A snort. "If she is? She's changed her name. Seems to me she wants to escape you."
A dagger to the heart, those words made him stagger within. "Yes," he accepted even as he bled. "But I need to hear that from her." He met the elder's dark eyes. "You have no need to fear me. All I want is a moment with her."
Then he heard it: Nina's laughter.
Head jerking up, he dropped his pack and walked past the elder without looking back. He was conscious of further scowls and grumbling around him, conscious of people following, but he didn't care. He had to see her, had to beg her forgiveness.
Then there she was, dressed in a simple dress of pale yellow that swirled around her calves as she spun and spun with her hands locked to those of a child of about seven or eight. Other children danced around them, laughing and calling out for their turn.
"Ani! Ani! Me! I want to have a go!"
His heart, it was a massive drum whose beat thundered in his ears. He would've gone to his knees except that he wanted to see Nina's eyes . . . and then the spin stopped and she turned laughingly toward him . . . and there was no recognition in her eyes.
She looked straight through him.
Xavier's breath turned into jagged shards in his lungs before his mind caught up with his heart. Regardless of how angry she was with him, Nina would never be able to coldly ignore him. They'd been too much to each other for such distance.
Yet though her face was turned toward him, she didn't meet his eyes.
Then he knew.
Walking toward her, he watched her head angle a little to the left, her awareness of his approach clear. "It's Xavier," he said when he was only a foot away from her.
Her lips parted in a whisper. "Xavier . . ." A hand rose, trembling.
He bent so she could touch her fingers to his face, so she could trace the lines of him. His beautiful Nina with her dark, dark eyes that were so much paler now, the hue watery blue. The color of someone undergoing regeneration after catastrophic damage to the eyes.
It took up to a year for the regeneration to work, and if Nina had been hurt during her jump into the water and remained up in the mountains all this time, the delay was understandable--regeneration was highly specialized and came with the attendant cost. Nina would've had to qualify for a grant or be given the treatment by a sympathetic clinic. Even then, if an attempt failed, she'd have had to wait the mandatory three years before a second attempt.
Today, those sightless eyes seemed to meet his as she shaped her fingers over his face. A tear rolled down her cheek. "Xavier," she whispered again. "Xavier."
He took her into his arms even though he knew he should wait, should be sure she wanted him to do so. But he couldn't stand by while Nina cried. "Shh," he whispered, the sound rough because his own throat was thick, his eyes hot. "Hush, my love." He spoke in their shared dialect, a dialect that had only been spoken in a village long destroyed. "Nina, please don't cry."
But she continued to sob and then he realized he was crying, too, and they were holding on bruisingly tight to one another. He was vaguely aware of children being drawn away, of the adults leaving, until he was alone with his Nina and she wasn't pushing him away but holding him close.
". . . you were dead," she said in a shaky voice. "They told me you were dead." Again and again, she repeated that.
Stroking his hand over her mass of curling black hair, he kissed her temple, her cheek, the taste of hot salt in his mouth. "I searched," he said. "I searched for so long. Where were you?"
Their words merged together until they weren't words any longer. They'd been apart too long to do anything but hold on to each other, rocking. The world was quiet around them, the villagers' voices some distance away, when he and Nina were finally able to breathe enough for more words.
Pressing a kiss to her hair, he reached down for her hand, her bones slender and her skin a lusher brown than his. "Walk with me?"
Her fingers wove into his in a silent answer, and the two of them walked into the verdant greenery around the village, until they were private, alone. Then, his hands cupping her face, Xavier admitted his guilt. "I should've never made you jump."
Her hands found his face again, held him with sweet tenderness. "Then I would be dead." Her voice was raw from her tears but resolute. "Everyone died. That's what they said."
"Who?"
"All the people I asked, and I asked so many." Jagged rasps of breath. "The water was so fast, so hard. It swept me far from our village and at some point, I hit my head and I can't remember what happened next--I know I was taken in by other villagers, but they didn't find me until four days after the attack."
