“I—” Sylvan began but she was already in his mind, rifling casually through the contents of the past twenty-four Earth hours without so much as a by-your –leave.
Sylvan gritted his teeth and forced himself to relive it with her. The Luck Kiss, the crash in the mountains, the grueling march to the cabin and all that had transpired between himself and Sophia there. Then the fight with the urlich and the way he had punished her attacker which had caused Sophia so much pain and terror.
“I see,” the priestess said at last, releasing Sylvan to his great relief. “I see your agony but it was of your own doing, Warrior. All of your own doing.”
“I—” Sylvan began but she shushed him with a wave of her hand.
“You made your vow to never take a bride, not out of genuine desire to serve the Goddess, but out of pride,” the priestess said. “And out of pride you chose not to see the warning signs that you were being drawn to this girl—this Sophia. And when you did choose to acknowledge them, you blamed them on the Mother of All Life, saying that she had only given you these feelings in order that you might protect the Earth girl.”
“But I thought she had,” Sylvan protested. “Why else would she have me break my vow?”
“A vow made in pride and fear—yes, fear. For fear is the loathsome sister of pride, who stands just inside the door to your soul, whispering foul untruths. Telling you that if you never give your heart again then it can never again be broken.” She frowned at Sylvan. “This was the shadow I saw on your heart, the fear and pride which taints your entire existence.”
“It was terrible when I was rejected the first time,” Sylvan admitted brokenly. “So terrible I never wanted to go through it again. But this…this is a thousand times worse.”
“Because you have found your one true mate—your bride.” The priestess shook her head. “And yet you let her slip through your fingers—telling her that your need for her will be gone as soon as you reached the ship. Letting her believe you can live without her when you know you cannot.”
“A fact which I now acknowledge freely,” he said. “But please, your holiness, she does not want me.”
“She does not know she wants you because you haven’t given her a reason to know it,” the priestess said sternly. “You allowed your need to overcome you, the protective rage to rule your actions instead of common sense. In so doing, you have frightened her away.”
“Permanently, I fear,” Sylvan said harshly. “In light of my loss, will you not now perform a cleansing?”
“I will not. For I think that you may yet regain your bride’s trust and bond her to you.”
“How?” Sylvan couldn’t help feeling exasperated. “She fears me. And as long as my blood burns with need for her, I can do nothing but make her fear me more.”
“I will do this much at least, then. Come, I will cool your blood.” The priestess beckoned him again and Sylvan bowed his head to receive her.
This time the feeling was a soothing one. A sensation of fresh, cool water being poured over the fevered fissures of his brain. The need which had come to the forefront of his mind, usurping his regular personality with it terrible imperatives, didn’t exactly vanish, but Sylvan found he was able to pack it away. To fold it like an unused garment and stow it in a chest in the corner of his mind. He still wanted Sophia, still needed and loved her, but he was able to pull his fangs in and the red veil which had fallen over his gaze so many hours ago was finally lifted, allowing him to see the world through fresh, rational eyes.
“Thank you,” he murmured with true gratitude when the priestess at last withdrew her hands. “I cannot tell you how much better that is.”
“It will not last forever.” She eyed him sternly. “It is but a respite. You must tell this Earth female how you feel for her. Let her know how much you care and that you can love her without hurting her. For I perceive that she had been hurt before—that was the shadow I saw around her heart.”
Sylvan nodded. “She has.” He frowned at the priestess. “And my vow?”
“Was never a true vow in the first place. But I release you of it now. Go and seek your bride.”
“I thank you, your holiness,” Sylvan said, rising to his feet. “But I fear you are sending me on a hopeless mission.”
“While both of you still breathe, there is hope. When one is dead, the other may die also,” the priestess said. She gave him an abbreviated bow. “Now I must go refresh myself. Your load of sorrow and need are a heavy burden indeed.”
“Forgive me” Sylvan said but she was already gone, her bare feet whispering over the green and purple grass of the sacred grove.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Sylvan, can I talk to you? Alone?”
