Claimed

  It was the ultimate surrender, and both of them had to give in to it. Galena’s face crumpled, and she bowed her head. “I hate this,” she whispered.

  Dec stared at the top of her dark-blonde head. He hated it, too. All of it. This whole situation was fucking unfair. And he’d let her down. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he’d gone along with it, but now she was nearly as vulnerable as before. She’d gone through the Claiming, had his blood inside her, had her Scope . . . but had none of the true benefits of being a Ferry. Dec exhaled, his anger deflating completely and leaving nothing but exhaustion and regret in its wake. He forced himself to walk over to Galena. He touched her arm. “I’m sorry.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked in a choked voice. “If you won’t . . . I mean, if I can’t . . . if we can’t . . .” Her shoulders sagged.

  Dec couldn’t take it. He took her hand and tugged her toward him. She didn’t resist as he coiled an arm around her waist. Her head came to rest on his shoulder. It was a cautious, hesitant embrace, but she closed her eyes and put her arms around him, holding on. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, and as he did, the hope rose up inside him that they actually could.

  “I can figure out how to tailor a multidomain antigen to an individual human leukocyte antigen system, but I can’t figure out how to do this,” she mumbled.

  Dec fought a smile. “This is more complicated.”

  “Nothing is more complicated than that.”

  “Wrong,” Dec murmured. “Your mind is more complicated. Your heart too.”

  She pressed her cheek into his shoulder. “Why are you so nice to me?”

  “I like you.” From the moment he’d first seen her. “I want this to be okay for you, complicated or not.”

  She sighed. “I wouldn’t know how to find okay if I had a GPS and a tracking beacon.”

  “Then I guess it’s up to you and me to hunt it down.”

  She raised her head. “I don’t know where to start.”

  He looked down at her hand on his waist, her fingers balled in the fabric of his shirt. “Let’s start by getting comfortable with each other. There’s no way we can go further until you feel safe with me.”

  She gave him a faint, sad smile. “How should we do that?”

  “You’re going to take a hot shower and change into something more comfortable. And then we’re going to sleep.”

  “Don’t you only need an hour of sleep each day?”

  “Yeah, but I can feel it coming on, and at some point, I’m going to pass out. And it might be one hour, but it’s like the deepest sleep you’ve ever experienced. You could rob me blind and toss me over a balcony, and I still wouldn’t wake up.”

  Her smile brightened. “So I guess you’ll have to trust me, too?”

  Dec blinked, distracted by the curve of her mouth. “I guess I will.” He walked over to the bag Cacy had dropped off with Galena’s clothes and toiletries. He offered it to her and gestured toward his bathroom. “Take your time.”

  Galena accepted the bag and disappeared into the bathroom. When he heard the shower running, Dec changed into sweats and a T-shirt. His limbs were heavy with the weight of the day. More than if he’d worked a double shift. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. His life had changed drastically in the last twenty-four hours, and he was still reeling from it. And after all that, Galena still wasn’t immortal.

  Failure to consummate a Claiming was grounds for severing the bond. It was easily done. It had happened to his cousin Gael—she had the bond with her new husband nullified the day after the wedding, and Psychopomps guards had to reclaim the guy’s Scope by force. Turns out he’d wanted to use it to commit corporate espionage by spying on his business rivals while in the Veil. Because he and Gael hadn’t consummated the bond, that was it.

  The guy’s body was found in a canal a week later. The case was never solved.

  If Dec wanted to get out of this, he could tell Aislin he tried, but the thought of Galena’s face, her eyes on him while she lay on the wooden Marking table, crushed his urge to escape.

  Protect her and you protect the future.

  Dec folded his arm over his face. Aislin would be pissed it wasn’t settled. She’d been hesitant to make Galena a Ferry in the first place, but she’d agreed to stick her neck out anyway. If it didn’t work, she’d have to deal with the fallout.

  But did she need to know?