Her hands kept touching him, as his kept touching her. "My rescuers took me to an off-the-grid local clinic and the doctor there did what he could, but I was in bad shape, barely coherent for over two months."
"Why didn't they take you to a bigger hospital?" Even as he asked the question, Xavier knew the answer--the Psy had been doing fatal damage throughout the region at that time, until the people who called these mountains home no longer trusted the cities or the big hospitals staffed by Psy.
Nina said the same, then added, "Even after those two months, I wasn't quite right. I had broken bones and other injuries that were still healing, but my head was the worst. I couldn't hold on to thoughts, on to memories." She trembled. "For a while I thought I'd never find myself, always be lost, but it came back over the next eight months."
She slid her arms around him once more. Locking his own around her, he said, "You began to ask questions the instant you were yourself again," he said, knowing his Nina. "And people told you everyone had died."
A jerky nod. "I didn't believe them. I went back home but there was no village there, nothing but an empty landscape cleared of all signs of our families, our friends."
"The Psy did that," he told her. "The same Psy whose soldiers murdered everyone we knew." It was important to him to differentiate the one from the group; the years since the attack had taught him that the Psy race wasn't one big entity but millions of separate individuals.
Just like him. Just like his Nina.
She thumped fisted hands against his chest. "Why didn't you leave me any signs? Why didn't you tell people you were alive?"
He wanted to shield her, couldn't. "I took a telepathic hit," he said and felt her flinch. "When I came to, everyone was dead and I knew the Psy would be back to clean up." He swallowed. "I couldn't bury anyone, or it would've alerted them to possible survivors. God forgive me for that choice."
"You could've never buried so many, Xavier," Nina said softly. "God knows your heart."
Holding on tight to her words, he said, "I haunted the mountains searching for you and eventually joined up with a small group of rebels who'd made it their life's work to sabotage or destroy all Psy operations in the area." Those men and women had been driven by the same need for vengeance that had kept Xavier alive at the start, even through the worst despair.
"I stayed nearby for three months, but my work with the rebels eventually took me some distance away in the opposite direction to this village." Unknowingly separating him from his heart. "When I was shot in an operation, they doctored me until I could take care of my own wounds, then left me in a cave with enough supplies to see me through." Injured as he was, the rebels had considered him dead weight.
"I couldn't move more than a few meters for over a month." He'd tried to crawl to his devastated village at one point, wanting to die on home ground, only to be forced to turn back after he came dangerously close to unconsciousness. No one in his condition could survive a night in the cold of the mountains without some kind of shelter.
Even knowing he'd never have made it, Xavier wanted to tell his younger self to keep crawling, to find his way back to the village and to Nina. "By the time I returned, the nearby villages had been long deserted and people farther out knew nothing."
His shoulder muscles knotted, his fist clenching in her hair. "I asked over and over."
Yet the mountains were big, and back then the people who called it home often moved because of fear or need or environmental factors, a multitude of reasons. It wasn't improbable that Nina hadn't spoken to any of those same people when she came to look for him. Especially since she'd returned long after him.
"Why do they call you Ani?" he asked, his heart in a painful vise.
"It's what my rescuers named me at the time when I wasn't myself . . . and after . . . when I thought everyone was dead, that you were dead, I didn't want to be Nina again."
A heartbreaking answer that betrayed the depth of her pain.
"I searched for you," he said, needing her to know, to believe. "I've been true, loved no other." Falling to his knees as her tears began to flow again, he dared say the words he'd held inside for so long. "Say you'll forgive me, Nina."
"Xavier." Going to her knees in front of him, she shook her head and his heart sank, his world narrowing to only her face and to this instant that might forever break him.
"There is no need for forgiveness."
He took a harsh breath, another.
"I know you did what you did out of love." Her kiss was a benediction. "I love you, Xavier. I've listened for your voice even after the world convinced me you were dead." Her fingers shaped his lips. "I've loved no one but you."
