necessary for the miracle of life. Her hands slid over the charred male body as she forced him into a deep sleep, no longer needing another to divert pain for her. She was proud of that. If nothing else, that development was worthwhile.
In the end it was the exterior burns she left uncared for, partly from exhaustion, but mostly because Reule snatched her away, calling an end to the healing. She murmured instructions about how to dress the burns and then fell asleep.
She didn’t feel it when, moments later, Amando finally slipped away from the rest of the Pack.
Chapter 10
Mystique stood facing into the winds, drawing her cloak tight as the cold bit at her exposed skin. She was looking down over Jeth City from her position on the highest battlements of Jeth Keep.
Even from her great height above, she could see the plain gray and tan stone of the houses and buildings below, and the speckles of red everywhere that decorated them now as they had not three days ago. The red banners of mourning, hung everywhere the loyal citizens of Jeth could possibly reach. The symbol of the city, splashed against a black background, was displayed in respect for the death of one of the cherished Pack.
As usual, the slightest thought of Amando made her chest constrict and sent hot tears searing into already raw eyes. Still, she’d rather watch the distant sadness of the city than remain within the keep where the loss was felt so keenly, so much closer. It was as though every male in the Pack had been stabbed deep in the belly, a wound slowly bleeding, killing them with as much pain as imaginable. They walked, they talked, they drew breath, but their spirit had abandoned them.
Never had she expected the violence.
Not against one another, but against themselves. Every day for three days it had been the same. The training grounds, the chapel, the wilderness—wherever they could lose themselves in a moment of privacy, these men would butcher themselves in devastation and loss. It was something ritualistic, the bearing of one’s dagger against one’s own skin, cutting arm, chest, or thigh as deep as one dared. Worse, none of them would allow her to heal them afterward. Since she was sensitive to injury now, she was aware of every new wound a Packmate endured. She’d first learned of the practice when she’d felt Reule suddenly wounded soon after they’d returned to the keep with Amando’s body. She had run to him, encountering him as he was leaving the keep’s chapel. She’d demanded to see his wound, insisted he allow her to heal him, and he’d summarily rejected her. He wouldn’t even allow her to heal his injuries from the battle with the Jakals.
She wondered if she would have fled the keep had she known then how truly bad it was going to get over the next few days. How much longer would this continue? She couldn’t bear much more. She felt every single wound in a way none of them could comprehend, each a little voice crying out to her for healing. The deeper the injury, the louder the voice.
Reule was the worst, taking Amando’s loss even harder than the others. No matter how careful her approach, he wouldn’t let her near him. He could hardly bear to look at her, and that hurt more than she would have thought possible.
And Rye…
Reule’s heir was openly hostile to her. She could feel his outrage and hate, a force he made obvious to her empathically challenged brain. It stung to have lost his f
aith in her, but it cut deep to feel his soul-blackened contempt. Rye had been warm to her, even when he hadn’t been certain of her motives. This bitter man blamed her, Reule, and most of all himself for Amando’s death.
The revelation had come when she’d been walking alone and a brutal hand had sealed around her throat from behind. She was jerked into a dark place and slammed hard against a stone wall. Seeing stars, she had barely comprehended it was Rye who held her. His face raw and red in the wake of her latest healing, he snarled as he cut off her air.
“Why? Why?” he demanded. “I saw what you did for Chayne. Why couldn’t you save him? Answer me, you heartless bitch! Did you waste too much precious energy panting after my Prime? Running around where you weren’t needed? Saving me? What am I, but heir? Amando was the heart of our commerce, the peace we keep so precariously. You sat next to him, broke bread with him, how could you let him die?”
He had thrown her to his feet, knowing no real answer could possibly be forthcoming. She made no defense of herself, not feeling she deserved to. He’d felt that guilt, the knowledge evident in the disgust on his face.
