Chapter 10
RECOVERING
DESTINY
The next few weeks were hard.
Mom was stronger than any of us expected, but healing after twenty years of a forced bond wasn't gentle.
I watched Gran work over her with the calm precision of someone who understood she wasn't simply treating an illness. She was helping a body remember itself.
The forced bond fought back.
Three times during the first week, Mom's fever returned. Her body shook so hard the bed rattled beneath her. She would wake drenched in sweat, crying without words, as though twenty years of borrowed instincts were finally leaving her one painful breath at a time.
Papa Ev never left.
Gran came and went with fresh herbs, fresh teas, and the same steady confidence that made even the hardest days feel survivable.
I had learned a long time ago that every room needs something.
This one needed someone who stayed.
So I stayed.
Every morning, I sat beside her bed. Sometimes she was awake. Sometimes she wasn't. It didn't matter. I wasn't there to measure progress. I was there so she would never wake alone again.
On the fourth day, Gran cleared her to go outside.
I wheeled her to the lake and quietly set up two easels.
She looked at the water for a long time before picking up a brush.
At first, she painted nothing recognizable. Just color. Movement. Light. Like she was trying to paint herself back together.
So, I painted too.
We didn't need words.
Two weeks later, it had become our routine.
Meditation. Herbs. Tea. Gran's morning assessment. If her temperature held, we painted by the lake.
Without ever being asked, Ty started bringing lunch every afternoon. Always something Mom could eat and something he somehow knew I needed before I even knew it.
Some evenings, Gran settled Mom between the herb beds, insisting that healing happened faster where things were growing. Other nights, we sat in Sage's shop with warm tea as Mom slowly remembered happier parts of herself.
Ten days in, she watched me rinse a brush.
"You were the easiest baby," she said.
I kept rinsing the brush and waited.
"You hardly cried. Only when you needed something. And the moment you had it..." A small smile touched her lips. "...you stopped."
I looked down at the water swirling through the paint cup.
Even then.
Already conserving.
"Were you..." I swallowed. "Before everything happened... were you happy?"
She didn't hesitate.
"The happiest I'd ever been."
She looked across the lake.
"You were wanted, Destiny. From the moment I knew you existed." Her eyes found mine. "Nothing that happened afterward changes that. You were always my daughter."
The colors on my canvas blurred.
I blinked until they came back into focus.
Mom reached over and covered my hand with hers. Her grip was still weak. But it was there. We painted.
I talked about Sage the way I had never talked to anyone about her. Not the facts of our bond, but its texture, what it had meant to have one constant over the years when everything else was provisional.
"She found me when I was five," I said, smiling despite myself. "We were at the same school. She'd only been there a few weeks, but she walked up to me as she'd already decided we were going to be friends."
Dana laughed softly. "And what did you do?"
"I told her I didn't need friends."
"What did Sage say?"
"That she didn't need my permission."
I shook my head.
"Then a couple of older girls decided we'd be easy targets. We ended up back-to-back before either of us knew the other's last name." I looked across the lake. "We've been standing that way ever since."
Dana smiled, her brush moving slowly across the canvas.
"That's all, Senya, and I ever wanted," she said quietly. "For the two of you to have what we had. Someone who always turns toward you instead of away."
For a while, only the sound of our brushes filled the silence.
"And Ty?" she asked.
I stared at the water.
"He's..." I searched for a word that felt big enough. "Steady."
She waited.
"He keeps showing up." My voice was quieter now. "Every time I expect him to pull back... he doesn't. Every time I give him another reason to leave... he stays."
"That scares you."
"It does."
I set my brush down.
"My whole life, everything that made me feel safe eventually disappeared. Foster homes. People. Stability." I swallowed. "You learn to survive that by never needing too much."
Dana reached over and rested a hand against mine.
"And now you've met a man who's asking you to need him."
I nodded once.
"I don't know how."
She smiled with a sadness only a mother could carry.
"Oh, baby... that's because you've spent your whole life learning how to survive. No one ever taught you how to be loved."
The words settled somewhere deep inside me.
"I hold pieces back," I admitted. "Not because I don't love him. Because I do. More than I know what to do with." I looked down at my hands. "If I give him all of me... and somehow lose him... I don't trust it not to cost me."
