Chapter 10 #2
That weighed on him most heavily. It was so different from the chakana experience, which had been sexual and intimate, a mutual discovery.
Getting zapped, being forced into his eagle form without his consent, had been almost the same, but it had twisted inside him until it felt dark and disrespectful, a violation.
He reached out, his fingers gently tracing the line of her jaw. Her eyes fluttered open, dark and immediate.
His instinct was to deflect, to smooth it over with humor. "Hey," he started, his voice rough. "Show me your hands."
She flinched, a subtle recoil that was worse than a slap. "Don't do that," she said, her voice quiet but firm. "Don't try to be charming or deflect me.” Her eyes glittered.
She'd been crying. He could see it at the edges, the slight redness she hadn't let progress to ruin.
While he had checked out, she'd cried quietly beside him, he was sure of it, and that wrecked him in the worst way.
“You need to be here in this moment with me.
We have things that need to be discussed.
Promise me, you'll be serious. I need that now, Jae. "
The use of his first name, the raw plea in her voice, stripped away every defense. He nodded slowly. "Okay. babe. Will you move closer, and let me hold you?"
“Not yet…I don’t deserve that yet.”
He clenched his jaw, working at keeping his body still. He exhaled, accepting her answer, even though he hated it. "How long?" he said. His voice came out rough.
She looked at her watch. “Oh, God. Twelve hours."
He registered that. He'd lost twelve hours.
"The team."
"Settled. The estate's staff have taken care of them. They’ve eaten, and I had them on standby for when you woke up.
Easy, Twister, and North sacked out in the east wing.
Fly is doing his Fly stuff, dozing now and again.
My father's in his study and won’t come up to disturb us.
" She murmured, her gaze going over his face with an aching, haunted sweep, her dark lashes thick and framing her eyes.
"He knows you're here. He doesn't know what you are to me. I haven't been ready to explain it."
The not-yet-explained sat between them.
He took a slow breath in. His ribs ached in the specific way ribs ached after he'd pushed his channel past sustainable limits.
He could feel where the eagle had ripped out of him in the glade.
The bird hadn't asked permission to leave his body and wasn't asking permission to be carried back inside it.
He could feel the wing-shape lying along his back like a stranger he'd agreed to share a bed with.
"The eagle…you changed me," he said. Not accusing. Just naming.
"I did."
He waited.
She hadn't looked away from his face since he'd opened his eyes. He watched her find the words. He watched her decide to say the hard version instead of the easy one.
"I forced you," she said quietly. "I didn't mean to. The font opened to me when I refused the phantom. The power found the fracture between us. I felt it go through. I felt it hit you. I knew what was happening to you before it happened, and I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry."
He accepted the apology, her words releasing that tight place in his chest.
His first instinct was to wave it off. To make a joke. To tell her the eagle had been waiting to come out for a year, and she'd just done him the favor of finally pulling the cork. He had the deflection ready to deliver before he'd decided whether to deliver it.
But he had made a promise, and he enjoyed the heat of her palm that was still on his chest.
“Thank you for being serious,” she whispered, acknowledging that his knee-jerk reaction had been curbed. He wanted her to know he heard her, without making it any easier on her. That he'd taken her apology at the weight she'd given it.
"Killa," he said. "I'm not blaming you."
"I know."
"I want you to hear me when I say it. I'm not blaming you. The font pulled the eagle into battle. It was protecting you. I can’t argue with that.
The fracture made the channel. Severance made the moment.
You didn't choose any of that. The fact that the current went through you doesn't make you the one who fired it. Do you hear me?"
Her jaw worked once.
"I hear you."
"Do you believe me?"
She hesitated, so not like her. He watched her find her honesty. "Not fully," she said. "I will."
He let that stand.
He hadn't earned full belief from her yet on this. He hadn't yet shown her enough non-coercive presence to make her trust his absolution. He filed her I will as a credit he'd have to earn against.
"How did we get here?" he asked.
“I opened a corridor. It was so easy. I was surprised I haven’t done it before.” She described everything, and he was sorry he’d been unconscious.
“Your corridor. I felt what you were feeling.”
The words punched her in the face like a body blow she hadn't braced for. He watched her ribs catch. Her hand fisted against his chest.
"You felt it."
"All of it."
He went still.
He'd thought he was carrying the team alone through the fold.
He'd thought his interior was sealed inside the channel and the channel was only one direction.
He'd been performing restraint, exhaustion, the active work of not chasing her, and he'd been doing it on the assumption that no one inside the threads could see.
She'd been inside him.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I refused your arm.
I thought I was protecting you. The threads showed me I wasn't. The threads showed me what it cost you to keep carrying me anyway.
I've been hurting you, and I've been calling the hurting protection, and the cosmos used your own slip corridor to make me feel what I'd done. "
Her ribs lifted and lowered in a breath that didn't steady her.
She kept her face composed, holding the apology in her own body the way she'd been holding everything in her own body since the flashback fucked them over, with the discipline of a woman who'd spent thirty years learning how to function alone.
“Can I hold you now?” he asked again, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn't name. “Please, babe, before I start crying like a goddamned baby.”