  Tomorrow, word would be spread far and wide that Galena was a Ferry. Kere and Ferrys alike would assume she was immortal. So wouldn’t that incorrect assumption offer her a little bit of protection, at least until he and Galena were able to fumble their way through this?

  Dec’s head began to swim, threatening to plunge him into the black ocean of sleep. He fought it, wanting to be awake when Galena came out of the shower, wanting to gauge her level of comfort with sleeping in his bed. But it was too strong, and the last thing he heard before letting it take him was the water in the shower switching off.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Galena dried herself off and changed into a pair of pajama pants and a tank. She stared at herself in the mirror and tried to slow her racing heart. She was in Dec’s bathroom. On the other side of that door was his bedroom.

  Her head buzzed with fatigue, but her thoughts were chaotic. She’d embarrassed herself and managed to insult him in the process. He was, based on all the evidence she’d seen thus far, a thoroughly decent, unselfish, good guy. And then Galena had treated him like—what had he called it?—a “dick for hire.” Like a prostitute, basically. She hadn’t considered that he might feel conflicted about getting physical with her, because she was so focused on her own needs.

  She silently reminded herself that he was going through this, too, and wordlessly promised him she’d try harder. Then she grabbed the doorknob and flung the door open, determined to make a fresh start.

  He was lying on his back on the bed, his arm folded over his face, his chest rising and falling slowly. “Dec?” she asked as she cautiously approached.

  His only response was a twitch of his fingers. She padded to the other side of the bed and sat on the edge, then got brave and crawled onto the mattress. He’d said he slept deeply, and he hadn’t been kidding. She inched closer. He was wearing sweatpants, and they were low on his hips. His T-shirt had ridden up a tiny bit, and Galena could see the deep V-shaped indents of muscle at his waist. Her gaze skimmed over his chest, his muscular arms, his angular jaw, his soft mouth. Gripped by a powerful curiosity, she reached out with unsteady fingers and took his hand, carefully shifting his heavy, limp arm off his eyes. She laid it over his stomach and looked back to his face. She liked looking at his face.

  His eyes moved beneath his lids. He was dreaming. His brow furrowed briefly and relaxed again. She smoothed her fingertips across his forehead. His skin was warm, inviting. Would he mind that she was touching him like this? Didn’t he want her to feel safe with him?

  Unable to stop herself, she drew her fingers down his straight nose, then over his cheekbones. There was something about the shape of his eyes, slightly upturned at the outer corners, that Cacy had, too. A family resemblance they didn’t share with Aislin. Or Rylan, the one who had tried to kill her. At least, she didn’t think he had the same eyes as Dec. She could barely remember his face. But she did remember how hard his hands had gripped her and the sharp smell of his cologne. Galena shuddered.

  Then she leaned close and inhaled Dec’s scent, mellow and earthy and comforting. She almost laughed—only hours ago it had signaled danger, but now it was like a “Reset” button, clearing her head. She moved until her nose was only a few inches from his neck. As her eyes skimmed over the dark stubble on his jaw, she drew his smell into her lungs. Her body responded instantly, but in an utterly confusing way. Parts of her tightened while other parts relaxed. What was that? Was she scared or excited? She bowed her head. She’d tried so hard to shut down her body that now it was a stranger to her.

&nbs
p; And that was going to have to change. She’d been stunned when Dec had told her that to achieve the bond that would make her a Ferry, she had to climax, too. Was that possible? She’d been close the other day in the shower. She’d felt the waves of tingling pleasure, the clenching, the craving. But that had been her, touching herself. She’d been in control. Could she do the same with Dec?

  If it was just him and her, maybe. But it wasn’t. Her head was full of vicious men trying to carve her up and destroy her. Too bad she hadn’t decided to research memory modification instead of immunology. What she wouldn’t give to erase her recall of what had happened.

