. . . Truffles continues

8

HOW COULD MORGAN know about that Tuli? Had he tracked down every being involved that day? Followed trails of hapless bystanders as well as those to blame? Why?

I slammed down my barriers until only our link remained. How he knew—why he knew—wasn’t important. I seethed inwardly. How dare he compare our experiences? The Tulis—I could still feel their paws groping over my flesh, the remembrance strong enough to raise bumps on my skin and speed my pulse. They’d examined me as if I’d been so much meat being shipped.

“It wasn’t Olsi. Remember that, too.”

Slowly, I let myself meet the gaze of those remarkable blue eyes, see the daunting patience in them. The shared anguish. The bone-deep understanding. My kind didn’t believe you could read a face. Didn’t bother, when Clan emotions flooded the M’hir and couldn’t be hidden from the more powerful. But this face, Morgan’s . . . I traced the line of his jaw with my fingertips, watched him swallow, those eyes darken . . . this I knew better than my own.

What that expression asked of me?

To admit the truth, to myself as much as to him. “I’m not who I was,” I said slowly. “I don’t know how to let go of what happened. Where it happened. Who did it to me.” The words came out too low to be heard over the music, the voices of strangers, but Morgan gave a barely perceptible nod.

“We won. Such anxiety is irrational.” I scowled. I shouldn’t fear an entire species. Tulis. Scats. My own kind. The Retians—I’M STRONGER THAN THIS!

I’m not. With terrible grief.

Shaken, I answered instinct and dropped my barriers. Even as I reached for my Chosen, I found him already present. Even as our minds and hearts sought one another . . .

We were found.

Me, seeing Morgan’s hunt for answers, for the complete picture of what had happened to me, to us both. Needing to know why. Needing to be ready, if we were threatened again.

Him, seeing how I’d tried to bury my horror and dismay, having no time to spare for either. Needing to be strong, for my people and myself. Needing to prepare, for we would be threatened again, and the cost? Now doubled, for we were Chosen and would die as one.

Timeless, that sharing. Over between two beats of the nearest music. We eased away but not apart, and I found myself at peace. Almost.

First, we both had to hurry out of the way of a Festor who stumbled toward an unsuspecting plant only to regurgitate a stream of green fluid. The being made a happy noise and headed back from where it had come, presumably in search of more. The plant sank into black goo.

There was nothing to do but laugh. “We had to come to Plexis,” I complained once I caught my breath.

His lips twitched in that half-grin I loved. “Everyone does.”