Shaking, he was the one who fell into her embrace this time. She held him with love in every breath. "My Xavier."
*
"THE regeneration might not work," she said to him a long time later, as she sat cradled against his chest while he leaned his back up against a sturdy tree with dark green leaves. "This is the second and final attempt."
He was happy to hear no worry in her tone that he'd feel differently about her. She knew he loved her, regardless of her physical appearance or health. "You're revered as a nurse."
"I have an apprentice who acts as my eyes, and together, we manage."
She was more than managing, he thought, considering the fidelity she'd engendered in people used to being loyal only to those they'd known all their lives. "I have connections now, Nina. I can get you to better doctors if you want."
"I've learned to live how I am, even thrive, but I could do my work better with both eyes or at least some vision." Her fingers grazed his jaw. "I'm selfish, too. I want to see you again."
Joy was a sweet pain through his veins. "Then we'll find the best specialists." He knew Judd and Kaleb would both help him without question; family, he'd learned, had many different faces. His now included two Psy with deadly abilities.
"There are others here," Nina said. "So many people still isolated, disbelieving of the changes within the Psy and unwilling to return to the lives they abandoned in order to survive. Many need proof they won't be murdered should they return to their lands. Others need medical help, access to wider education--"
"I'm with you." Xavier had fought beside his friends for years. Now it was his time to walk beside Nina. He'd said good-bye to his parishioners at the outset of this journey, wanting to go into it with his whole heart and soul. But he hadn't abandoned them. Never would he do that to people who had given him as much succor as he had them.
He'd left them in the gentle, capable hands of a young woman of God who was ready for her own congregation. She had strength enough to offer a shoulder to those in need and heart enough to open it to any soul that walked through the door.
He was at peace with his decision to leave San Francisco, could think of no better life than to live it beside Nina. "I'll call on every favor I have to help the people who kept you safe until I could find you again." Until he could hold her close again, his heart beating in time with her own.
"Will you ever ask me?" Nina chided an hour later. "Really, Xavier, you're taking the concept of becoming your own man first too far."
His smile was startled joy on his face, memories cascading through him of a young Nina rolling her dark eyes when he proudly told her he'd ask for her hand only when he could build her a home worthy of her spirit. "I think we've both waited long enough."
Reaching for his necklace, he tore it off to drop a ring formed of gold, and set with sapphires and diamonds, onto his palm. He'd bought it years earlier, after he came to San Francisco and found a steady position. Being a Second Reformation priest didn't pay much, but Xavier hadn't needed to spend much, either. He'd saved it all for Nina's ring. The stones were small but the delicate beauty of them perfectly fit her bone structure.
He reached from behind to lift her hand. "Will you marry me, Nina?"
"Today, if you arrange it," was her answer, her smile as radiant as the moon.
*
TWO days later, when Xavier called Judd to ask for assistance in getting specialist help for the woman who would soon be his wife, he got far more than he'd bargained for. Judd not only put him directly on the phone with the SnowDancer healer--who was then able to get Nina into treatment at the best facility in the world--the other man spoke to his alpha, and Xavier was suddenly in touch with the AzureSun Leopards.
The leopards' connection to SnowDancer came through the SnowDancer-DarkRiver pact, with the AzureSun alpha, Isabella, the grandmother of a DarkRiver sentinel. And, he was proudly told by said alpha, the namesake of one of three newborn members of DarkRiver.
"My great-grandchildren," the alpha had said, while appearing not the least like a great-grandmother.
Isabella Garcia was a powerful alpha who held the loyalty of her people, despite being in her eighth decade. Even Xavier hadn't realized changelings didn't always go for physical strength in an alpha. Wisdom was also treasured, with the sentinels acting as the alpha's physical arm.
