“I fought them like an Andarion.”
She squeezed his hand. “Your uncle and father would be proud.”
He smiled at her. “Thank you.” When she started to leave, he took her hand. “Be careful with Dancer, Sumi. I don’t want him to hurt you.”
Her heart hammering over those words, she inclined her head to him then went to check on Dancer. He was bleeding through the bandage on his ribs. She considered stitching it, but the damage was such that she feared he might have internal injuries. Honestly, she didn’t know enough about their anatomy to do anything more than keep his wounds clean and hope that Syn got here soon. The last thing she wanted was to make something worse in her ignorance.
So she did the best she could. As she redressed it, Darice’s words about Dancer’s condition went through her mind. Could Dancer really be dangerous to her?
Over and over, she relived some of Avin’s more choice rage-fits.
Listen with your eyes.
Dancer had done nothing to make her think he would hurt her. Ever. She hadn’t known Keris and she didn’t really know Dariana. And while her sister had been terrified of Fain, Sumi had never seen him act threateningly in any way toward Omira, and she’d stayed with them a good bit.
Fain’s eyes had always been white when she’d seen him. The only red was a very thin band around the outer edge of his iris, which was normal for his race.
I won’t listen to rumor.
Until Dancer did something to make her second-guess his temper, she would keep faith with him.
But even as she had that thought, her old fears rose up to slap her hard. She’d talked herself into a four-year relationship she should have walked on within the first six months.
Please, Dancer, don’t be deceiving me.
The last thing she wanted to do was kill him, too. But no one, not even Dancer, would ever put her through the misery that had been her relationship with Avin.
She would kill him first.
CHAPTER 19
Hauk grimaced in pain. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself still in the camp with the others.
Shit.
He hadn’t meant to stay here. But what stunned him was the sound of laughter. Scowling, he turned to see Thia, Darice, and Sumi enraptured by a story Bastien was telling them.
“So then Fain claps the guy on his back and says, ‘So sorry my common sense offends you. But look on the bright side. In terms of procrastination, we’ve had a remarkably productive day.’”
The laughter died on Sumi’s face as her gaze met Hauk’s. She got up immediately and rushed to his side. But the warmth returned to her features as she felt his forehead. “How you feel?”
“Like a guy who made a pass at Thia and Nyk saw it.”
Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes at him. Then she sucked her breath in sharply before she gently touched his cheek just below his eye. “You have one heck of a shiner. Who was tall enough in that fight to hit your face?”
“He wasn’t. But the board in the bastard’s hands gave him reach.”
Snorting at his humor, she pulled out a bottle of water and then helped him to sip it.
“How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.”
He cursed. “I need to get going.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Sumi…”
“Don’t argue with me. I’m putting my foot down, Dancer. But if you attempt to leave, I’ll be putting it up your ass.”
He laughed then groaned.
Thia and Darice moved to stand behind her. She shoved at Darice. “Told you he wasn’t dead.”
“I knew from the snore he wasn’t dead. I said he was dying.”
Thia made a noise of discontent at Darice before she scowled at Hauk. “Why are your eyes still glowing red, Uncle Hauk?”
His gut drew tight over her question. Damn. They should have stopped that while he slept. The fact that they hadn’t…
He was in deep Andarion shite. “I didn’t know they were.”
She nodded. “They’re very odd. I never knew Andarion eyes did that.”
That’s because it was exceedingly rare for them to glow in the first place. To remain glowing – that only happened one in a hundred billion cases.
Lucky me…
A tic started in Darice’s jaw, but for once his nephew held his tongue.
Bastien brought over a small plate of food and something that appeared to be a root of some kind. “If you took the punches I did, I know it’ll be hard to chew, but… that root will minimize the pain.”
“Thanks.” Hauk set the plate down beside Sumi.
“C’mon, guys,” Bastien said. “Let’s give them some quiet time.”
Darice hesitated before he followed them back to the small fire.
Hauk winced as he tried to chew the meat. Bastien was right. Eating was rough. “I need to go back for Illyse.”
“We already took care of it.” She gestured to the fire where the lorina was curled up and sleeping. “Bastien said you owe him a good night of drinking for the scratches she gave him.” She paused. “Can you really not tell that your eyes are glowing?”
He glanced over to make sure the others weren’t paying any attention to them before he took her hand in his and led it to his swollen groin. When he spoke, his tone was so low that it was barely audible. “I can only tell how much I want to be inside you. Which, given the amount of pain I’m in everywhere else, is ridiculous. Gah, how can I be horny and dying at the same time? It’s not right what you do to me, woman.”
She blushed at his teasing. “Is that,” she dropped her gaze to his groin, which made his cock twitch, “what causes it?”
Hauk hesitated before he answered her. “No, but it is what started it. It’s tied to my adrenaline and vasopressin levels.”
She narrowed her eyes accusingly. “You told me originally that you didn’t know anything about it.”
He wrapped a lock of her hair around his finger. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Why would it scare me?”
Hauk released her hair and swallowed his food. Why would it not? Even though it was a highly sought after trait, it terrified most females he knew of – and they were Andarions who knew and understood it.
His mother was the only exception to that. Once she found out the male Hauks carried the mutation, it’d pissed her off that she’d never been able to induce that kind of devotion from his father. Some of their fights over it while Hauk had lived in their house had been quite nuclear, which probably had a lot to do with his father’s inability to feel that kind of love and devotion for her.
How could anyone love someone who constantly nagged at them and derided them for something they couldn’t help?
He took another sip of water before he answered. “It’s an exceedingly rare condition for the males of my breed. A genetic defect where we overproduce vasopressin once we fall in love with someone. Whenever an Andarion male has it, it’s said that no other female will ever please him – that he can never stray from the one female who causes him to experience it. It’s the ultimate in pair-bonding.”
She drew her knees up to her chin and he saw the fear in her eyes as she watched him closely. But he had no idea why she’d feel such with him. “Does it do anything else?”
“Like?”
“Make you violent?”
His heart wrenched at her question as he finally understood the fear he saw in her gaze. How could she think that of him? “No, mia. It just makes us extremely loyal and protective of the one who makes us feel it.”
“Violently so?”
That sent a wave of anger through him. Not at her, but at the bastard who’d put such terror in her kind heart. “I’m not your ex-boyfriend, Sumi. I would never strike you. Not for any reason. And it doesn’t work that way. It drives us to protect our mate and our children – to the point of suicide. Like today when I saw you bleeding and I went after them with no regard for myself, because they had caused you harm. That rage is part of it, but it’s never directed at the one we love. Only to the ones who threaten her. They’re the ones we beat into the ground. Not our females.”