Chapter 24
Frederique
I could tell that being faced with another Son of Ragnar—because I had no doubt that’s who this male was—was hard for Sin.
Or should I say, Damor? That’s what this man called him.
Was that his real name? I knew I’d asked who he really was when we first met, and he’d denied me, but I couldn’t believe I had never bothered to ask again.
Of course he wasn’t the Sineater; he had a true name beneath that surly, tough exterior and all that armor.
It shamed me that I could profess to love him and not have known that at the same time.
Mandy and Harper slipped out once the conversation turned more private, beyond the simple introduction of names.
Perhaps the captain’s lady had wanted to stick around long enough to make sure Sin would be okay with this visit.
Harper wasn’t ready to go, but she obeyed the light shove out the door readily enough, her curious eyes lingering until the door shut in her face.
That’s when Devan’Car and his extremely imposing symbiont truly got to me.
How massive the black creature—somewhere between a polar bear and a shark—truly was, and how menacing the spiked black armor worn by the Talacan male appeared.
They looked so similar, he and Sin, and yet at the same time, they were worlds apart.
I knew without thinking which of the two I preferred.
“My situation?” Sin asked with that typical, mocking drawl.
It was so full of dark anger and spitefulness, like he couldn’t help but cut with each word so that nobody else could cut him back.
My fingers dug a little harder into his shoulder, and I hoped it was enough of a reminder that I was there, on his side, no matter what.
“Yes, the fluke during bonding that caused the dark quirk,” Devan’Car agreed, heedless of how the words made my mate bristle.
Pain, not anger, because I knew—without having to be told—that he’d internalized all of that throughout the long years and considered it his own failure.
This guy had no clue what kind of wound he was poking at, and it was obvious he had no tact, no bedside manner.
“You vanished before I could properly study the situation, or I might have come up with a solution sooner,” he added, with a good dose of censure in his voice, like it really was Sin’s fault.
Dark quirk? Was that why it always felt like Val soaked up and drew out my sadness and my fear?
Did she feed on that? Nothing in the literature I had on the Sons of Ragnar explained what the Symbiont got out of the equation.
For it to be a symbiotic relationship, the advantage had to be mutual, though—that had been obvious.
Did she feed on feelings? On the energy they generated?
And if it was a dark quirk between Val and Sin, did that mean other symbionts fed on everything? The good and the bad?
My eyes flicked to the big beast, black and hulking.
Val had reached him, and they were nosing at one another.
Big and shimmering black, the bear—with shark-like fins on his shoulders—seemed inordinately gentle, far kinder in the way he responded to the slinky, small, silver-and-black-streaked Val than the Talacan was acting toward my mate.
“And you’ve got a cure now? Do you?” Sin responded, his voice so cold it could give frostbite.
He didn’t believe it for a minute, didn’t want to hope.
I didn’t blame him. Seven hundred years believing this couldn’t change…
this had to be hard. It was so hard he couldn’t even talk to me about it.
It brought a sting of pain, followed by a whole lot of empathy.
That wasn’t a rejection of me; those were patterns he had to unlearn, and he was.
And that was good enough. I might not have been a believer once, but I knew now that the mate bond was far more than biological. I had faith in him, in us.
Devan did not answer immediately but cocked his head to study Val and her strangely streaked appearance.
“It appears I’ve come at exactly the right time.
I’ll need a lab to work from, but yes, I do believe I can…
reinitialize the establishment of the bond the right way.
” He swept his hand between Val and Sin to indicate which bond he was referring to.
“Data indicated that during your bonding there was a power surge, an uncorroborated fluke. When it happened again, I could be more certain.”
“It happened again?” Sin asked faintly. The idea was clearly so abysmal to him that his shock could not be hidden.
“Some other poor guy got dealt the same hand I did?” he asked.
He appeared to struggle to comprehend that, and relating the situation to something as random as a power surge meant it wasn’t anything he’d failed to do, just something he’d had the bad luck to be a victim of.
If there was one thing I knew, it was that Sin could not handle that kind of thinking easily.
He might have had rotten luck in life, but he was not a victim—he could not think of himself that way.
“Not he,” Devan said, either choosing not to respond or truly oblivious to Sin’s surprise. “She. I have not yet been able to fix her bond with her symbiont.” The words trailed off when Sin abruptly launched to his feet and snarled.
“Her? Are you saying there are female pairings now? And you’re just here to see me so you can help her, that’s it?
I’m a stepping stone? How did you even find me?
I made damn sure to vanish, to never leave a trace, to never…
” He trailed off, because he did not need to finish that.
It was sad, lonely—the life he’d led—all so that he could keep himself separate from the world he’d once belonged to.
At least now, Devan seemed to know that he was touching some very raw nerves.
Perhaps he was not as cold and calculating as I’d first given him credit for.
He slowly rose from his seat as well, and the two faced off, equally tall, equally imposing.
Devan spoke very gently, though, the way you might to a spooked animal.
“No, her situation just reminded me of my failure to you, Damor. It was sheer luck that an article by one Harper O’Neill drifted into the Alpha Quadrant and talked of the great crew of the Varakartoom.
I would never have found you otherwise.”
An article by Harper… Sin’s eyes went from the Son of Ragnar to me, huge, silver, and so incredulous that it was almost comical.
I reached for his hand and gently curled my fingers around it, squeezing when I realized just how cold and clammy those strong digits were.
“I guess you got lucky this once, Sin,” I said to him.
Then I realized what I’d said and backtracked, “I mean, Damor…” I hadn’t meant for that to sound like I was upset with him for not sharing his real name, but that was clearly how he took it.
He twisted, turning his back on his guest, wanted, unwanted; on that, the jury was still out.
Pulling his hand free, he reached for me, cupping my face with both palms. “I’ve not been that male in so long…
I would have told you if I thought it mattered.
But you’re wrong. I’ve been lucky before.
” He leaned closer and pressed his forehead to mine, shutting out the world around us.
“I was extremely lucky when I found your stasis pod, for instance.”
The room felt warmer after those words, which I knew were as good as a declaration of love coming from him.
He wasn’t done yet, though, and heedless of the stranger as our audience, he soldiered on.
“I was extremely lucky when you decided not to let me run and hide. Lucky when you tempted me with a future so bright I couldn’t look away.
So lucky, Frederique, when you showed me what was right here, in my heart.
” He tapped his chest with a fist. “I love you, my mate.”
I was not the type to cry easily, but tears were definitely spilling down my cheeks then.
The words stuck in my throat for once. He kissed me, his expression softer than I’d ever seen it.
Then he had the gall to push me over the edge by turning to Val and saying, his voice hoarse, “And I was lucky bonding with you, Val. No matter what it put us through. You know that, right?”
I was pretty sure that even the gruff Devan was not unaffected by the scene we’d just made.
He had stepped back, giving us space, and curled a fist deep into the scruffy fur on the back of his hulking symbiont.
Val had returned to us, curling her slinky, oversized Riho body against us and purring loudly.
“Yes,” Devan’Car said when the silence stretched. Sin held me tight against his chest, his body relaxing in a way I could not ever recall him doing before. “I believe I came at just the right time. Your mating bond might be the very key we were missing. Now, a lab?”
It was several hours later—and after a lot of prodding and testing—before Sin and I could finally withdraw to our home on the ship.
His rooms had been a safe haven while I grieved and adjusted to life in a future seven hundred years beyond the Earth I’d known.
After the Davidson thing had invaded, that peace had been shattered, and I needed my mate and his symbiont at my side to reassure me that home was still real.