Mystique touched her throat where the bruises of his fingerprints were fading now, two days later. She’d been avoiding them all ever since. She mourned alone for a man she’d hardly known and yet knew perfectly through the intensity of the love of six other males who were floundering without him. So she stayed in the cold wind where she knew it was unlikely she would be found or joined. The sky was overcast, the sharp scent of first snow growing as the temperature dropped. She had learned one more thing about herself, she thought with a humorless laugh. The cold didn’t seem to bother her very much. It was almost as though she was used to the extreme temperature. Strangely, this made her feel more of an outlander than anything else in this place where warmth was so highly coveted.
Reule watched Mystique from just around the corner. She leaned into the wind, shedding a single tear that was quickly blown away, chapping her cheek an even brighter red than it already was. It was a novel experience to be able to watch her undetected like this. How much of her obliviousness was caused by her obviously deep thoughts, he didn’t know, but he’d been there a good twenty minutes. Long enough to know she hardly moved, didn’t sit, merely stared out at the city, thinking and feeling.
Her thoughts he left alone. The empathy of a city of mourners was intense enough; he didn’t need to hear painful inner dialogues as well. He felt her sadness reaching deep, but it was the loneliness he found surprising. There was a keep…a city full of others feeling exactly as she was. The chiming harmony of Sánge grief lent him a kind of comfort, and he didn’t understand why it wasn’t the same for her. She was confused and angry, and he knew she was having a hard time understanding their mourning rituals. She’d accepted so much so easily, but here she floundered in Sánge differences.
Still, none of them were performing at their best in the wake of this devastation.
He had sought her out to tell her there was a ceremony tonight. Upon his death, the rights to Amando’s body had reverted back to his blood family. It became the choice of his mother, father, or siblings what would be done to recognize his life and his death. Amando’s family had deeply honored Reule by extending his rights as Packleader in this regard. It meant they wished Amando to be paid homage in state, rather than make it just a familial affair.
Reule wouldn’t disappoint them. Tonight they’d begin the seven formal days of light and dark mourning with all the proper pomp and regalia that the Packleader could muster. No one in Jeth would ever forget how deeply he had treasured Amando, or how terribly he felt the loss of him. He knew Mystique would value being present tonight, and he hoped the ceremony would help her understand that amongst the Sánge, no one truly ever mourned alone.
He looked up at the gray skies, felt in his bones the coming storm, and found it almost poetic. The snow always came just as Amando ended his final trade journey of the season. It seemed appropriate that it had come early, marking the occasion as the Prime Envoy came home for the last time.
Reule allowed himself to feel the pain of grief, pressing his hand over his heart where the deepest bite of his ritual dagger lay, provoking hurt in muscle and sinew that echoed the hurt he couldn’t touch.
And this, at last, alerted her to his presence. She’d grown extremely sensitive to detecting physical pain, he realized as she turned her head to look at him. The movement threw her hair to the mercy of the wind, sending tendrils whipping wildly across her face and throat before she could reach up and pin it back with her hand. She faced him, silent and unsure in a way that twisted him into knots because she suddenly seemed so fragile. In just a few steps he’d closed the distance between them, his wide palms reaching to frame her small, cold face. It was the first time he’d touched her in three days, and he felt the awareness of it cutting them both to their very souls. It brought him low, the way his entire body seemed to shudder with relief at the long-awaited contact. She reached up with both hands to circle his wrists, holding him fast, as if she feared his escape.
“I came to tell you there will be a ceremony tonight,” he said roughly, emotion changing the stroke of his voice.
She blinked and then gave him a peculiar little smile. “No, you didn’t,” she corrected him. “Reule, anyone can see there’s going to be a ceremony tonight. It’s hard to miss such extensive preparations. So you came here for other reasons.”
He thought about it for a moment, easily seeing the truth. The ceremony had been an excuse to approach her, to breach the distance he’d crafted between them.