  It wasn’t fair. She’d had to endure that night—did it have to ruin the rest of her life as well? Because this should have been easy. Effortless. Dec was gorgeous. Undeniably, objectively, astoundingly attractive. Funny. Sensitive. Aware. This might be a miserable situation, but she couldn’t think of a single person she’d rather be trapped with. And yet she was still struggling. So much so that he probably was dreaming of escape right now.

  She owed it to him to get them through this. Maybe once they did, he could return to his old life if he wanted to. She hadn’t heard anyone say they had to live together once their bond was consummated.

  Galena sighed and got off the bed. Poor Dec. While he breathed, slow and quiet, getting the rest he needed, Galena absently wandered his room, then went out into his living area. It was a huge open space, with a kitchen and bar on one side and a large amount of exercise equipment on the other. A couch huddled in one corner, in front of a large videowall. She was struck by the fact that there were no pictures on his walls, not a single one. No paintings or sculptures, no trophies, no knickknacks on his shelves and side tables. He lived here, but he wasn’t collecting things. Like he was walking lightly on this earth, letting his actions define him, not his possessions.

  That was why the box caught her eye. It was sitting on an end table next to the sofa and was made of dark polished wood. She walked over to it and flipped the lid open, expecting to see cigars or something like that, but it contained a single antique digital picture frame. She picked up the frame, and as her thumb brushed the surface, it came to life.

  She recognized Dec immediately. He had his arms around two people, one a woman and the other a little girl. An older man stood on the woman’s other side, his arm around her shoulders. They were standing in front of a waterfall, the kind that Galena had seen only in history files. Except the image must have been recent, because Dec looked no different than he did now: tall, black hair, glacier-blue eyes, and wearing a smile that took her breath away. It was weightless, pure happiness. In the brief time she’d known him, she hadn’t seen him smile quite like that.

  The other people in the picture looked vaguely familiar. The little girl had black hair like Dec’s and looked to be about nine or ten. The woman was hauntingly beautiful. She had blonde hair and hollow cheeks, and her eyes had the same upturned corners as Cacy and Dec’s. Come to think of it, the little girl’s did, too. The older man had a few gray hairs, but apart from that, he looked almost like an older version of Dec. Slightly leaner, and his eyes were a different shape, but . . .

  “That was taken right before she got sick.”

  Galena let out a yelp and dropped the frame back in the box. It hit with a clatter and went dark. She spun around to see Dec standing behind her, his hair sticking up, his eyes on the frame where it lay in the box.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snoop.”

  “It’s all right.” He closed the distance between them and picked up the frame. It came to life again at his touch. He tilted it toward her and pointed to the man in the picture. “That’s my father.” He touched the little girl’s face with his fingertip. “That’s Cacy. She was nine.”

  Galena blinked down at the photo. If Cacy had been nine . . . “How old were you?”

  His eyes met hers. “In this picture? I was forty.”

  Galena’s mouth dropped open. “Which would make you . . .”

  He grinned. “Fifty-six. I guess I should have told you that.”

  She let out a hoarse laugh. “You’ve aged really well.”

  “It’s part of the deal. Aislin is turning a hundred next year. And Rylan is—” He shook his head, obviously not wanting to talk about the brother who’d betrayed them all.

  Galena pointed at the woman. “And is this your mother?”

  He drew his finger across the screen, lightly caressing the woman’s image. “Yeah.”

  “You said she got sick.”

  Dec nodded. His eyes were focused on his mother’s face.

  “She wasn’t a Ferry?”

  Dec sat on the arm of the couch, close enough for Galena to feel his warmth, for his scent to wrap around her once more. “She was. By marriage. But women who are active-duty Ferrys can’t get pregnant. Their bodies wouldn’t allow that kind of upheaval, and so if a woman wants to have a child, she has to relinquish the Scope and Mark until after she’s given birth. It’s a vulnerable time.”

  “But worth it, I imagine,” Galena murmured. The woman had her arm around Dec, who looked only a few years younger than she did. But Galena could read the fierce pride in her expression. Her own mother had looked at Eli like that as he left for Ranger school. It had been the last time the four of them had been together. Her mother had cried for days after he left. “She looks really proud of you.”