"You think you'll lose yourself too."
I didn't answer.
I didn't have to.
Dana rubbed slow circles across my back.
"Listen to me, Destiny." Her voice was gentle yet certain. "Love always asks us to risk something. That will never change. But Ty isn't asking you to become someone else. He's asking you to trust that he'll be there to catch you when you fall."
I stared at the unfinished painting.
"I want to believe that, but until I know for certain... he won't get all of me."
Her hand squeezed mine.
I didn't know someone had been standing behind us long enough to hear every word.
***
TYRELL
I had been standing at the top of the lakeside path for four minutes.
I came down at the usual time, lunch balanced in one hand, just as it had been every day for the last two weeks. Soup for Dana. A sandwich for Destiny, because she'd been so focused on her mother that she kept forgetting she had a body that needed taking care of, too.
Then I heard her voice.
I stopped.
Kai went quiet inside me. Not restless. Not protective. Just as still water becomes still when something heavy sinks into it.
"I don't trust it not to cost me."
The words settled somewhere I couldn't immediately reach.
The truth was, none of it surprised me. I'd known from the beginning that loving Destiny meant loving a woman who had spent her entire life preparing for loss.
I knew it the first week she moved into my quarters, when she quietly placed knives around the room without realizing I had noticed.
I knew it through the nightmares, through the months it took before she could sleep beside me without waking in a panic, through every instinct that told her to calculate an exit before she allowed herself to enjoy where she was.
I'd always understood it.
Understanding it wasn't the same as hearing her say it out loud.
"And until I do... he won't get all of me."
I stood there another moment, letting the words find their place inside me. Then I picked up the tray and continued down the path because Dana still needed lunch, and I wasn't about to let a woman recovering from twenty years of hell miss a meal over something that belonged between Destiny and me.
The gravel shifted beneath my boots.
Destiny looked up immediately.
I watched her read my face the way she always did, searching for information before words arrived. It took less than a second for something to change in her expression.
She knew.
I couldn't have explained how.
She just knew.
I set the tray beside the easel.
"Brought lunch."
My voice was steady enough to pass.
Dana smiled up at me. "Thank you, son."
That word still did something to me every time.
"Always."
I looked back at Destiny.
"Stay for lunch?" she asked carefully.
I held her eyes for a second before answering.
"Nah. I'm good."
It wasn't cold. It wasn't sharp. Just honest.
"I'll see you tonight."
I turned and started back toward the compound.
By the time I reached the top of the path, I stopped without thinking.
The morning sun warmed my face, but Kai stayed quiet, sitting with the same ache that had settled into both of us.
I had spent a year believing I was slowly becoming the safest place in her world.
Standing there, I realized she still saw me through the same lens she'd learned to survive with long before I met her.
The gravel shifted behind me.
I knew her footsteps before she spoke.
She came to stand beside me, and for a while neither of us said anything.
"You heard me."
It wasn't a question.
"I did."
I looked at her then.
"I've never asked you to move faster than you were ready to. I've never pushed you for more than you could give me because I knew every step you've taken toward me cost you something, and I wanted you to know I'd still be here when you were ready to take the next one."
I rubbed a hand across my jaw, searching for words I'd never imagined having to say.
"But standing up there..." I looked back toward the lake before looking back at her. "Listening to you talk about loving me like it's something you're already preparing to survive... that hurt in a way I wasn't ready for."
She didn't interrupt.
"I know why you're afraid. I really do. I never expected you to wake up one morning and forget everything that happened before I was born.
But somewhere along the way..." I let out a slow breath.
"I guess I thought I'd earned enough of your trust that, when you pictured your future, I wasn't already another person you were bracing yourself to lose. "
The silence between us wasn't uncomfortable.
It was honest.
"I've spent a year trying to show you that my love isn't something you have to earn, protect yourself from, or repay.
I just wanted to be the place where you could finally put all that weight down.
" I smiled, but there wasn't much strength behind it.
"Hearing you say I still don't get all of you made me realize I've been standing outside a door I thought was opening, when maybe it never was. "
My eyes never left hers.