“I haven’t wanted to feel good,” he uttered, her brow wrinkling at the half-explained thought. “I want you to understand that, Mystique. Touching you, even in this small way”—he drew her against his lips, kissing her forehead and then inhaling the cold, clean fragrance of her hair—“for me it’s so sweet, so damn glorious a feeling, and I didn’t want to feel that.” He watched as the ache of her loneliness brought scorching tears into her red-rimmed eyes. He felt an answering sting lance through him. “He was Pack, kébé,” he said hoarsely. “I can never adequately explain what that means, what it feels like to have him torn away, but I can try to explain mourning rituals.”
“Please,” she begged, “Para has been too beside herself to even speak and…I had no one else to ask. I don’t know about this the way I knew other things.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. Can we go somewhere warmer? We can talk and, if it’s all right, I’d like very much to hold you close for a while.”
Her response was to fling herself forward against him, wrapping her arms around his body as far and as tight as she could manage, burrowing beneath his cloak for his warmth. She exhaled a heavy sob of relief and he suddenly realized she’d taken his distance as rejection and maybe even reproach. He held her a moment, closing his eyes tightly against the bitter wind. This was the second time she had mistaken his treatment of her for a form of punishment. It spoke loudly to him of her unknown past.
He moved them indoors, letting her cling to him however much she wanted. Did she know how good the closeness felt to him too? He discarded their cloaks and other outerwear, then took her into a small study. A fire burned enthusiastically and they both headed straight for it even though the room was electrically heated and warm. Reule took a seat in a large chair and, hooking her wrist in hand, he pulled her down into his lap. She sighed, making no arguments whatsoever, and snuggled against him.
“There are ten days of mourning for the Sánge,” he began quietly. “The first three are called the Depths. This is when we immerse ourselves in our grief. We do this,” he took her hand and laid it over the wound near his heart, “so that every time we move or touch the wound, the pain will force a reminder of our loss and grief. The more intense and plentiful the cuts, the more we seek to honor the one who has died. The tradition is very old, but it has evolved to a point that these cuts are usually shallow marks done for symbolism m
ore than anything. But Amando was Pack.”
He said it as though his words explained everything, and Mystique supposed they did. Now she understood why it would be an affront to him to be healed. She didn’t care for the practice, but she did respect what it represented to him.
“The Depths ends the third night, tonight,” he continued, “and the light and dark mourning will be initiated with the ceremony. Tonight we will inter Amando in the royal crypt, honoring his lifetime spent as a Packmate.”
“Light and dark mourning?”
“It means we laugh and cry as we remember him together. We celebrate and mourn together. The first days are solitary, but these seven are spent close to family and friends who were all touched by Amando in his lifetime.” He placed a finger on her windblown cheek. “The Depths is a very dark and painful period. You understand? It would disrespect others to disturb the grief with improper emotion. This is doubly true of Pack, because our feelings are so interwoven. The Pack feels what I feel, kébé, especially now. They expect me to help them cope with their grief.”
He drew her closer, his lips to her ear. “I couldn’t accept your solace or endure your sympathy, sweetheart, because of how it makes me feel. Comforted. Soothed. These feelings would have disturbed the Depths of the others. Besides, I wouldn’t have contented myself with the solace of your words and heart.” He slid his fingertips down to the edge of her modest neckline, running its edge as though it were something low and daring against her breasts. “Only all of you would have sufficed, Mystique. The slaking of my voracious lust for you would have been insulting to the Pack. I believe it would have been insulting to you as well. You wouldn’t have wanted to learn me as a lover under those circumstances.”
“And now is different?”
“Now is different,” he agreed. “Dusk is coming and soon we will shed the Depths. It will…”
He stopped and, because she was sitting in his lap, she felt the tension that suddenly locked tight in his muscles. His thighs beneath her bottom became so hard that she shifted uncomfortably. His hand clamping onto her shoulder stopped her movement, and he turned her toward him as he lifted his hand from her neckline and tipped her chin back. She glimpsed the green-yellow glare of his eyes before she was forced to look at the ceiling, baring her throat to him.