  “She was. I’d just been promoted to chief at the station. She insisted we go on this vacation to the Arctic Circle colonies to celebrate. I hadn’t taken a vacation in ten years, and she said that with the promotion, she was pretty sure I’d never take one again.” He sighed. “She was right, too.”

  “If Cacy was nine, why hadn’t your mother become a Ferry again?”

  “Oh, she had, but they were trying to have another child.” Dec’s chin trembled. “She wanted another baby. She was a really good mom. She had a hard time getting pregnant, though, and then we got the news that she was sick. Cancer. It set in really quickly, like it had been waiting to pounce.”

  “But couldn’t she just go on ‘active duty’ again? Wouldn’t that have made her immortal like she was before?”

  Dec shook his head. “Becoming a Ferry doesn’t heal things that are already broken. It wouldn’t have worked. My dad must have tried. He was desperate to save her, but the course had already been set. She was fated to die, and so she did. Less than a year after this picture was taken.” His voice had become tight.

  Galena put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Dec. I can tell you still miss her.”

  “Yeah. She was the only one in my family who was proud of my decision to become a paramedic. My dad was pissed. He had a position all set up for me in the corporate office. My older brother and sister thought it was a joke. My extended family thought it was embarrassing. But she . . . she . . . I could tell that she wasn’t just being nice or motherly. She was genuinely proud. It meant a lot.” Dec pressed his lips together. “I never expected to lose her like that.”

  “It must have seemed so unfair.” Galena knew the feeling.

  “I was so angry when I found out she was sick, that there was nothing anyone could do. I threw myself into my work, even more than I had before. I didn’t want to think about what was happening. I’ll always regret not going into the Veil to say good-bye to her, but I couldn’t face it. I didn’t think I’d be able to let her go, and I didn’t want to make her feel bad for leaving. It wasn’t like she had a choice.”

  Galena stroked her thumb over his skin. “I miss my mom, too. She and my dad died a few years ago. I can still hear her voice in my head sometimes, telling me I could do anything.”

  “Isn’t it funny how, when your mom or dad tells you that, it’s easy to believe?” Dec set the frame back in its place and carefully closed the lid. He gently smoothed his palm over the top of the box. It was a gesture of reverence, of love, of pain.

  Galena had never thought of dealing with grief
in this way. When her parents had died, she’d put away all their things, sold the house, and moved into a campus apartment. She’d turned her back and walked away. She’d even deleted their pictures, because the sight of them felt like being stabbed in the heart. Now, though, she had nothing of her parents.

  But Dec had handled his sorrow differently. Galena suddenly understood why this picture was in a box. He probably looked at it a lot, but it was too painful to have sitting out, in full view even when he wasn’t ready to look at it. So he kept it near and took it out when he felt strong enough. She looked down at her fingers on his arm, her pale skin over the firm ridges of muscle, the dusting of dark hair. And then she looked up to see him staring, too, a bemused expression on his face. Slowly, he laid his hand over hers.

  They sat like that for a few minutes, barely moving, just breathing. Galena felt no desire to break it down, to analyze it. Because it was so simple: two people and one touch, no demands, no domination, no fear. No fear. God, that was an utter miracle.

  Then something stirred inside her, the oddest sort of pull. Almost like a rope had been tied around her spine and someone was leading her forward. Galena found herself leaning, unable to resist. Her chest brushed Dec’s arm, then pressed against it, then started to push on him. Dec frowned. “Galena?”

  She moved suddenly, like the person who held the rope had given it a sharp tug, and Dec slid right off the couch arm. His hand fell away from hers, but her fingers were clamped over his forearm, balancing her as she crawled over the side of the couch. “Dec,” she gasped. “What’s happening?”

  “What do you feel?”

  “A pull.” She walked in the direction of the yanking sensation, toward the wide windows that looked out over the city. “But I . . .”