He looked up and for a moment Liv thought she saw a brief flash of hope in his ice blue eyes. But when he saw it was only her and not Sophia, he simply nodded and stepped away from the chart he was coding at the med station.
“I am at your service, mate-of-my-kin,” he said gravely. “What can I do for you?”
Liv studied him for a moment, taking him in. According to Sophie he’d become a whole different person during the time they’d spent together on Earth. A very frightening person, apparently. But there were no signs of that now. His fangs were as short as his other teeth and his eyes were their normal icy blue. There was a sadness in them, though, that Liv had never seen before. A kind of calm despair that made her sorry for him.
Well, he made his choice, she reminded herself. Both Baird and Sophie had told her that Sylvan had chosen to do a cleansing ceremony to rid himself of his unwanted feelings for Sophie. It was probably just as well—Liv couldn’t imagine a more mismatched pair. But ever since they’d come back from their short stay on Earth, almost a week ago, both of them seemed quiet and sad. Liv wished she knew what to do to cheer them up but there didn’t seem to be any way. And since they were avoiding each other like the plague, there was nothing they could do to help each other, either.
“I need to know something,” she said to Sylvan in a low voice as he came around the station he’d been working at to stand by her. “Do you have a pregnancy test I can use? I’ve searched in every shop selling Earth products on the ship and I can’t find a single one.”
Sylvan frowned. “That’s because an Earth standard test wouldn’t show if you were pregnant by a Kindred warrior.”
“Shhh!” Liv looked around the busy med station. “Can we go some place private to talk about this?”
“Of course.” He led the way into a back room where medical supplies were stocked. As Liv closed the door behind them he began rummaging through the cabinets. “I think I have the necessary equipment…here,” he said, turning around at last. “I’m afraid I’ll have to draw some blood, though—quite a lot of it, in fact.”
“That’s fine,” Liv said though she couldn’t help recoiling a little at the large gauge needle he was pointing at her. “Geeze, you guys really need to get some smaller needles up here if you’re going to treat the Earth brides as well as your own warriors,” she complained as he swabbed her arm with antiseptic. “We don’t all have veins the size of fire hoses, you know.”
“I’ll order some at once if you can recommend a good supplier,” he said. “A little pinch here, I’m afraid.”
Liv winced as he slid the needle in. To his credit he did it quickly and smoothly so that even though the large needle stung, it didn’t hurt as much as it could have. “A little pinch, huh?” she said dryly. “You’re a good stick, though. I’ll give you that.”
“Thank you. I’m a natural with sharp objects.” He gave her one of his rare grins, showing his double set of fangs which were small and innocuous looking at the moment.
“Ha-ha.” Liv grinned back at him, glad to see a small vestige of humor returning. “You know,” she remarked as he drew vial after vial of blood. “It’s a good thing I’m the one you’re sticking and not—”
“Not who?” He looked at her sharply.
“Uh…” Liv frowned, God, she’d really put her foot in it now. “Not Sophie,” she answered reluctantly. “She, uh, has a phobia of needles. Ever since she was a kid.”
“Does she?” Sylvan was trying to appear unconcerned as he finished the draw but she could tell that he was dying to hear the details.
“Yes, really. She had ITP when she was little—only about five or six.”
“ITP?” he asked, sealing the small needle wound with some flesh glue and placing the freshly drawn vials in a coffee mug-sized silver machine. He tapped in a sequence on its tiny keyboard and then said, “What’s that?”
“It’s a blood clotting disease. Your spleen attacks your platelets and starts chewing them up. And of course without platelets, your blood can’t clot. Theoretically, in an extreme case, you could skin your knee and bleed to death.”
“Fascinating.” Sylvan crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her, giving her his whole attention. “Go on.”
“Well now they have a cure for it. But back when she was first diagnosed the only thing you could do was blood transfusions or a spleenectomy. Of course my parents didn’t want Sophie to go through such a risky surgery so they opted for the blood transfusions. And you know what a big needle you have to use for those.”
