Chapter 15
Vessa
Vessa lost time in the aftermath of their apocalypse.
In their exhaustion, there were no more sharp words or weapons to be used. No more energy for fury or bitterness. All that remained were their vulnerabilities with no armor to protect them.
Kedar cleaned her while whispering into her flesh devotion and regrets she only caught pieces of. His fangs grazed her as his tongue traveled over small cuts she’d sustained. His hands were everywhere, gripping and exploring.
Then he held her without reservation. Without needing to accomplish anything other than touching her. He held her like this was what he’d been hunting for these last seven years.
Vessa had yearned for it, too. Even as she hated him. Why else had she never let anyone in? Her face was buried against his neck, and she breathed in his scent. It was night moss and salt, sanctuary and home. It had always been him. It always would be.
But it couldn’t last.
“I owe you the truth,” Kedar rumbled.
She propped herself up on his chest. Those violet eyes she’d dreamed of more than she cared to admit took her in. Every time he looked at her, he searched her face like it was she who had worn a mask all this time. “And I need to hear it.”
Kedar’s calloused fingertips, which had been tracing the length of her spine, stilled against her.
His jaw ticked before he gave her a slight nod.
“That night, seven cycles ago, some hot helmets had returned from the Great Hunt and were being welcomed into the clan. When the alarms sounded that something had happened, that there were intruders, most of the clan had more brew in their veins than blood. I barely drank, as my mind was elsewhere. So, I was the first to respond. Two unmasked youths who’d been guarding an armory were ambushed.
They were badly wounded, but they could speak. ”
Kedar took a deep breath, his chest rising beneath her. “They were attacked by four Seken warriors from your faction, who then stole some of our weapons.”
Vessa covered her mouth with her hand. The truth of it was in his eyes, dripped from his words. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. Did she have it all wrong? Had she blamed Kedar when it was her faction who’d spilled blood first?
“I know you didn’t, Ves,” he murmured, running his warm, calloused hand down the length of her spine.
“But an enemy coming into our territory and harming two youths who hadn’t even earned armor?
It couldn’t stand. The qon wanted to use it.
He would wait and strategize, but this gave him reason for war.
To take your faction’s territory. No High Seken Council could condemn it as it was Sekens who had struck first.”
“I don’t understand, though,” she murmured. “If he wanted to wait, why were you there that night?”
Kedar brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and over her naked shoulder.
His fingertips glided against her flesh with such solemn gentleness, like it would be the last time he could ever do such a thing.
“I knew it was Nikel who led the attack. I could smell him.” His nostrils flared, and his lip curled up to expose his fangs.
“His scent was known to me. I’d sensed it on you the moment you began sparring and taking meals with him. I wanted his death.”
Realization struck Vessa hard as her stomach dropped. “Tell me you didn’t want to kill Nikel because of what he would become to me.”
He flattened his palm against her back, pressed her into him.
“I was incensed. Fury was my guide, bloodshed my oath. I only thought of tearing him to shreds. He spilled Xaal blood, but more importantly, he did not deserve you. And you didn’t deserve to be made a brood mother when we both know you never wanted that. ”
Her heart raced. Kedar’s face blurred in her vision. All this time, she had assumed that he’d been ordered to fight that night, but he’d chosen it. Elder Nerra had told her it was her fault Kedar attacked.
She shook her head. “No,” she breathed. “You…”
Predicting her need to flee, he banded an arm around her back.
“The truth,” he reminded her, though his voice was rougher now.
Sadder. “I brought two others with me, Sorr and Qed. We were cloaked, but Nikel was waiting. He had his own plan for that night, and I was too blinded by bloodlust to see it. I challenged him, and that coward smiled at me. There were others waiting on his signal. It was a blood-damned ambush, and all of it a scheme to look as if we had attacked first. Nikel wanted to start a war.”
“I don’t care about what Nikel wanted. He had no loyalty to me.
You did,” Vessa said, pushing an accusatory finger into his chest. “You knew the moment you set foot on faction territory that it was an act of war. You should have come to me first. Told me everything. I’d have made you see reason.
