Grim
I shook my subconscious like a Pegasus shaking wet wings. Never had I experienced a stronger psych than the fragile female lying before me. Her power was immense, almost too immense for the body that held it, uncontrolled, a fire flashing like hungry tongues set to devour. Her life had fueled emotions even she couldn’t understand—abandoned, unloved, unnoticed. Her fear was as powerful as her hopelessness, creating a force that would take a will of iron to control. I only hoped hers proved strong enough.
Eyeing the door, I sent a message straight to Sun. Seconds later the door opened and the two shifters entered.
Two pairs of guarded eyes turned on me. I smiled, a hard, brittle twist of my lips I knew they could see below the hood that had ridden up until it only concealed the upper half of my face. Sun was the closest thing I had to a brother, and still I wanted to pop the male upside the head and tell him to get it together. Instead I let my smile speak for me. Kat was the first known female Archai born outside the clans in centuries. Nothing mattered but her, certainly not a my-balls-are-bigger-than-yours contest between two males stuck in the distant past.
Only Kat. Her future. Her safety. Her hope. She needed it badly.
“Well?”
Always the challenger, aren’t you, Arik?
Arik shifted his gaze from me to the bed. Following that look, I watched my own fingers stroke absently across the female’s forehead, a kind of detached bewilderment filling me. I’d never been tempted to make the soul-deep connection of a matebond, but when Kat had reached for me…I’d been tempted. She tempted me. She inspired a male to want to protect her, care for her. She wasn’t the one for me, though—no female was.
But I wasn’t the only male in this room, was I?
Arik stalked around the end of the bed, his body vibrating with barely leashed emotion, his animal restless, uneasy. He stopped at Kat’s side, and when I raised my head, Arik chuffed his displeasure.
With a faint grin, I withdrew my hand. “Kat’s strong when she wants to be. Her recovery is now just a matter of time. One moonrise, maybe two.”
“Kat?” Sun asked.
“Her name,” I said, amused. A Kat belonging to a cat. The griffin would love that. “Sleep is the best thing right now. And blood; she needs the nutrients. I’ve built some barriers to block the drain of her gift and provide a foundation for her own wards, but it will take time for the new connections to her psych pathways to heal. And this as well.” I indicated her neck with a nod of my head. Cramped from bending over the female for so long, I stood, stretching the muscles along my spine.
“And her gift?”
I frowned, the greed saturating the griffin’s voice stiffening my spine. Call it auras, psychic landscapes, whatever, I always got a sense of the people around me, and what I sensed in Arik was a cold, hard plane of nothingness. The only spikes on that plane were his anger at Sun, and Kat. Arik watched the female with possession. Desire, interest, they were there too, along with something else I couldn’t quite define, but that sense of the female belonging to Arik, the same as a car or a sword, drowned out the rest. Like the taste of blood in my mouth, it overwhelmed all else until only that flavor remained. I didn’t like it.
“It won’t be easy. She’s volatile, powerful, certainly more so than any talent I’ve seen in generations. Training her will be…difficult.” Without the right incentives. Kat would respond well to being needed, being cared for; her soul would blossom. Without it, she’d be right back where she’d been with the humans, and her soul would likely die.
“What exactly is her gift?” Sun asked.
I shrugged, searching my mind for the feel I’d gotten of her psych pathways. “I’m not sure I understand entirely, but best guess, I’d say she wields her emotions as others wield weapons.”
Arik visibly fought a shudder. “Emotions?”
Yes, remember those? Watching Arik’s gaze wander over Kat’s unconscious form, I thought the shifter might remember them better than he wanted to. “Mmm. When she attacked earlier, it felt like a knife slicing into my skin, but I sensed only overwhelming fear. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, necessarily. She wanted to defend herself, and she struck out the only way she could.”
“A defense?” Arik asked, that unidentifiable something coating the words.
“Yes.”
Sun narrowed his eyes. “Feelings come and go easily. They can’t all be deadly.”
I shook my head. “I’m not saying I understand it. If she did, perhaps I could read it, but she’s clueless as to what has happened to her. Intent may be a factor, and it’s possible she can send good as well as bad emotions, so to speak. As she grows in strength and control, some of that power might morph into other capabilities; who knows? But control is an absolute must; otherwise she’s as much a danger to herself as she is to others.”
Arik eyed me suspiciously. “But she will heal?”
I returned the look, testing the male. “She will. Definitely. She would heal faster and have more control, however, if she was bonded.”
A wave of revulsion washed across the telepathic landscape between us, so strong I had no doubt the griffin wasn’t even aware his wards had failed. Arik might want Kat, but not as a mate. What then? Just sex?
“It doesn’t have to be you,” I said, each word laid carefully, deliberately. “There are any number of males who would give their—”
“I don’t care what they’d give,” Arik barked. “None of them will come near her, you got me?”
I studied the male. Arik’s hand encircled Kat’s wrist, the grip firm but not crushing. He isn’t even aware he’s touching her. I stared a moment longer, wondering, weighing, before a slight smile curved my lips. “I understand. For now, she’ll sleep.” I flicked my fingers at the floor. “Might as well make yourselves comfortable.”