“Of course.” Sylvan frowned and rubbed his jaw. “So she had to endure these transfusions…?”
“It was a weekly thing and she absolutely hated it.” Liv shook her head. “Sometimes my mom would let me come with her to hold her hand. That was when I decided I wanted to be a nurse—I wanted to help heal sick people, people like Sophie.” She sighed. “Poor Sophie—it was terribly traumatic for her. She used to beg my mom not to make her go and they would both wind up crying and crying. It was awful.”
“She, ah, told me she didn’t like sharp objects like…like my fangs.” Sylvan looked down at his boots. “But she never told me why.”
“Honestly, I don’t think she lets herself think about it much,” Liv said candidly. “See, one thing about Sophie is that she’s really good at burying bad memories.”
“So I noticed,” he said dryly. “I had to almost pry the story of her attack on your, ah, prom night from her.”
“She told me what you did to Burke Simpson,” Liv said softly. “And I want to thank you for it—that’s exactly what I would have liked to do to him. Only I would have broken both his legs and his jaw too.”
He sighed unhappily. “Unfortunately Sophia didn’t see it that way. I think seeing him again and watching what I did to him traumatized her.” He shook his head. “I can’t forgive myself for that.”
“You didn’t know, Sylvan. You were just doing what you thought was right,” Liv protested. “And, like I said, Sophie doesn’t like to dwell on the past. I’m still not sure if she’s processed all her grief from our parents’ death—it’s like she’s afraid to let herself feel because it might hurt too much.”
Sylvan laughed brokenly and shook his head. “Gods, to hear you say that…”
“What?” Liv frowned.
“It’s just…ironic. I was told by a priestess in the sacred grove recently that I had the exact same problem.”
Liv shook her head. “You two are a pair, all right.”
“No, we’re not.” Sylvan was suddenly serious. “And I’m afraid we never will be. How can we be? Aside from her past trauma, Sophia fears needles. And I have what amounts to four, incredibly sharp needles in my mouth that I long to pierce her with.”
Liv frowned. “Do you really have to do the biting thing? I know Sophie likes you—likes you a lot. But after what she went through with the ITP, the biting is sort of a deal breaker for her.”
Sylvan ran a hand through his spiky blond hair. For a moment he looked more miserable than Liv could ever remember seeing him, then his features smoothed out and he shook his head. “I’m afraid the ‘biting thing’ as you put it, is part of bonding sex for a Blood Kindred. In fact, it’s part of any kind of sex with us.”
Liv shook her head. “That’s really too bad, Sylvan. In that case, I don’t know what to tell you. But…does it really matter to you? Baird told me you vowed never to take a bride. And anyway, I thought you did a cleansing ceremony to get rid of your feelings for Sophie.”
He looked down. “The priestess released me of my vow and refused to perform the cleansing. She says Sophie doesn’t care for me because I haven’t given her a reason to care. But I don’t know how to do that.”
“Back off a little to start with,” Liv suggested. “I mean, you’re giving her space right now and that’s good but when you do get together again, don’t go all he-man protective on her. Sophie’s not big into alpha males.”
“Yes, she told me as much. She, ah, said I wasn’t her ‘type,’” Sylvan admitted.
“Honestly, you’re not,” Liv said candidly. “But then, I don’t really know what is Sophie’s type. She hasn’t dated anyone seriously in so long it’s hard to say. Just…be gentle with her Sylvan. She’s been hurt before, as you know. And trust is a big issue with her. If you lose her trust, you’re going to have a very hard time rebuilding it.”
He sighed. “Thank you for the advice, mate-of-my-kin. Tell me, does she still have this ITP disease you spoke of? She didn’t seem to have any problems clotting when we were on Earth together. I know—I healed her several times.”
“Yes, she, uh, told me.” Liv cleared her throat. “No, they developed a cure for it a few years after she was diagnosed—Sophie was one of the first ones treated with it, in fact. My parents always kept her very sheltered, though—it’s one reason she became such a great artist. She wasn’t allowed to run and play outside with the rest of us. She had to stay inside with her paints and crayons.”
