Chapter 5 #2
Aiden exhales and drags a hand over his head.
He starts to speak, probably another question I do not want to answer, but I am already moving.
I pull the chair from the corner of the room and set it beside the bed, close enough to count her heartbeats.
Close enough that if she wakes and tries to run, I will catch her before her feet touch the floor.
The bruise is spreading, darkening in real time, purple bleeding beneath brown skin and swelling her cheekbone until her left eye is nearly shut.
The cut inside her mouth has stopped bleeding, but I can still smell it, copper and salt layered beneath the rain-washed earth and wild honey that pours off her skin.
My Bouda pushes forward at the scent, pressing against the walls of my head, straining toward the smell of home wrapped in the body of a woman who does not even know my name.
I reach out and press my palm to her forehead. Her skin is cool beneath my fingertips, too cool, and I pull the blanket higher around her shoulders. My thumb traces the edge of the damaged cheek without pressing. She does not stir.
Careful, my Bouda whispers. She is fragile. Human bones are not made to hit concrete at that speed.
I know because I watched it happen, and I was not fast enough.
Do not. She ran because she was afraid. You did not push her. That guilt is not yours.
I did not catch her either, and my Bouda goes quiet. There is nothing to say to that.
Kade returns in a curl of black smoke, plastic bag dangling from one hand, the logo of a twenty-four-hour pharmacy printed on the side. She sets it on the nightstand and pulls out ice packs, gauze, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a tube of something I do not recognize.
“Arnica gel,” she says, tossing it onto the bed. “For the swelling. Humans use it.”
She leans over the bed and studies my mate, tilting her head one way, then the other. The teasing leaves her.
“That cheekbone might be fractured.” Kade straightens and rolls up her sleeve. “Let me give her some of my blood. A few drops and she heals before she wakes. Nothing to explain in the morning.”
My Bouda erupts with a roar of NO before the last word leaves Kade’s mouth, surging forward so hard my vision flickers amber and my Ridge calcifies, the blades pressing into the back of the chair.
A snarl rips from my throat, low and vicious, vibrating through the room hard enough to rattle the lamp on the nightstand.
Kade does not flinch. She raises an eyebrow like she has heard worse from bigger predators, and she has.
“No.” I force the word through clenched teeth, my claws sinking into the armrests of the chair. “No vampire blood in my mate. Not a single drop.”
“Kojo, it’s just…”
“I said no.” I am on my feet before I finish the sentence, my body between Kade and the bed. “I will not have her waking up with the blood of a vampire in her body. She is Bouda, and she is mine. She heals on her own, or I tend to her myself.”
Kade holds my gaze, jaw tight, then rolls her sleeve back down without argument.
“Fine.” She lifts both hands, palms out. “Your mate, your call. But if that cheekbone is fractured, she’s going to be in pain when she wakes up.”
“Then I will manage her pain.”
“With what, your winning personality?” Kade smirks, but she steps back from the bed. The teasing is back, and that is how I know she trusts me to handle it. She only goes quiet when the situation is beyond saving.
I settle back into the chair and crack one of the ice packs, wrapping it in a strip of gauze before pressing it gently against the swollen cheek.
She flinches in her sleep, a small sound escaping her lips, and my Bouda loses it.
The whine that tears through me is so loud I have to close my eyes through it.
Easy, brother. She is here and breathing, and we will fix this.
Kade watches me work from the foot of the bed, her head tilted. I can feel the question forming before she speaks.
“Do you even know her name?”
My thumb strokes the curve of her jaw, holding the ice pack steady. Her pulse flutters under my palm, quick and warm. I watch her eyes move beneath closed lids, her mouth twitching, her brows pulled tight. She is dreaming, and the dream is not kind to her.
I do not know her name. Where she was born, what makes her laugh, what she eats for breakfast, whether she sings when she thinks nobody is listening. All of it is blank.
But her scent is already burned into me. The sound of her heartbeat, how she sprayed that chemical at a man twice her size and told him no with a gun pressed to her head. Nobody fights like that unless life taught them to. My Bouda wants to tear apart every lesson.
“Not yet.” My voice comes out wrecked. I did not expect that.
“I will learn everything about her when she wakes. Every scar and every story behind it.” I adjust the ice pack, and the crease between her brows smooths out.
“And then I will spend the rest of mine making certain she never has a reason to run from me again.”
Kade is quiet for a long time. When I glance at her, the grin is gone.
“Alright, Kojo. It looks like we’re going to be traveling in this storm. I’ll grab the truck and be back in an hour.” She points at me. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
When she turns to Aiden, her tone shifts.
“She’s not going to understand why she’s being kept here when she wakes up. Just try to keep her calm and don’t let her leave.” She flicks her gaze to me, then back to Aiden. “Kojo will leave a trail of bodies through this city to keep her close. You understand what I’m saying?”
Aiden swallows hard. “Yeah, I understand.” Then Kade teleports away again, and Aiden coughs and fans away the fading trail of black smoke she leaves behind.
I set the ice pack aside and take her hand. Her fingers are small and cold, nails short, no polish. Working hands. I close my palm around hers and let my heat seep into her skin, watching the color return to her fingertips.
She is going to be furious when she wakes, my Bouda observes. I know. She will scream, curse, try to run again. I know that too. Good. I like her fire, and a queen should have fire.
I press her hand against my chest, right over the place where the bond burns hottest, and I wait.