We could have set up a meeting with the Elders and your qon or dealt with Nikel quietly.
But you wanted it. You wanted the bloodshed.
” She slammed a fist against his chest. “I trusted you, Kedar. More than anyone else.”
“You’re right, I wanted to destroy Nikel. Needed to, even,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I also did it because if I killed the perpetrators, my clan couldn’t make a war out of it. I may have been led by rage, but I swear on my hearts, I did it for you.”
“Stop saying that! It wasn’t for me,” she hissed. “Do you know how much guilt I have from that night? That I couldn’t do more, that I didn’t kill you. I would never have done that to you. I would never have put you in such a situation.”
“Nevskol,” he bit out. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t realize what I have done to you? To your faction? I know I fucked everything up for us that night and—”
“For us?” She forced a harsh laugh through her trembling lips. “There was no us.”
The look of devastation on his face mirrored exactly how she felt. “Ves, please, listen to me. I—”
“No,” she rasped. “Let me go. I need to go.” Now. Dawn was coming, the blizzard was gone. She had no reason to stay. Vessa pushed herself up, and Kedar’s grip tensed around her waist for the briefest of moments.
But then he let her go.
She didn’t spare him a glance, not even for one last fill of his face, as she stood and stepped over him.
It was so much worse this way. Hurt worse. She was unraveled. All the years she’d shoved the pain down had been meaningless. For here it was, wounds exposed and opened. Raw. Bleeding.
She pulled a hydration pack from his bag and drank it down.
Her body was sore and ached from their violent deeds.
Matching bruises from his hips marked the insides of her thighs.
The gash on her hip was crusted with dried blood.
It would make trudging through snow painful, but she had survived much worse before.
When she was dressed in her original suit, there was no more putting him off. She wasn’t a coward and wouldn’t become one now.
Turning, she found him staring at her with such anguish her heart ached in turn.
Like calling to like. But gods, he was a vision.
He’d put on his pants and boots, but his bare chest bore her markings—crescent gouges from her nails and the abstract design she’d made with her pin blade.
Something flashed through her at the sight, but she pushed it down and down until she couldn’t feel anything. Just the cold.
“Ves.” There were questions in his tone. Uncertainty.
“I’m leaving now,” she said, pulling every emotion from her voice until it didn’t even sound like her.
He shook his head. “Then I’ll follow.”
“Nothing has changed. Just stop.”
“We—” He let out a frustrated growl. “You can’t just leave. Not now.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “What do you want from me, Kedar? Haven’t you taken enough from me?”
Vessa watched as the words hit him like throwing daggers. He took a step back, the blows too great. His four fangs flashed, his naked brow furrowed. “And what about what I’ve lost?”
“And what have you lost? Your honor? So have I, and—”
“I lost you!” he roared.
Air left her lungs in a gasp.
He swiped a hand through his dark hair, his chest heaving. “Do you know why I hand-made you the plasma dirk?”
“I don’t know. Because I was like a bruvya to you?” It was all she could manage with constricted lungs.
“Bruvya,” he scoffed. He shook his head as his hand flexed in and out of a fist, putting every vein of his forearm on display.
“I didn’t spend a year crafting the perfect blade—pouring myself into it, even using elements of my own armor, and hunting down the exact Minad jewels that mimicked your favorite view of the forest—because I wanted you as a fucking comrade.
I wanted you. All of you. As my mate, my partner.
Stars, even as my actual bruvya. I wanted every morning with you, every night.
Every single one of your smiles, and every venomous word.
And if I could earn it, be worthy enough, I wanted your heart. You were everything to me.”
Heat rushed through her veins, her head spun. A lump formed in her throat. “But you never said anything,” she rasped. “What am I supposed to do with this now?”
“I thought about telling you a thousand times. Every second of every setting. I knew I would lose you, and then I fucking lost you anyway.” He laughed, but it was humorless.
For the first time, she saw just how broken he was.
It was in every tightened muscle, came out in every single word he spoke.
It was written all over his beautiful face.