While AzureSun's power base was in another part of South America, they had contacts in Xavier's region on whom he could call should he have the need. They also gave him permission to access certain resources that would help ease his and Nina's journey as they fought to undo the damage that had been done to the people of these mountains.
"My granddaughter's alpha, young cub though he is," Isabella had said, "has taught me the value of relationships beyond the pack, of treating neighbors like family."
It had taken Xavier a minute to realize the "young cub" was Lucas Hunter. One of the most visible and powerful men in the world, thanks not only to his pack's strength, but also because of who and what he represented in the Trinity Accord.
And Xavier was connected into that network.
All because of a friendship formed with a soldier he'd first seen in a nameless bar.
Then Kaleb called him, having been alerted by Judd, and Xavier had access to a teleport anytime he needed one to take Nina to the physicians. That wasn't the only thing.
"I have wealth no one could spend in a single lifetime or even ten lifetimes," the cardinal said. "I've created a charitable foundation with a significant endowment that you can use at will for your humanitarian work."
"Thank you, my friend." Xavier accepted the generosity without argument because he understood how big a step this was for Kaleb--this friend of Xavier's didn't trust easily, much less allow people into his life.
For him to offer such a gift was a precious thing. "Is your Sahara well?"
"Yes." Kaleb's tone didn't soften as another man's might have when he spoke of his lover, but Xavier understood this friend of his, knew Sahara Kyriakus was his heart.
"And your Nina?" Kaleb asked.
Xavier smiled. "Yes."
*
LATER, as he walked under a carpet of stars with Nina, their hands linked and her warm, earthy scent so sweetly familiar, he said, "I wrote you letters."
Soft laughter. "Finally." Her teasing made him feel young, wild, free. "I'll read them all once I can see."
He couldn't help but clasp her hand tighter. "I'd like to read you some now." Before they wed, before it was too late for Nina to back away. "I want you to know what I've done . . . who I've become."
Gentle reproof in her expression. "My love for you will never fade."
&nbs
p; Xavier had no doubts of the truth of her vow, but he still needed her to understand how much he'd altered from the laughing young man she'd known, didn't want to steal her with false promises. So he read out the letters that spoke of battle, of violence, of his friendship with Judd and Kaleb.
"I'd like to meet your friends." Nina's hand remained firm in his. "We've both been marked by life, Xavier, but we haven't changed where it matters." She lifted their clasped hands to his heart, then to hers.
Yes.
They continued to walk together, content to simply be with each other. He spoke at times, Nina at others. At one point, he said, "I once told one of my friends that love is the greatest form of loyalty. But I think from loyalty can come love."
"Of course." Turning into him, she laid her head against his chest.
Listening to his heartbeat, as he so often found himself simply watching her breathe.
"So many bonds," he murmured as the two of them stood under a night sky that reminded him of Kaleb's cardinal eyes. "So many connections. Our world is becoming the interlinked entity it was always meant to be."
The majority of those connections were fragile, breakable, or barely budded, but a rare few had passed the Rubicon, would endure. Such as the bonds that linked him to Judd and to Kaleb, the bonds that linked Judd to his mate and his pack, the bond that linked Kaleb to Sahara, and through her, to another pack.
Such was the bond that tied Xavier to his Nina, and through her, to all the villagers she knew. In return, he could link her to so many others. Together their family spanned continents . . . and it existed right here in this moment when he held Nina.
PART 8
Chapter 51
BO WAS UNSURPRISED when he received a visit from Malachai Rhys as the sun was setting over Venice in a splashy display. What he was surprised about was the public nature of it. "I had the feeling you wanted to keep the Alliance-BlackSea relationship on the down low," he said as he held out his hand.
Malachai shook it after stepping out of the water taxi that had ferried him from the mainland. Then he removed his mirrored sunglasses in what seemed a conscious act. Realizing it was, that to see the eyes was to know the man, Bo removed his own and tucked them into the pocket of the short-sleeved shirt of chocolate brown detailed with bronze studs that he wore over jeans.