“I have seen several of her paintings—both in real life and in my dreams,” Sylvan said softly. “She is very talented, though perhaps too generous to her subjects.”
“She paints things as she sees them. Her art is the one place where she’s truly honest with herself, I think,” Liv said. “If she painted you as strong and handsome and brave then that’s really how she sees you.”
“Or saw me, anyway,” he murmured, looking down.
“I think she still sees you that way,” Liv said thoughtfully. “But…I think she’s afraid. Both of what you want to do to her and what you represent. You’re a whole lot of male, Sylvan—any Kindred warrior is. I think Sophie has to realize she can handle someone like you and well, she’s just not there yet. Just give her a little time, okay?”
He nodded. “All right.”
“And speaking of time, when will I get the results?” She nodded at the small silver machine he’d placed the vials of blood in.
Sylvan turned and studied it. The configuration of lights on the outside seemed to be slightly different but there was no other discernable change that Liv could see. “Right about…now,” he said, pressing a final button on the keyboard. The machine emitted a small beeping noise and from out of the slot where he’d put in the vials, a small blue flower appeared.
“What’s that?” Liv asked as he gave her the flower. She couldn’t tell if it was real or not but it had silky, periwinkle blue petals and a mild, sweet fragrance that reminded her of baby lotion.
“Your answer,” Sylvan said. “If the results were negative, you would have received a white flower. If you were carrying a female baby, the flower would have been pink—that’s a very rare result indeed.”
“But blue means…” Liv looked up at him, her heart pounding. “A little boy? I’m carrying a boy?”
“You are,” Sylvan said gravely. “May I be the first to congratulate you, mate-of-my-kin, and wish you a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery.”
“Oh my God!” Liv was so excited she couldn’t speak. Instead she rushed forward and pulled him down into a hug. Sylvan was stiff at first, clearly surprised by her exuberance. But then he loosened up a little and hugged her back carefully. “Wait ‘til I tell Baird,” she exclaimed. “He’s
going to be so surprised!”
“He’ll be extremely pleased and so proud there’ll be no living with him.” Sylvan smiled when she finally let him go. “Are you going to tell him at once?”
“Yes, him first and then the girls. Oh, Sophie’s going to be so excited to be an aunt!”
“I’m excited to be a…what is your term for it?”
“An uncle. You’ll be the baby’s uncle.” Liv grinned at him. “Oh, I have so much to do! And no time to do it.”
“You have plenty of time,” Sylvan assured her. “According to the results and the size of the flower you received, you’re still in your first quadmester.”
“My first what?” Liv frowned. “You mean trimester, right?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Carrying a Kindred baby to term takes twelve of your Earth months, not just nine. So you see, Olivia, you have plenty of time to get everything done.”
“Wow.” Liv was a little nonplussed. “Uh…a whole year, huh? You guys should really put that in the brochure.”
“We don’t hide anything,” Sylvan protested. “You just have to ask about some things if you want to know.”
Liv laughed. “All right—I’m so excited right now I don’t even care. Although by my eleventh or twelfth month I may want to shoot myself. Or Baird, for that matter.”
Sylvan gave her one of his rare, one-sided smiles. “Go tell him now before you start wanting to shoot.”
“I will.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “And I’ll tell the other girls what they can expect if they end up getting claimed. You know, we used to joke about having sixteen pound alien babies but none of us thought it would take a whole year to have one.”
He looked suddenly sad again. “Tell Sophia she doesn’t have to worry. I would never claim her unless I knew she wanted me to. So she doesn’t have to fear carrying my son.”
“Oh Sylvan…” The sorrow in his eyes made Liv forget her own joy for a moment. Sophie was wrong, she thought. He cares, he really does. And he loves her so much it hurts him. Just like Baird loved me before I finally let him in. Impulsively, she stepped forward and gave him another hug. “Don’t give up,” she whispered in his ear. “I know things seem hopeless but they did for Baird and me too, remember? And we came out all right in the end.”